Mirrorscape » (Library Edition)

Mike Wilks is an award-winning artist and the bestselling author of The Ultimate Alphabet and The Ultimate Noah's Ark. His paintings, which have been described as "meticulous and eye-bending," can be found in public and private collections in the US and Europe. Mirrorscape is the first installment in his middle-grade trilogy.

Grade Level: 7-9 Age Level:12-14 Listening Level: Grades 4-6

Melkin Womper is thrilled to escape his dull future as a village weaver and develop his artistic talent when he’s apprenticed to Ambrosius Blenk, one of Vlam’s most famous masters. Mel is especially excited by the colors that he’ll be able to use, since color is a very expensive Pleasure, strictly controlled by the sinister Fifth Mystery.
Mel can’t wait to enjoy the wonders of the grand city and begin his important work for Blenk. Instead, his dreams are quickly crushed by the reality of days filled with unimportant tasks and bullying by the other apprentices.
But when Mel and his new friends, Ludo and Wren, inadvertently stumble into a battle between the Fifth Mystery and the Rainbow Rebellion, an underground band fighting to make Pleasures affordable for all, the trio must step through Blenk’s paintings into the Mirrorscape. In this alternative world, the friends encounter monsters, mazes, talking houses, angels, and more.
Hugely original and deeply compelling, Mirrorscape is a thrilling adventure filled with the beautiful and the bizarre, the fantastical and the frightening. Enter into an incredibly visual, secret world, where the ultimate weapons are pigment, a paintbrush, and the power of imagination.

Publishers Weekly

Wilks (The Ultimate Alphabet) launches a trilogy with this adventure set in a world where imagination has power and art is literally alive. Melkin (Mel) Womper, a talented young artist, is given the chance of a lifetime when he's selected to study under the famous painter, Ambrosius Blenk. This puts him at odds with the sinister Adolfus Spute, who represents the Fifth Mystery, one of five organizations with a stranglehold on everything that involves the five senses (the Fifth Mystery controls color). It also brings him the enmity of Blenk's lazy, drunken head apprentice, Groot. Together, these enemies make life difficult for Mel and his new friends, Ludo and Wren. Soon after Mel discovers the secret of passing through certain paintings into the Mirrorscape, a surreal alternate world that exists within the paintings, Spute launches an all-out attack on Blenk. Devilish angels, walking houses, impossible contraptions and monsters galore collide in a no-holds-barred battle of the brushes. Wilks creates a chaotic, whimsical romp that will appeal to the mind's eye. Ages 12–up. (Oct.)\