$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 Three of ten
The Salt Run
The village loses eleven days of food in one night, and the only thing that stops the rest rotting is nine miles up-valley.
Odji Faal keeps the Ledger, which means he keeps the trades, the rules, the birthdays and the village — and he is fifteen, and in this valley you go Quiet on the morning of your sixteenth birthday. Everybody knows his date. Nobody says it.
When the winter store vanishes overnight, somebody has to send six people and two enormous animals up the valley for road salt. Odji is the one holding the pencil. He writes six names, sends them out at grey light, and stays at the rail — while the road goes on without him, nine miles up-valley to a wooden dome full of the one thing everything large in the valley also wants.
Then the Tally poles up the river with a boat full of food and a crate of collars, free, no charge. Their offer is generous, and reasonable, and true, and it stands for nine days.
The picture out of this one
The only door of the salt dome, filling up with animals.
The spotlight
Odji Faal
15, Keeper of the Ledger
Keeper of the Ledger — every trade, every debt, every birthday, in three books strapped together. He will not Match, because he will not make an animal love somebody who is leaving.
In the back — Field Notes
Triceratops
Triceratops — the frill, and what the bone tells you it was and was not for.
In the back — Make It
The balance beam: making two loads equal without knowing what either weighs.
Household junk, numbered steps, under thirty minutes, and a number the child writes down at the end.
| Spotlight | Odji Faal, 15, Keeper of the Ledger |
| Reading age | Ages 9-12 · Grades 4-6 · grade 3–4 text under a grade 4–6 story |
| Length | 22,482 words · eighteen chapters · a two-hour read |
| 5.5 x 8.5 in · Paperback, perfect bound, black-and-white interior · about 156 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 |
← Book Two, The Impossible Rig · Book Four, The Collar and the Key →
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 Salt Run?
The village loses eleven days of food in one night, and the only thing that stops the rest rotting is nine miles up-valley.
Who is it about?
Odji Faal, 15, Keeper of the Ledger. The only door of the salt dome, filling up with animals.
How long is The Salt Run?
About 22,482 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 Three 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?
Triceratops. Triceratops — the frill, and what the bone tells you it was and was not for. 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 balance beam: making two loads equal without knowing what either weighs. 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.
