The Menagerie (20 page)

Authors: Tui T. Sutherland

BOOK: The Menagerie

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J
ust like any wild mythical creature, a book requires a team to raise and nurture itâmeaning we have a lot of people to thank.

Erica Sussman, thank you so much for your enthusiasm, wisdom, humor, and expertise at the care and feeding of temperamental authors.
Thank you to Tyler Infinger, Tara Weikum, Erin Fitzsimmons (we love the cover!), Christina Colangelo, and the entire HarperCollins team, which provided this story with a beautiful design and spotless comma placement and which is now spreading the word far and wide about the Menagerie. Thank you also to Steven Malk, agent extraordinaire.

Ali Solomon, thank you so much for all your patience, hard work, artistic talent, and ability to interpret our notesâon how long yeti fur is or the shape of the Aviaryâand transform them into wonderful images beyond our imagining.

A million thank-yous to the Newton Writers GroupâKaren, Ed, Laya, Joan, Kathryn, John, Elly, and Mordenaâfor their patience, perfection, and perspicacity, and for pointing out ways to make Wyoming feel more like Wyoming. Thanks always to Dayna Lorentz for being the most wonderful willing reader and a great friend.

To our intrepid parents, who raised us in the midst of a never-ending adventure and a real-life menagerie of pets, including eight dogs, one nefarious kitten, a family of cannibal gerbils, six piglets, and two screeching monkeys (some of which were, thankfully, only visitors passing through the house). And to all our sweet, goofy, cuddly pets over the years, and all those of our relatives, friends, and coworkers whose anecdotal traits helped fill out the personalities of the creatures in the Menagerie. (Not that we're saying Maui and Yump have anything in common or anything . . . or that Sunshine is sometimes a soulful griffin cub, sometimes a melodramatic phoenix. . . .)

And, finally, to our lovely husbands and children, who patiently let us burn through phone time as we brainstormed plot twists, researched just how big a two-year-old mammoth might be, and certainly never got distracted talking about
The Amazing Race
.

Kari would also like to thank Tui for being such a fabulous and brilliant sister and an unparalleled writing partner. Working with you doesn't feel like work at all, which is the best kind of job.

And Tui, being the big bossy sister, gets the last word, so she would like to thank Kari for being THE MOST fabulous and MOST brilliant (not to mention gorgeous, understanding, and ridiculously patient) sister with the biggest COOLEST brain on the planet. Could you cowrite all my books, please?

About the Authors

TUI T. SUTHERLAND & KARI SUTHERLAND
are sisters and best friends, and if you can't tell by looking at them which one is older, Tui certainly isn't going to tell you. They grew up in South America, traveling a lot and moving several times (and they're still only about 80 percent certain that their parents weren't secret agents). Kari now lives in New Jersey, while Tui lives in Boston, but they use every excuse they can to see each other (like, say, writing a book together). You can visit them online at www.tuibooks.com or www.menageriebooks.com.

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Credits

Cover design by Erin Fitzsimmons and Alicia Mikles

The Menagerie

Map art by Ali Solomon

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

www.harpercollinschildrens.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-0-06-078064-7

EPUB Edition MARCH 2013 ISBN 9780062202901

Version 09132013

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