First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017
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Text copyright © Laura Martin 2017
Cover artwork © Fred Gambino
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017
Laura Martin asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
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Source ISBN: 9780008152925
Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008152932
Version: 2017-03-03
For all the teachers, librarians, and parents working to instill a love of reading in the hearts of the next generation. You are the true heroes of stories.
And to my mom, who first did that for me.
Contents
This was a bad idea. Spectacularly bad, actually. It went against everything I’d learned in my short time topside, but all that didn’t change what we had to do. I glanced back down at my dad’s map, but it showed the same thing it had always shown. The only way to get to Lake Michigan was to leave the shelter of the trees and make a run for it – in the open. My eyes flicked up to take in the sprawling grassland in question, filled, as I knew it would be, with dinosaurs.
A large herd of what I thought had to be Dracorex hogwartsia was grazing close enough for me to count the spikes that bristled all over their bony heads, making them resemble the dragons of fairy tales they were named after. But these creatures were not the stuff of fairy tales or history books. At least not anymore. Behind the herd of dracorex was a grassland that used to contain houses, roads, cars, and everything else humans had used to stake their claim on this earth. All that was gone now. Which made sense, I guess, considering the dinosaurs were the ones who ruled things these days.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Shawn muttered, running a hand through his blond hair so that it stood up in sweaty spikes. “There’s no way we can make it to the lake without getting eaten.”
“What’s your point?” Todd asked as he swung his arms in lazy circles to stretch out his shoulder muscles.
“My point,” Shawn said, grimacing, “is that there has to be a way around this, a way that isn’t so exposed. We’ve always gone around the open areas. Except,” he amended, “for that time we almost became a T. rex’s lunch.”