The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet

T.S. Spivet is a genius mapmaker who lives on a ranch in Montana. His father is a silent cowboy and his mother is a scientist who for the last twenty years has been looking for a mythical species of beetle. His brother has gone his sister seems normal but might not be and his dog - Verywell - is going mad. T.S. makes sense of it all by drawing beautiful meticulous maps kept in innumerable colour-coded notebooks.He is brilliant and the Smithsonian Institution agrees though when they award him a major scientific prize they don't suspect for a moment that he is twelve years old.

So begins T.S.'s life-changing adventure travelling two thousand miles across America to reach the awards dinner the secret-society membership and the TV interviews that beckon. But is this what he wants? Do maps and lists explain the world? And why are adults so strange?