The roadmap · Illustrated chapter books
The Echo Stones
How Concord Crater was found
A planned series of illustrated chapter books for readers ready for something longer than a picture book. The Dino Defenders and the Mean Mammals set out after fourteen ancient stones, and find they can’t unlock a single one without each other.
These are plans in motion and likely to change. Release dates will follow when each book is ready.
Long ago in Megasauria
The story behind the stones
Before DinoTopia and Mammal Metropolis were built, dinosaurs and mammals lived side by side. The wisest among them were the Reverberants, a council of both. Together they made fourteen Echo Stones, and each one holds a value they wanted the world to remember: confidence, kindness, honesty, patience, and ten more.
Then the Reverberants hid the stones across Megasauria, and the world forgot them. Today nobody in either city knows the Reverberants ever existed, or that the place where they gathered is still out there. Its name is Concord Crater.
One stone per book
How each book works
Two clues
The Dino Defenders find a clue to where the next stone is hidden. So do the Mean Mammals.
One race
Both teams set out for the same place, each hoping to get there first.
Tests nobody can pass alone
Every test along the way needs something one team has and the other doesn’t. To reach the stone, rivals have to work as partners.
An echo wakes
When the last test is passed, the stone wakes, and an echo of the Reverberant who made it appears. The echo carries the stone home to Concord Crater.
Fourteen stones later
When every stone is home, Concord Crater is found at last. What the Dino Defenders and Mean Mammals discover there is how the series ends, and I’m saving it for the last page.
For parents
Why this series, at this age
Somewhere between six and nine, many children start wanting a story they can carry from one evening to the next. I want this series to meet them there: chapters short enough to finish in a sitting, pictures throughout to keep Megasauria vivid, and a bigger story to follow from book to book. You can still read them together, and I hope many families will.
Each book is built around one value, and the tests on the way to its stone ask the characters to practice it. Nobody wins by beating the other team. The Dino Defenders and the Mean Mammals get there because they work out how to do it together, and that is the lesson I most want a child to take from the whole series.
More of the roadmap
Planned · Picture book roadmapPicture Books · Phases 2–6
Ideal for ages 5–7 · Read togetherNew characters and new corners of Megasauria, one phase at a time.
In development · Longer mysteriesDino Detectives
Ideal for ages 8–12 · Growing readersFive detectives, one case per book, and clues a reader can follow alongside them.
Available now · Read-aloud stories