You Don't Know About Me

You Don't Know About Me

Sixteen-year-old Billy Allbright is about to bust out of his sheltered cocoon and go on a gonzo road trip. He just doesn't know it yet. His ticket to freedom? A mysterious Bible containing two resurrection stories. The second is about a man Billy's never met, and who is supposedly dead: his father.But the road to a risen-from-the-grave dad, and the unusual inheritance he promises, is far from straight. Billy zigzags across the American West in a geocaching treasure hunt. When his journey includes a runaway baseball star, nudists who perform sun dances, a girl with neon green body parts, and con artists who blackmail him into their "anti-action movie," Billy soon realizes that the path to self-discovery is mega off-road.From the Hardcover edition.ReviewFrom Publisher's Weekly? Starred ReviewMeehl draws inspiration from Huckleberry Finn in this thought-provoking, often philosophical coming-of-age tale...both strange and wonderful...powerful and intelligent.From Bulletin of the Center for Children's BooksBlue Ribbon: One of the best YA books of the Year (2012). Reviewed by Karen CoatsMany remakes of classic stories stay so close to their source texts that it seems pointless not to simply read the original. Sometimes, though, the remake gets it just right--not only adopting the plot and character arcs that made the first book great but also manipulating the style and sensibilities of the source text to refresh and renew our acquaintance with it, all while creating a story that stands alone on its merits. You Don't Know about Me, Brian Meehl's revision of Huckleberry Finn, is one of those.From Kirkus ReviewsMeehl spins acomplex, thought-provoking plot. Readers who have grown tired of thesupernatural and the dystopic will be thrilled to sink their teeth andtheir brains into reality.From the AuthorYou Don't Know About Me is a story that began with a little known yet infamous book.In 1884, months before Mark Twain published his classic, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, he was reading a non-fiction book, Thirty-three Years Among Our Wild Indians. While reading it, Twain wrote many notes in the margins. He was brainstorming a sequel to Huckleberry Finn, which would follow Huck, Tom, and Jim as they headed into Indianterritory for a "howling adventure." Twain wrote the first nine and half chapters of the Huck Finn sequel and stopped.While Twain never finished the sequel, the book in which he mappedout the story in the margins still exists. This book, and Twain's notes, have been closed to the world ever since. When I met the man who now owns the book, and he told me the story of the literary gold mineburied in its margins, my imagination went to work.I imagined a modern day treasure hunt for the book. But not just anytreasure hunt: a quest that would echo the epic journey Huck and Jimtook down the Mississippi River in Huck Finn. After all, theywere on a treasure hunt for freedom. So my modern treasure hunt becamethe story of a boy's quest for the invaluable book, and his adventure as he seeks his own freedom.From the Inside FlapSame as and About the Author.From the Back CoverI shut the glove compartment harder than I meant to. "Why'd you do that?""You mean freak you out?""Yeah."He slid his sunglasses back on. "I was checkin' you for coolant.""Coolant?""Yeah. You gotta check a radiator to make sure it's got enough coolant. You gotta check a person to see if he's got cool." He smiled. "You got it." "Thanks. But why do you care if I'm cool?""'Cause if I'm gonna drive someone west the rest of the day, they gotta be cool."I didn't exactly know who I was riding with, but the way I looked at it, it didn't matter. If there was one thing I'd learned in those past few days it was this: you can ride with someone all your life and not really know who they are.About the AuthorThe first characters Brian Meehl brought to life were not in books. They lived on TV and movie screen