The Story of the Blue Planet

The Blue Planet is beautiful. It's filled with plants and animals and lots of happy children. There are no grown-ups, the excitement and danger of living on the blue planet would have surely withered away, but when a stranger arrives in a rocket that spells 'Let There Be Fun' in the sky, everything changes. Gleesome Goodday tells the children he can make their dreams come true, but the children don't want for anything on the beautiful blue planet. Their landscape is the best thing they can imagine, the skies thrill them and the waterfalls fill them with wonder. But the grown-up convinces them to wish beyond their blue planet, and with his strange vacuum-cleaner-esque machine he introduces them to the magical butterfly powder that can make imagination reality…at a price.

This otherworldly fable spirals out of control when the power-hungry grown-up cons the children into exchanging their youth for his magical promises. As they expire the children find themselves bored with the very things they were besotted with just days before and through their bargaining trap themselves into a world that holds them prisoner. Goodday claims he has no wishes of his own, but his secret desire is the key to the children's freedom. This bizarre story has an important message at its core but like the magical butterfly powder effect, it's easy to be distracted by all of the crazy mayhem going on around it! Told in short chapters with attractive colour illustrations throughout, it's a brave and eccentric book about the nature of greed.