The Dreamatics - Hardcover

Cuevas, Michelle

 
9780593532225: The Dreamatics
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593532228 ISBN 13: 9780593532225
Verlag: Rocky Pond Books, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

In this exhilaratingly original novel, a fantastical theatre and its troupe perform a young girl’s dreams, until nightmares take over. Will one devoted stagehand be able to bring joy back into the spotlight?

Have you ever awakened from a dream and thought, what was THAT?! A platypus waddling through my school while singing the word farfanoogle? Well, that dream was performed by a dream theatre, and this is the story of one such place: The Lunarian Grand.

The Lunarian is a magical theatre with a mind of its own, often redecorating on a whim or making it snow from the rafters. The theatre’s troupe call themselves the Dreamatics, and together they grow sets from seeds, sew costumes that can change an actor’s shape, and each night when a girl named Luna goes to sleep, they produce her spectacular dreams: dreams of memories, family, and her beloved dog, Murph.

But when something devastating happens in Luna’s waking life, the theatre falls under new management in the form of the Bad Dreams. Now it’s up to a loyal stagehand named Dormir and the Dreamatics to put things right and restore balance in their world and in Luna’s.

Go behind the scenes of your dreams in this enchanting novel full of cozy magic, humor, and wonder.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Michelle Cuevas graduated from Williams College and holds a master of fine arts in creative writing from the University of Virginia. She is an author of children’s novels and picture books, including The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole, Confessions of an Imaginary Friend, and The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles. She lives in western Massachusetts with her husband and their two Bernese Mountain Dogs. Her hobbies include travel, watercolor painting, and drawing.

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Prologue
Onstage, a dream is unfolding.

The theatre’s lighting department has outdone itself—somehow managing to perfectly re-create the amber glow of a late-afternoon sun, right down to the dappled and dancing light through the leaves. The set builders have grown giant sunflowers that tower on the stage, and the actors have transformed themselves into dragon-sized bumblebees, emerging from the flowers with their fuzzy bodies covered in golden pollen. Even the air in the theatre feels crisp and edged with the smell of apples.

A great wind starts blowing, and yellow leaves begin swirling around the stage, some blowing out into the theatre and over the velvet-covered seats. The leaves change to snow, and the stage is transformed—now a lone lantern glows through the fluffy flakes, the ground sparkles like a million tiny moons, and the air smells of nutmeg, gingerbread, and a hint of pine.

This is the magic of the theatre; the way the creaking floorboards seem to speak in their own language; the way every prop, light, and velvet seat seem to know the audience by name; the way a stage can also be bumblebees and lanterns, cinnamon, and snow.
This is where dreams are written, says the creaking floor.

This is where dreams are born, built, brought to life, say the blinking lights.

This . . . is the Lunarian Grand.

But then, the sweet smells begin to sour, and the big, beautiful flakes of snow begin to whip in the wind, turning to hail, then lashing sleet. The theatre goes cold—colder than cold—causing icicles to form below the box seats and balcony.

Crunch.

Crunch.

Crunch.

Something is stalking through the snow. Something is crushing fallen branches. Something is howling with a crylike screeching tires. The footsteps come closer and closer, carrying something wrong, something bad, something that smells of fear and darkness and something worse, far worse, too awful to even imagine.

“Cut!” yells the Director. “Wake up!”

“Wake up. Wake up!” join in the rest of the cast and crew.

“Wake up,” I whisper, less sure than the rest. “Wake up, it’s only a dream . . .”

A Brief Explanation of the Prologue

Only a dream? you’re probably saying. Was that whole prologue just a dream? But I HATE when writers do that. It’s lazy! Just stay in reality, pal.

Don’t worry, I totally agree. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

Well . . . that is . . . except in this one, specific, very particular case. Because, you see, dreams are our reality.

Hey! Come back. Where are you going? Okay, okay, I can see I’m starting to lose you. How to explain, how to explain . . .

