Truman is a most ordinary little tortoise, living in an apartment above the street where the number 11 bus heads south, content in his terrarium. His Sarah is enough for him. But one day, Sarah puts on a new sweater and a big new backpack (big enough for 32 little Truman-sized tortoises!) and gets on that number 11 bus, and is gone. Truman knows he has to rise to this occasion and find his most extraordinary self so he can head south to find Sarah, and so, of course, he does. Truman experiences the loss children feel when parents go off to work, only in his case, it's his Sarah going off to school.

This is the story the extraordinary Jean Reidy tells in her newest picture book text. TRUMAN was just signed by the extraordinary Emma Ledbetter of Atheneum and will be illustrated by the extraordinary Lucy Ruth Cummins, both of whom are as enamored of little Truman as I am—and as you will be, too, starting in summer 2019!

Congratulations, Jean!

—Erin