The Planet of Junior Brown

Junior Brown, an overprotected three-hundred pound musical prodigy who's prone to having fantasies, and Buddy Clark, a loner who lives by his wits because he has no family whatsoever, have been on the hook from their eighth-grade classroom all semester.

Most of the time they have been in the school building -- in a secret cellar room behind a false wall, where Mr. Pool, the janitor, has made a model of the solar system. They have been pressing their luck for months...and then they are caught. As society -- in the form of a zealous assistant principal -- closes in on them, Junior's fantasies become more desperate, and Buddy draws on all his resources to ensure his friend's well-being.

The recipient of nearly every major award and honor in her field, including the 1992 Hans Christian Anderson Award, Virgina Hamilton was the first African-American woman to be awarded the Newbery Medal, for?M.C. Higgins The Great. Renowned as a storyteller, anthologist and lecturer as well as a novelist, Ms. Hamilton makes her home in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Leo and Diane Dillon are an award winning illustrator pair that have collaborated of book projects for more than fifty years, winning two consecutive Caldecott Medals for Why Mosquitoes Buzz In People's Ears and Ashanti To Zulu: African Traditions.?They have also received five New York Times Best Illustrated Books Awards,?five Coretta Scott King Honors and one Coretta Scott King Award?and many other awards and distinctions.?They live and work in Brooklyn, New York.