Let’s see . . . have you ever woken up from a dream and thought, What was THAT? My auntie Gertrude shaped like a giant platypus waddling through my middle school while singing the word “farfanoogle” over and over? Well, that dream? That was us! Or a dream theatre just like us. We built the middle school set, one of our actors played Aunt Gertrude the platypus, and our orchestra performed the Farfanoogle Waltz in Zzz Minor.

That’s because we are the members of the Lunarian Grand Theatre, affectionately referred to among ourselves as the Dreamatics. Every night we perform the dreams of one Luna Grande, age ten and three-quarters. Well, every night until tragedy struck and changed everything forever.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning . . .


Chapter One
The Weather Closet

Someone hadn’t fully closed a jar of winter in the weather closet, and everything was covered in drifts of snow. Again.

Frost glazed the bottles of wind and the jugs of raining rain, and I had to dig to find the glass orbs of sunsets I’d been sent for in the first place. I finally found the one that Nox had told me to find—“colored peach pie with clouds à la mode, fading into a melted sherbet horizon.”

“Team, your desire for a snowball fight later,” said the Director, “is not an excuse to leave winter open in the set department again and give . . . uh . . . Whozamacallit here frostbite.”

I smiled and shook the snowflakes from my overalls. Sure, call me Whozamacallit. Or Whatsername. Or So-and-So. I answered to them all. Who needs to learn the name of the lowliest of low assistants?

(It’s Dormir, by the way. My name, that is.)

“Sorry, boss,” said Nox, our set designer. “My bad. Also, you said you wanted to change the snow for tonight’s performance? What kind of snow d’ya want?”

“Ugh, must I do everything?” asked the Director. “Just make it romantic. Make it fun.” She was wearing one of her usual stress-related T-shirts, which always featured things like a picture of a lightbulb saying “I’m burnt out!”or a head of lettuce saying “Romaine calm!” Today was another classic—a cat shouting “DON’T STRESS MEOWT!”

“We’ve got all the kinds of snowy precipitation,” continued Nox. “Ice pellets, blizzard, squall, thundersnow . . .”

“Do you think ‘thundersnow’ sounds romantic?” asked the Director.

“I wouldn’t know,” said Nox, putting her dirty work gloves on her hips.

“Something unique,” continued the Director. “Something poetic.”

“Unique . . . poetic . . . well, we have one thing, fairly rare,” said Nox. “It’s called watermelon snow.”

“And that is . . . ?”

“It’s technically caused by a red-colored green algae called Chlamydomonas nivalis,” said Nox with the poetry of a snowplow.

The Director stared, bewildered.

“It’s pink,” said Nox. “Pink snow. It happens in the real world.”

I didn’t hear the end of the conversation, as I had plenty of my own work to do before the theatre opened for the night.

Not that I was complaining. I may have been a lowly-low assistant, but I was lowly-low at the Lunarian Grand, which was, in my humble opinion, the most majestic, magical, beautiful theatre in the entire universe. I was sawing, nailing, painting, and rigging most of the time, sure, but I was also part of the show.I felt the tingling excitement every time the houselights dimmed, knew every line by heart, and whispered them under my breath from the wings, loving every moment, but knowing that I would never be in the spotlight.

You will never bask in that kind of glow, I’d tell myself.

You will never capture moments, say things unsaid, stir hearts, feel the thrill of the unknown.
You will always be only what you are: a lowly stagehand, a set painter, an assistant to all, but never the star.

Still, I thought. Still.

Even a dream like me was allowed to dream.

Chapter Two
The Lunarian Grand

“If it isn’t the wizardess of illumination,” I said to my  best friend, Circadia, opening the door to the lighting department. “Need anything before the show?”

Circadia, her giant eyes magnified even more by thick glasses, looked up from her table of various-shaped...

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Verlag
Rocky Pond Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593532228
ISBN 13 
9780593532225
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
320
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Buchpark GmbH
gpsr@buchpark.de

Krügerweg 1
Trebbin
Brandenburg
14959
Deutschland

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