Brimir and Hulda are best friends who live on a small island on a beautiful blue planet where there are only children and no adults. Their planet is wild and at times dangerous, but everything is free, everyone is their friend, and each day is more exciting than the last. One day a rocket ship piloted by a strange-looking adult named Gleesome Goodday crashes on the beach. His business card claims he is a “Dream.ComeTrueMaker and joybringer,” and he promises to make life a hundred times more fun with sun-activated flying powder and magic-coated skin so that no one ever has to bathe again. Goodday even nails the sun in the sky and creates a giant wolf to chase away the clouds so it can be playtime all the time. In exchange for these wonderful things, Goodday asks only for a little bit of the children’s youth—but what is youth compared to a lot more fun? The children are so enamored with their new games that they forget all the simple activities they used to love. During Goodday’s great flying competition, Hulda and Brimir fly too high to the sun and soar to the other side of planet, where they discover it is dark all the time and the children are sickly and pale. Hulda and Brimir know that without their help, the pale children will die, but first they need to get back to their island and convince their friends that Gleesome Goodday is not all that he seems. A fantastical adventure, beautifully told, unfolds in a deceptively simple tale. The Story of the Blue Planet will delight and challenge readers of all ages. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Author
Andri Snær Magnason is an Icelandic writer, born in Reykjavik on July 14, 1973. An award winning author published in 40 languages. His most recent book is On Time and Water - a book seeking to explore the issue of time and climate change through language, mythology and memoir. Andri has written novels, poetry, plays, short stories, essays and he has directed documentary films. His novel LoveStar was chosen as “Novel of the year” by Icelandic booksellers, it received the DV Literary Award, The Philip K. Dick special citation Award of 2013 and won the french Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire as best foreign Sci-Fi in France 2016. His children’s book, The Story of the Blue Planet, was the first children’s book to receive the Icelandic Literary Prize and has been published or performed in 35 countries. His first book of poetry was a runaway best seller published by the Bonus supermarket chain in Iceland. The Story of the Blue Planet received the Janusz Korczak Honorary Award 2000 and the West Nordic Children’s Book Prize 2002 and the Green Earth Honor Award 2013 and the UKLA Award 2014. The play from the story was performed on the main stage of YPT in Toronto in 2005 and 2013. He has been active in the fight for preserving the delicate nature of Iceland, his book Dreamland: A Self-Help Manual for a Frightened Nation takes on these issues. Dreamland has been made into a feature-length documentary film. Andri Magnason is the winner of the Kairos Award of 2010 granted by the Alfred Toepfer institute in Hamburg. His most recent documentary films are The Hero's Journey to the Third Pole - a bipolar musical documentary with elephants and Apausalypse, available on the website of Emergence Magazine. Andri Snær Magnason lives in Reykjavík. He is married with four children. His work has been published to more than 40 languages.
