Introduction

As a former middle school teacher, I know how much kids enjoy a rollicking adventure story that never talks down to them, and I’ve done my best to create just that. It seems to have worked: Casper and Jasper and the Terrible Tyrant won second place in the New York Book Festival, and Kirkus calls it a “darkly mirthful tale [that] readers young and old will adore."--Author Tilia Klebenov Jacobs

Casper and Jasper set out to rescue their parents, prisoners of evil Count Wilhelm Scream. Soon they find themselves battling werewolves, trolls, and carnivorous marshmallows. Can their quick wits save them — and their parents?

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Excerpt

This is a tale of wondrous magic and great suffering. You will meet a foul villain and the heroes who battled him. Trolls are involved, and twins. Oh, and a beautiful princess, but not in the way that you might imagine.

Long ago and far away, in the misty, distant Lands of Yonder, farms encircled the villages of Larksong and Nether Wallop, and the twin hamlets of Deasil and Widdershins. The smallest town was called Inglenook; the largest, Middlemost. It is there that we now turn our attention.

Middlemost was a polyglot parcel of neighborhoods. Now, according to Pilcrow and Inkhorn’s Concise Dictionary, “polyglot” means “many tongues;” but please do not let that revolting image disturb you. What it really means is that Middlemost was home to all manner of people from different backgrounds. Its playground burbled with children and piskies sharing snacks and popular magic spells. If you visited, you might buy clunky mugs at Gargles the Golem’s Earthenwares Shoppe, or see a family of horned demons with berets sipping burnt coffee at a café called Charbucks. Two sisters named Scribble and Jot ran Dybbuk’s Books, a jolly place to find a novel and a friendly argument. Tree-lined boulevards led to a big, important hospital near a square in the town center.

But that peaceful feeling had shattered six months earlier, when Count Wilhelm Scream arrived and established himself as Supreme Ruler over all the land, holding sway from a mountaintop fortress filled with an army of dangerous creatures who enforced his new laws against almost anything that might be fun. You can only imagine how annoying this was for everyone concerned, except, of course, the count himself. Nowadays Scribble and Jot’s big window, previously home to picture books and adventure tales, displayed volumes with titles such as A Helpful Explanation of Obedience to Count Wilhelm Scream and Why Life is So Much Better in a Dictatorship. They kept the old books in a back room, but one had to know a certain password to be allowed to see them. Otherwise Scribble and Jot would just dust their shelves and talk loudly about how best to organize paperbacks of uneven heights.

Restlessness thrummed through Middlemost. In the schools, on the streets, at the farms and down the alleyways, people grumbled. This was particularly true of young and idealistic people who thought that maybe, just maybe, Count Wilhelm Scream didn’t have the right to rule them, especially if said rule involved taking land without asking, levying exorbitant taxes, and maintaining a Special Police force with the disagreeable habit of kicking in doors and dragging off entire families without explanation. This had been happening a lot lately, and the idealists in particular were getting fed up with it. view abbreviated excerpt only...

Discussion Questions

In your opinion, who is the bravest character in the book? What made you choose that character?

Why are Casper and Jasper able to defeat Count Wilhelm Scream when no one else could?

People in the Lands of Yonder fight against Count Wilhelm Scream in many different ways. If you lived there, how might you have opposed him?

Casper and Jasper grow up feeling the "secure weight" of their C and J medallions on their necklaces. Why do the medallions make them feel secure? Why are they so important to the boys?

Casper and Jasper set off on their adventure without packing any supplies. If you could put five items into each boy's backpack to help them (ten items total), what would you choose, and why?

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