IN A HOTEL IN PARIS one evening in 1879, Mark Twain sat with his young daughters, who begged their father for a story. Choosing a picture from a magazine to get started, Twain began telling them the tale of Johnny, a poor boy in possession of some magical seeds, who finds himself on a quest to rescue a stolen prince. Later, Twain would jot down some rough notes about the story, but the tale was left unfinished... until now.
Plucked from the Mark Twain archives at the University of California, Berkeley, Twain's notes now form the foundation of a fairy tale picked up over a century later.
With only Twain's fragmentary outline and a story that stops partway as his guide, author Philip Stead has written a tale that imagines what might have been if Twain had fully realized this work. Illuminated by Erin Stead's graceful, humorous, and achingly poignant artwork, this is a story that reaches through time and brings us the debut children's picture book of America's most legendary writer, envisioned by two of today's most important names in children's literature.