Douglas Gibson media kit
Ten facts about Douglas Gibson and Tales of a Fifth Grade Knight
Capstone Young Readers marketing
Contact
Douglas Gibson
doug@douglasgibsonwrites.com
828-674-7180
34 Crestmont Ave.
Asheville, NC 28806
http://www.douglasgibsonwrites.com
Twitter: @dougibson
Facebook author page: http://www.facebook.com/douglasgibson.author
Book info
Title: Tales of a Fifth-Grade Knight
Publisher: Capstone Young Readers
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-162-370-255-7
Retail price: $10.95
Release date: August 1, 2015
Photos
Cover images
Bios
Douglas Gibson lives and works in lovely Asheville, North Carolina, with his wife and son, a small dog, and a medium chicken. He is a student of the Great Smokies Writing Program, received his MA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his BA from Davidson College. His first book, Tales of a Fifth Grade Knight, is due out in September 2015 from Capstone Young Readers, and when he isn't writing about books or designing them for other people, Douglas is usually hard at work writing books of his own.
Douglas Gibson and his wife and son live in lovely Asheville, North Carolina, along with a small dog named Spencer and a medium chicken named Juliet. When he isn't writing about books or designing them for other people, Douglas is usually hard at work writing books of his own.
Book description
One day, Isaac Thompson is just your average fifth grader playing the part of a porcupine in the school play. The next, he is launching his quest to knighthood. When his little sister, Lily, goes missing, Isaac and his best friends, Max and Emma, set out to find her.
Their search takes them to the Underground — a mysterious subterranean realm that exists beneath their school — where they encounter an army of spear-wielding rats, a talking human-sized bat, and a thumb-nosed prison guard.
But humans who stay in the Underground too long transform into weird, unpleasant creatures and are forced to work for the horrible Elf King. Can Isaac and his crew find Lily and escape the Underground before it’s too late for them to ever return home?
Shorter:
In Tales of a Fifth-Grade Knight, a fifth-grader named Isaac Thompson looks for his little sister after she goes missing—and finds 1) a mysterious underground country, 2) rats with spears, elves with attitude, and frogs with chips on their shoulders, and 3) trouble.
Ten facts about Douglas Gibson and Tales of a Fifth Grade Knight
Top Ten Interesting Facts About Douglas Gibson and Tales of a Fifth-Grade Knight:
- I wrote Tales of a Fifth-Grade Knight as a birthday present for my wife, Stacey. I was a week late finishing, but she forgave me!
- I was partially inspired to write about knights because my son, Griffin, and I occasionally join in the epic boffer sword battles that are a weekly feature in Asheville.
- Tales of a Fifth-Grade Knight is my first book.
- Just like Max, I had a large collection of sticks that doubled as swords when I was younger. I still sometimes pick up sticks that look like swords.
- I based Acro on the Flying Fox family of bats. I’ve never met a flying fox, but there’s no doubt that flying foxes are both the largest and the handsomest type of bat there is.
- The characters of Isaac, Emma, and Max are based on Griffin and his friends, though I combined attributes of several kids in each character. I’m glad (or maybe sorry) to say I’ve never met a first grader quite like Lily.
- This is pure coincidence, but the picture of Isaac on the front cover somewhat resembles my son, Griffin.
- Capstone put out a British edition (Isaac Thomson and the Knights of Castle School, via Raintree Publishing) at the same time as the American one (Tales of a Fifth-Grade Knight). In the British edition, Isaac has a last name (“Thompson,” named after the British songwriter and guitarist Richard Thompson) and lives in “Butford” (this is a play on “Butleigh,” the town in England where one of Griffin’s best friends lives). Castle School was brought over from Germany (instead of England), and the toilets in the third-floor boy’s bathroom play “Rule Britannia” instead of “Yankee Doodle.”
- My favorite books when I was Isaac’s age were: John Fitzgerald’s Great Brain books, The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg, Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh, The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper, Then Again, Maybe I Won’t by Judy Blume, and C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. I still own most of my first copies of these books, including a Great Brain book that I checked out of my school library, thought I lost, and then found buried in a drawer in my room a couple of years later.
- My favorite books for middle-grade readers these days include John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice series, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl books, and The Spiderwick Chronicles by Tony Di Terlizzi and Holly Black. I also like a lot of graphic novels, including Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet series, Jeff Smith’s Bone books, and everything I’ve read so far by Doug Ten Napel, Raina Telgemier, and Kean Soo.
Capstone Young Readers marketing
o Featured on NetGalley
o Two page spread in the F15 Trade Catalog
o May 2015
§ Advanced Reader Copy distribution at Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist/ALA, Book Report, Kidsreads.com, NPR Books, Star-Tribune, Kid Lit Reviews, Los Angeles Review of Books, Shelf Awareness, Bank Street, Horn Book, School Library Journal
§ ARC featured in the Capstone Young Readers booth at BEA 2015 in NYC
o June 2015
§ ARCs will be part of the Summer Reading Challenge with Bookopolis
o August 2015
§ Capstone YR will sponsor ARC giveaways and promotion on Facebook & Twitter
o September
§ Book will be featured on the Capstone website as one of the scrolling banners on the home page