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The Search for WondLa (1) Paperback – April 24, 2012
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When a marauder destroys the underground sanctuary that Eva Nine was raised in by the robot Muthr, the twelve-year-year-old girl is forced to flee aboveground. Eva Nine is searching for anyone else like her: She knows that other humans exist because of an item she treasures—a scrap of cardboard on which is depicted a young girl, an adult, and a robot, with the strange word, “WondLa.”
Tony DiTerlizzi honors traditional children’s literature in this totally original space-age adventure—one that is as complex as an alien planet, but as simple as a child’s wish for a place to belong.
- Print length512 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Grade level5 - 6
- Lexile measure760L
- Dimensions5.5 x 1.2 x 8.25 inches
- PublisherSimon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
- Publication dateApril 24, 2012
- ISBN-109781416983118
- ISBN-13978-1416983118
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Eva Nine was dying. The tiny scarlet dots on her hand mirrored the glowering eyes of the snake that had just bitten her.
Sitting down on the prickly ground of dead brown pine needles and small cones, she felt the curdled coil of nausea wind its way up her throat from her stomach.
She dropped the sweaty handful of moss that she had scooped up from the forest floor.
“Kindling,” her Omnipod had instructed her earlier in its chirpy voice. “Find a flammable substance such as dry twigs or moss to begin your fire.” The large gathering of boulders Eva had found had seemed like the perfect place to make a shelter for the night, and the surrounding area was blanketed in ashen puff-patches of reindeer moss. As she had knelt down to gather a clump, Eva had realized there was a rust-colored, mottled snake just next to her, sunning itself in the fading light. She’d realized too late, though, to avoid its bite.
Now, with trembling hands, she fumbled through her dingy satchel to retrieve her Omnipod. The handheld metallic device was flat, like a magnifying glass, with a small circular hole in the middle of it that resembled an eye. Eva’s heart pounded, as if trying to escape her chest. She swallowed, interrupting the hectic meter of her breathing. The shoulder patch on her tunic blinked off and on in warning.
“This is Eva Nine,” she whispered into the Omnipod. “Initiate I-M … um, I-M …”
Eva closed her eyes and concentrated. She put the device to her forehead, as if the Omnipod would whisper to her brain the command she needed.
“Greetings, Eva Nine. How can I be of service?” the device chirped.
“I … um …” Her hands shook. “I need you to initiate Independent Medical—”
“Do you mean Individual Medical Assistance? IMA for short?” the Omnipod corrected her.
“Yes,” she answered, licking her dry lips and trying to hold her insides in.
“Is this an emergency?”
“Yes! I need help right away!” Eva yelled at the Omnipod.
“What is the nature of your emergency?”
“S-snake bite,” Eva said with a gulp. The nausea lurked just under her tongue, ready to leap out.
“Hold, please. Initiating Identicapture.” Eva watched as three tiny lights on the Omnipod flickered in a rhythm around its central eye. “Begin Identicapture of said snake. We need to determine if it is a poisonous species or not.”
Through glassy eyes Eva scanned her immediate area; she could no longer focus on the terrain around her, let alone find a snake disguised as the forest floor. Her eyes rolled up into her head. Her breathing slowed. She let the Omnipod slip from her fingers.
Eva fell back, like a slain giant collapsing in a miniature forest of moss. She looked up at the fading light of the cobalt blue sky. Her Omnipod lay alongside her as it repeated, “Please begin Identicapture.”
All Eva could whisper was, “Dead. I’m totally dead.”
A voice from the heavens echoed through the landscape. It was a kind and graceful voice, like the sort she’d heard coming from a beautiful woman in an old movie.
“Eva. Eva, dear, please get up,” the voice said. Just like in an old moving picture, Eva could also hear the slightest bit of static hidden in the dulcet intonation.
The pine trees seemed to whisper the girl’s name as the cool of evening blew in. Somewhere in the distance a whip-poor-will beckoned the night. Eva cracked open her pale green eyes into little slits.
“Eva Nine,” urged the voice, “get up.”
The girl rolled onto her side. Lying on the forest floor, she examined the tuft of moss in her hand. She saw that the delicate network of stalks really did make it look like a shrunken tree, albeit a washed-out lifeless one.How does such an insignificant plant survive in a big world? she wondered.What is its purpose? What is my purpose?
“Eva, please—”
“I’m dead,” Eva announced to the sky. “Or couldn’t you tell? I’m gone. Deceased. No more. Deeeaaaaad!”
She turned her attention back to the little moss tree and pouted. “It’s not like you have to worry about that,” she muttered.
The clump of moss in her hands vanished, dissipating into a cloud of light motes. Eva curled up into a ball, shutting her eyes as the world around her also evaporated into nothingness. Emptiness.
The voice was right next to her now. “Eva, what happened?”
“Leave me alone,” the ball replied.
