A Little Like Waking
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
You’ve Reached Sam meets The Good Place in this deeply-felt, surreal and fully illustrated love story about a girl, a boy, a dreamer, and a dream from best-selling and award-winning author Adam Rex.
Zelda is stuck in a dream. A very strange dream, where people can fly, bears sneeze money, and her childhood cat, Patches, is somehow alive - despite being run over years ago. Things only get stranger when Zelda meets Langston, a sweet if overly timid guy who feels more real to her than anyone she’s ever met.
As Zelda and Langston explore the far reaches of the dreamscape together, they find themselves growing closer and closer. But what they uncover along the way pushes them towards a truth neither of them wants to face. Will it turn out that he's the guy of her dreams, or is she the girl of his?
Full of mind-bending artwork, Adam Rex's A Little Like Waking is a tender, insightful read that defies time, space, and expectation that's perfect for fans of Every Day and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
While running late for a final exam and biking furiously through her small town, white teenager Zelda narrowly misses being hit by a car and meets Langston, a handsome Black boy sprawled in the bushes. This meet-cute—and various encounters before it, including the greeting she received from the gate to her house (" ‘MORning,' creaks the gate as it opens")—leads to Zelda realizing that her entire life, including her town and everyone in it, is a dream. Accompanied by Langston and her poetry-spouting, once-dead cat Patches, Zelda endeavors to travel to the edge of the vision, discover the identity of the dreamer, and hopefully return to waking life. Along the way, the trio meets fantastical apparitions (dodgeball-throwing gym teachers on horseback, a sinister laundromat clown, and a 1980s-themed carnival), and muddle through challenges in a world where the rules are constantly changing. Yet the closer they get to the edge, the more apprehensive Zelda and Langston become about their impending separation once the dreamer wakes. By turns existential and goofy, this campy, off-the-beaten-path story by Rex (Fat Vampire), propelled via an immediate, stream-of-conscious present-tense voice and sprinkled with beguiling b&w artwork, ruminates on themes of loss and love. Ages 12–up.
