Nine-year-old Pudge is a chronic liar—until one lie shatters his family. He meets a talking dinosaur hiding in a museum and hatches a plan to lure his paleontologist dad home. But when a creepy curator wants to clone the dino, Pudge must choose: tell the truth and fix his family or keep lying to protect his new dino bestie.
MONTYSAURUS is an illustrated middle grade novel-in-verse. A contemporary fantasy, it’s perfect for fans of the movie Paddington and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Konigsburg or The Dinosaur Sanctuary graphic novel series by Itaru Kinoshita (Author) and Shin-ichi Fujiwara (Contributor).
Nine-year-old Pudge thinks it’s okay to lie, as long as no one gets hurt. But when he tells a lie that puts another kid’s life in danger, the fallout is the last straw for Pudge’s already bickering parents. Then his dad leaves for a dig in Brazil, and the rest of the family moves across town into a shoe-boxed sized apartment. As he struggles to fit in at a new school, Pudge is pretty sure his dad is never coming back.
Then Pudge meets Monty—a four-foot-tall live dinosaur—on a class trip to the museum. Suddenly, he has the perfect bait to lure his dad home. All he needs is proof. Pudge sneaks back into the museum but when he finds Monty, he discovers he can talk. And he’s on the run from a power-hungry curator who wants to clone him.
Pudge smuggles Monty home but it’s hard to keep the world’s biggest secret in the world’s smallest apartment (especially if you’ve promised never to lie again). As the villainous curator closes in, Pudge must decide: keep lying to protect his new dino bestie or tell the truth about Monty and fix the family he broke.