“You were not paying attention,” the voice said with a sigh. “You had a ninety-eight percent chance of discovering the snake, had you done a simple LifeScan sweep. It was right there in plain view.”
Still curled in a ball, Eva said nothing.
“Of course, I have to mark you as a failure on this particular survival skill test. We shall try it again tomorrow. All right?” said the voice.
A warm hand brushed Eva’s half-braided dirty-blond hair. At last Eva stood up.
Two dark orbs, emitting an amber glow from deep within, reflected Eva’s own face in a distorted fashion, like a fish in a fishbowl. Large automated eyelids clicked open and closed in a lifelike manner. Several other eyes, small and unblinking, studied the girl, recording endless data and sending it to a computerized brain. A brain that was contained in two metallic canisters mounted on the back of a head—the front of which displayed a mechanized silicone-rubber face.
“What is going on with you, Eva?” the automated lips mimed. “This test should have been effortless for you to pass. Is everything all right?”
One of the robot’s telescoping arms extended from a carousel of several additional arms folded up around the cylindrical torso. Four wiry fingers, also tipped in silicone rubber, rubbed Eva’s shoulders in a reassuring fashion.
“How is your concentration?” the robot asked. “I noted that you did not rest a full ten hours last night, which indicates that you may not have achieved enough REM sleep. That can have quite an effect on your performance.”
“Not now, Muthr.” Eva shrugged the robot off. “I need to be alone.”
She crossed the wide squarish white room and headed for the low doorway. Buff-colored rubbery floor tiles absorbed the sound of her plodding footsteps. Though the chamber was only dimly lit, there was still enough light coming from the holo-projectors mounted around the ceiling to show that the room itself was empty of anything … except for the human girl and the pale blue robot.
Eva sulked as she shuffled into the main hub of her living quarters. When the large doors to the holography chamber slid shut behind her, a pastoral scene was projected onto them in vivid detail. Cottony clouds drifted aimlessly across a brilliant azure sky over distant lavender mountains. This gave the effect that the entire hub was like a grand outdoor gazebo, displaying a magnificent vista in the round—though one projection was not working properly and flickered into a corresponding nighttime scene, ruining the illusion.
“Welcome back, Eva Nine.” The intercom spoke in a relaxed tone. Its words reverberated throughout the octagonal chamber. “How may I help you?” Water trickled in a distant stream, and songbirds sang, filling the vestibule with ambient sounds coinciding with the scenery.
“Hi. Please open bedroom doors, Sanctuary,” Eva said, stomping across the hub toward the far window. Projected on it was a spectacular view of a misty waterfall cascading down from a colossal mountaintop. The cast image crackled when the girl passed through it, as through a holographic curtain, into the open doors of her dimly lit bedroom.
“Close doors, please.” Eva flung her jackvest onto her medi-seat. She sat down on the edge of her foam bed and kicked off her sneakboots. As she flopped back onto the oval mattress, Eva stared up at the myriad of pipes and exhaust shafts that wound through her white ceiling. There were water stains on the corner ceiling tiles of the small room, like large ochre flowers blooming from the pipes. One of the overhead lights flickered in an annoying, erratic tempo.
With her hands behind her head, Eva rubbed the raised round mole on the nape of her neck. The warmth of her electric bed permeated through her tunic in a comfy sort of way. Her eyelids drooped, and she had begun to doze off when her bedroom doors slid back open.
“Eva, you forgot your equipment satchel and Omnipod back in the holo-chamber,” Muthr said, rolling into her room balanced on a single tread-worn wheel. “Honestly, dear, how can you expect to pass your training if you do not take care of your things?”
“Muthr!” Eva continued staring up at the stained ceiling, refusing to look Muthr in the eye. “Just leave it. I’ll put it away later.”
The robot picked Eva’s dingy jackvest up from the chair. The discarded garment had been perfectly hidden among the stuffed toys, dirty clothes, and electra-papers that were strewn about the room. “Put it away as you have done with the rest of your belongings? I sometimes wonder—”
“Please, Muthr, I just want to be alone for a while,” Eva barked at the ceiling.
Muthr hung the jackvest on the empty row of coat hooks lining the wall. “Dinner is at eighteen hundred hours. Please be timely, Eva,” Muthr said. After Muthr rolled out of the room, the doors slid shut behind her. Eva reached under her head and grabbed her pillow. As she squeezed it over her face, she screamed.
