Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman is the author of five novels including the #1 New York Times bestselling Magicians trilogy. A TV adaptation of the trilogy is now in its fifth season as the top-rated show on Syfy. Grossman is also a journalist who spent fifteen years as the book critic and lead technology writer at Time magazine, where he published more than twenty cover stories. In addition, he has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Wired, the Believer, the Village Voice, NPR, Salon, Slate, and Buzzfeed, among many others. In The Silver Arrow (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers) we meet Kate and her younger brother Tom. They lead dull, uninteresting lives. And if their dull, uninteresting parents are anything to go by, they don’t have much to look forward to. Why can’t Kate have thrilling adventures and save the world the way people do in books? Even her 11th birthday is shaping up to be mundane — that is, until her mysterious and highly irresponsible Uncle Herbert, whom she’s never even met before, surprises her with the most unexpected, exhilarating, inappropriate birthday present of all time: a colossal steam locomotive called the Silver Arrow. Kate and Tom’s parents want to send it right back, but Kate and Tom have other ideas — and so does the Silver Arrow. Soon they’re off to distant lands along magical rail lines in the company of an assortment of exotic animals who, it turns out, can talk. Soon, Kate and Tom are on the adventure of a lifetime and who knows? They just might end up saving the world after all. Best-selling author Ann Patchett said simply “I loved every page. This is middle grade fiction at its best.”