ELA

"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis.

It's not easy to stay out of trouble when four brothers live under one rooftop. So nine-year-old Will's parents send him and his brother Marty, age ten, to the library three times a week, to the kids' absolute horror. After all, that's mean old librarian Spud Murphy's domain, who is rumored to use a "spud gun" on misbehaving kids.

It is a land of wonders. It is a land of mystery. It is a land that time forgot (or chose specifically not to remember). Cut off from the civilized world for untold years by prohibitive interstate tolls at the New Jersey border, this land is called: Delaware.

When Brian and Gregory receive an invitation to stay at a distant relative's strange mansion, well, they should know better than to go. Once there, they stumble upon The Game of Sunken Places, a board game that mirrors a greater game in which they have suddenly become players. Soon the boys are dealing with attitudinal trolls, warring kingdoms, and some very starchy britches.