© 2010 TONY DITERLIZZI
Product details
- ASIN : 1416983112
- Publisher : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers; Reprint edition (April 24, 2012)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 512 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781416983118
- ISBN-13 : 978-1416983118
- Reading age : 9 - 12 years, from customers
- Lexile measure : 760L
- Grade level : 5 - 6
- Item Weight : 1.4 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 1.2 x 8.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,217,752 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #11,181 in Children's Folk Tales & Myths (Books)
- #24,454 in Children's Action & Adventure Books (Books)
- #38,567 in Children's Literature (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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The Search for WondLa: Mini Trailer
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1:44
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WondLa Demo of Augmented Reality
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About the author
THE FANTASTIC WORLDS OF TONY DITERLIZZI
#1 New York Times bestselling author and illustrator, Tony DiTerlizzi, has been creating children’s books for twenty years. From fanciful picture books like The Broken Ornament and The Spider & The Fly (a Caldecott Honor book), to chapter books like Kenny and The Dragon and The Search for WondLa, DiTerlizzi imbues his stories with rich imagination. With Holly Black, he created the middle-grade series, The Spiderwick Chronicles, which has sold over 20 million copies, been adapted into a feature film, and translated in over thirty countries. He teamed up with Lucasfilm to retell the original Star Wars trilogy as a picture book and his collaboration with celebrated author Mo Willems created the bestseller The Story of Diva & Flea. The Norman Rockwell museum’s retrospective, “Never Abandon Imagination”, featured artwork from the beginning of DiTerlizzi’s career as a contributing artist for Dungeons & Dragons and broke attendance records. He has been featured in Time magazine, USA Today, CNN, PBS, NPR the BBC and The Today Show.
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It is great to find a book with a strong young female character as the centerpiece. Not a super-hero, just a young person that learns through her mistakes with reasoning and compassion. Yes it is set in a "futuristic" form of the planet earth, but what I found interesting after reading the first and now the second book in this series, is that I became comfortable with the characters and schematic of this new earth fairly early on. At first I thought that the speech and description of some of the characters were similar to the Jar Jar Binks character in star wars, but that view quickly changed. Every character serves a purpose in the story-line of this book and each one is well developed. This book has the excitement factor also for adults and kids to keep wanting to read on to find out where this leads Eva Nine and the choices she will make to get there. An exceptional book about survival, courage, acceptance, and yes, loss, but without the sap. At times you can really feel the underlying darkness in parts of this planet but you never get the feeling of true despair from the Eva Nine character. Instead you feel hope, steadfastness and moving forward. A true survival of spirit and mind. You witness her growth from naivety to understanding.
I am always looking for books for my grand daughters (this book is for my 8 year old) that will not only challenge their reading and vocabulary, but also their questioning mind. In the process I have found that I also love reading this genre! This opens up a whole new world for all of us because of the follow-up conversations. It's amazing how much my grand daughters love to talk about the books they read with someone that has also read it.
This has developed a love in my grand daughter for not only reading, but also for the actual book form to hold onto and read. This came through loud and clear after giving Percy Jackson and the Olympians a go on audible and my kindle. She absolutely states that she wants the actual books. With the Wondla series this is a big bonus because the illustrations are amazing.
A big thank you to the libraries out there for carrying a wide variety of children's books.
And a big thank you to this author and so many others out there for giving "kids of all ages" great material to read and looking forward to the third book in the series with anticipation.
If you like Wondla, here is a list of similar genre books read and thoroughly enjoyed by this grand mother and her 8 year old grand daughter:
We read the full series of the books listed below and they were all great!
Gregor and the Underland Chronicles series by Suzanne Collins (yes, the same author that wrote the Hunger Games -also a kids book- although a bit older)
Harry Potter Series by J K Rowling
Percy Jackson and the Olympian series by Rick Riordan
How to Train your Dragon series by Cressida Cowell (we both giggle at times through these, they do have more humor in them which is a bonus)
I give authors credit when they take on the task of both writing a story, and illustrating it. They get double credit from me if they're good at both.
The illustrations are beautiful...and colored...not something you see a lot of outside of picture books that are 40 pages long, and read to very young children.
The writing isn't the most lyrical I've ever read, but Tony gets his point across. I like the way he takes time to describe the landscape around, simply because I love how original, and alien it all is. A hill isn't just a hill, it moves, a tree isn't just a tree, it eats birds.
Though for some who are more point driven, I guess the lengthy descriptions can seem a bit long-winded.
Eva Nine's character at times seems kind of.... bratty? Or maybe she's just stubborn and strong-willed? Either way, at a couple points I found myself a little tired of her, and wished that she'd just do what she was being told.
While I admit, I'm not the best person at judging character development, I think all the characters in the book were well defined, and they grew on me easily. There are obviously still things to learn about each of them, but Tony's got two more books in the trilogy to do that with. And I think that some of the beings that he's dismissed in the duration of the plot will make an appearance later on. (With the exception of a few, for reasons that become apparent after you read it.)
The Search for WondLa was an engaging read. It was colorful both in its pictures ^_^ and in originality. It had a twist or two to the main plot, some of them you could kind of see coming, and others not so much.
Though I have to say, I got more the impression of Alice in Wonderland... So when it was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, it threw me a little. But I guess I can see it... the so called 'robot' was the Tin Man; I guess the 'human' was the scarecrow. But no Toto, or Lion? (Again, you have to read the book to understand.)
Anyway, I look foreward to the next books. I will definitely be adding this series to my personal bookshelf.