F O R I M M E D I AT E R E L E A S E

Matt Phelan
With warmth and humor, award-winning author-illustrator Matt Phelan follows a child as she leads her daddy on some rainy-day flights of fancy.
Its raining and raining and raining, and Penelope is bored. What would you do if you had your druthers? asks her daddy. Well, if Penelope had her druthers, shed go to the zoo. Or be a cowgirl. Or a pirate captain who sails to the island of dinosaurs, or flies away on a rocket to the moon. If Penelope had her druthers, shed go off on amazing adventuresbut then again, being stuck inside may not be so bad if your daddy is along for the ride!

ON SALE SEPTEMBER 9, 2014

HC: 978-0-7636-5955-4 $15.99 ($18.00 CAN) 32 pages Ages 25 Media Contact: Erika Denn, Publicist (617) 588-4516 erika.denn@candlewick.com

A Note from Matt Phelan

Druthers is a book about make-believe and play. While I was writing the book, I found myself stuck at one point. So I turned to the resident expert on play, my then-four-year-old daughter.
What would you rather do, I began as she splashed in the tub, be a pirate or go to a land of dinosaurs? Without even a split-seconds worth of contemplation, she answered, Pirates and dinosaurs. And that answer was the key to Druthers, and maybe the key to make-believe. When you have a choice between pirates or dinosaurs, the answer is always pirates and dinosaurs.

MATT PHELAN is the author-illustrator of the highly acclaimed and award-winning

graphic novels The Storm in the Barn, Around the World, and Bluffton. He is also the illustrator of many books for young readers, including Always and Ill Be There by Ann Stott and The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, which won the 2007 Newbery Medal. He lives in Philadelphia.

Illustration copyright 2014 by Matt Phelan