$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 Two of ten
The Impossible Rig
The Roost keeps twenty-two days of water a hundred and twenty feet up a tree, and loses all twenty-two in forty minutes.
Nell Okonjo, fourteen, is the Roost’s Head Rigger. She built the water system. She built it well. Then at grey light the tin pan under the tank stops dripping, and two miles of pipe quietly empties itself back down a hill.
There is no electricity left to fix it with, and the Roost does not weld. What there is: three days of water, ninety chickens, nine terraces of food, a herd of ninety-foot animals wandering along the pipeline who do not know that anybody exists, and one extremely polite boy from downriver holding the part she needs and a receipt he has already written.
Nell has to build a thing nobody believes can be built — and then find out whether she built the right one.
The picture out of this one
Thirty-six kids lying flat along two miles of pipe, an ear each on the metal, passing a knock down the hill as a wave of raised hands.
The spotlight
Nell Okonjo
14, Head Rigger
Head Rigger. Seven pockets, one category per pocket. She can hear a bad bearing three platforms away and has never been wrong, and when Nell runs, everyone runs.
Matched to Boiler, Ankylosaurus. Six tons and wider than a car. Three slow knocks of his club on the decking means open the gate, and he will not cross a bridge until he has watched a person cross first.
In the back — Field Notes
Ankylosaurus
Ankylosaurus — what the club was for, and how the tail was actually swung.
In the back — Make It
A siphon out of two jars and a length of tube, and why breaking it on purpose matters.
Household junk, numbered steps, under thirty minutes, and a number the child writes down at the end.
| Spotlight | Nell Okonjo, 14, Head Rigger |
| Reading age | Ages 9-12 · Grades 4-6 · grade 3–4 text under a grade 4–6 story |
| Length | 23,012 words · eighteen chapters · a two-hour read |
| 5.5 x 8.5 in · Paperback, perfect bound, black-and-white interior · about 148 pages, not yet confirmed from a proof | |
| 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 The Impossible Rig?
The Roost keeps twenty-two days of water a hundred and twenty feet up a tree, and loses all twenty-two in forty minutes.
Who is it about?
Nell Okonjo, 14, Head Rigger. Thirty-six kids lying flat along two miles of pipe, an ear each on the metal, passing a knock down the hill as a wave of raised hands.
How long is The Impossible Rig?
About 23,012 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?
Reading order is publication order, and there is no other order. This is Book Two of ten, and it closes its own problem, so it can be read on its own - but the season runs a clock under all ten and it reads better in order.
What is the nonfiction page at the back?
Ankylosaurus. Ankylosaurus — what the club was for, and how the tail was actually swung. 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?
A siphon out of two jars and a length of tube, and why breaking it on purpose matters. 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.
