by S. E. Grove
Perching before the window in unspoken agreement, they looked out over the city of Boston and ate their chocolate spoons. A companionable silence fell over them. The snow that had been waiting all day in the clouds overhead began to fall, filling the air with white dust and an air of possibility.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am grateful to the librarians, booksellers, and readers who have followed Sophia and Theo so far on their adventures. You’ve made me reluctant to end the journey! A special thanks to bookseller extraordinaire Kenny Brechner, for indefatigable enthusiasm and erudition.
Viking and the Penguin Young Readers Group have carried this surprising voyage to its happy conclusion. I am grateful to Ken Wright, Jim Hoover, Eileen Savage, Dave A. Stevenson, Stephanie Hans, Janet Pascal, Abigail Powers, Krista Ahlberg, Eileen Kreit, Julia McCarthy, Jessica Shoffel, Tara Shanahan, Amanda Mustafic, Zarren Kuzma, and the sales team (especially Jackie Engel and Biff Donovan) for ensuring that these stories made their way from sketchy lines in my head to beautiful books in readers’ hands.
Sharyn November, were it not for your passionately offbeat (and excellent) taste, this trilogy would never have made it onto paper. From that first conversation we had, in which the shared favorites tumbled out by the handfuls, I’ve felt fortunate to have found such a like-minded reader and thinker.
Dorian Karchmar, thank you for the impeccable sensibility you bring to writing and the wisdom you bring to everything else about the process.
And, as ever, I could not have finished this book without the judicious comments of early readers. To my parents, my brother, and Pablo—thank you for leaping into every stage of this story and cheering me all the way. Mamá and Papá, I’ve noticed that you always keep my books in view on the coffee table. Thanks for treating all my scribbles, even the abysmal ones from when I was ten, as if they deserve pride of place.
Alton, knowing you will read a manuscript the moment I hand it to you persuades me, all the time and every day, that I’m doing something worthwhile. These stories are always somehow at their best in your imagination—thank you.
This book is dedicated to Rowan, who may someday actually read it. In the meantime, you are filling the world with words far more lovely, fantastical, funny, and profound. Thank you for the constant inspiration.
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