THE NOBODIES and THE SOMEBODIES! The desperately, breathlessly awaited sequels to THE ANYBODIES are HERE!

I can’t say much about The Nobodies – except that Fern and Howard go to a camp populated by counselors with gills and beaks; a blind busdriver with a seeing eye dog who barks directions; a vicious mole with a flower-shaped nose! And, of course, the Nobodies are in this book, too. They’re sending Fern urgent messages stuffed into bottles! Will Fern and Howard save the Nobodies?

And The Somebodies, well, Fern and Howard narrowly escape being sent to Grave's Military Academy and escape through a golden, singing invitation to the Anybodies Convention in the City Beneath the City where they ride in a glass elevator - shaken from a book you might have once heard of - into Willy Fattler's (very grand, ever-changing) Underground Hotel and find themselves being led into battle with the new villain (a soul-sucking villain to beat all villains): The Blue Queen!

First, let’s back up a minute. Maybe you haven’t read book one The Anybodies just yet. Below is a summary from a starred review – I’m tooting my own horn here just in case you, like my creative writing professor, think that I am contributing to the demise of literature. I’m not! See:

* STARRED REVIEW IN KIRKUS

"...[a] witty, sometimes hilarious tale, punctuated with authorial asides and featuring switched babies, hidden identities, magical transformations, and allusions to literary classics. Frequently interrupting ...[himself] to slam ...[his] creative-writing teacher, apologizing for putting in talking animals, etc., the chatty narrator follows Fern ...[11] as she is whisked a way from her beige and orderly household to the book-stuffed boarding house where her real mother, who died in childbirth, had grown up possessing both a manual for shapechanging and the ability to shake characters or items right off any printed page. As she helps her still-grieving, real father search for the manual before it can fall into the hands of a sinister magician known as The Miser, Fern discovers to her delight that she has inherited her mother's gift. Bode scatters the grounds with hobbits, fairies, clothed rabbits, teacups labeled "Drink Me," and other references for well-read children to catch, assembles a cast of fundamentally decent sorts led by a preteen with plenty on the ball, and concocts a tangled plot with a clever twist at the end, plus plenty of loose threads to connect a sequel."

AND from SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL'S starred review: "...There's laugh-out-loud humor, fantasy, mystery, real-life drama, and potential for a sequel. What more could a reader want?"

I certainly don't know! I did the best I could, you know.

If you've already finished the book, here's a challenge:

THE ANYBODIES -- A book that loves books!

There are 39 (or so!) must-read classics mentioned in THE ANYBODIES...

Can you find them all?

Charlotte's Web; Oliver Twist; Stuart Little; Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone; Peter Pan; A Series of Unfortunate Events; The Chronicles of Narnia; The Indian in the Cupboard; Heidi; Charlie and the Chocolate Factory; >From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler; James and the Giant Peach; The Borrowers; The Hobbit; Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl; King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table; Robin Hood; Little House on the Prairie; Anne of Green Gables; The Secret Garden; Fair and Tender Ladies; Alice in Wonderland; The Wizard of Oz; Catherine, Called Birdy; Snow White and The Seven Dwarves; Little Red Ridinghood; Goldilocks and the Three Bears; Green Eggs and Ham; A Bear Called Paddington; Aesop's Fables; The Tale of Peter Rabbit; The Complete Book of Flower Fairies; The World of Bats; The Book of Presidents; The Mouse and the Motorcycle; Harold and the Purple Crayon; The Bible; Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies; The Phantom Tollbooth, Where the Sidewalk Ends.

And what books lurk within THE NOBODIES? I’m not at liberty to say! Read it and then YOU can tell ME!