$8.99 paperback, when it opens
Not on sale yet. Nothing here has cleared the publisher’s own gate: no volume has a typeset interior, a print wrap, or an ISBN in either format, and the ebook price has not been ruled. Every free page on this site is finished and true — the whole first chapter, ten Field Notes, ten builds — and the shop opens when the books do. Write to orders@dinoroost.com to be told when.
Dinoroost · Book One of ten
Signal Green
Three years after every grown-up vanished, a thirteen-year-old has to walk five tons of dinosaur home across a flooded road in the dark.
The old world came back up through the new one, and the kids who were left built a village in the treetops.
Lars Vantén is thirteen, and the thing he is best at in the world is standing still. When nine hundred pounds of dinosaur locks onto a splitting gate post and will not stop, Lars walks out in front of it with his hands empty and low, says his own name until the sound of it is boring, and does not move his feet for thirty-one minutes — and the whole village claps. He is also the boy who says yes to everybody. Yes to the rope, yes to the ladder, yes to the kid who needs a witness at noon. His best friend is a hip-high raptor called Bramble, who steals exactly one boot from whoever Lars is talking to and always leaves something in its place.
Then he promises the same afternoon to two people, and picks wrong. A five-ton Stegosaurus walks out over the mud shelf with a squall coming and stops on a traffic island three-quarters of a mile from the gate. That night the river comes up fourteen feet, the causeway goes under three feet of moving water, and the only person in the valley who can walk out there is the boy everybody already asked for something else.
The picture out of this one
A boy with a lantern leading five tons of Stegosaurus across a causeway under three feet of moving river.
The spotlight
Lars Vantén
13, Rider
Rider, and the boy who says yes to everybody. He is the only person here who swims, and he says I’ll get that nine times a day and means it every time.
Matched to Bramble, Deinonychus. The runt of his clutch and finished growing. A crooked outer toe ticks on plank decking, so the whole Roost always knows he is coming — and he will not put a foot in water.
In the back — Field Notes
Deinonychus
Deinonychus — quill knobs on a catalogued forearm bone, and the claw experiment that showed it hooked rather than sliced.
In the back — Make It
The table net-caster, and the range card you paint on it afterwards.
Household junk, numbered steps, under thirty minutes, and a number the child writes down at the end.
| Spotlight | Lars Vantén, 13, Rider |
| Reading age | Ages 9-12 · Grades 4-6 · grade 3–4 text under a grade 4–6 story |
| Length | 22,582 words · eighteen chapters · a two-hour read |
| 5.5 x 8.5 in · Paperback, perfect bound, black-and-white interior · page count not yet measured | |
| Paperback ISBN | not yet issued |
| EPUB ISBN | not yet issued |
| Illustrations | Eighteen, at the head of every chapter |
| Content | Peril yes, cruelty no. No child dies, no swearing, no romance, and nothing anybody builds is meant to hurt anyone |
| Written by | Jory Hark — a pen name |
Inside this one
Eighteen drawings,
one a chapter.
Each one is the object that chapter turns on, at the head of the chapter, in a single ink. All eighteen are here — nothing about this book is behind a Look Inside button.
Questions about this one
Eight answers,
from this book’s own file.
Every one of these is a fact out of the manuscript or the catalogue rather than a sales line — the measured word count, the drawings that actually exist, the animal on the nonfiction page at the back.
What happens in Signal Green?
Three years after every grown-up vanished, a thirteen-year-old has to walk five tons of dinosaur home across a flooded road in the dark.
Who is it about?
Lars Vantén, 13, Rider. A boy with a lantern leading five tons of Stegosaurus across a causeway under three feet of moving river.
How long is Signal Green?
About 22,582 words across eighteen chapters, a cold open and a tag - roughly a two-hour read for a confident reader in the 9-12 band.
Is it illustrated?
Yes. Eighteen drawings, one at the head of every chapter.
Do I have to read the others first?
It is the first, and it is the way in.
What is the nonfiction page at the back?
Deinonychus. Deinonychus — quill knobs on a catalogued forearm bone, and the claw experiment that showed it hooked rather than sliced. The page names its own sources and says which parts of the story were invented, and it is free to read on this site.
What do you build at the back?
The table net-caster, and the range card you paint on it afterwards. Household junk, numbered steps, under thirty minutes, and a number the child writes down at the end.
Is anything in it frightening?
Peril yes, cruelty no. No child dies, there is no swearing and no romance, and nothing anybody builds in these books is meant to hurt anyone - that last one is the first of the three Laws the series runs on.
Around it in the season
