Twenty Years of Weslandia!
In the last two decades, Weslandia’s universal message has garnered international
appeal, with editions published in a wide range of languages, including Simplified
and Complex Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Danish, and Castilian.
An American Library Association
Notable Children’s Book
A Parents’ Choice Silver Honor Winner
A Parents Best Book of the Year
A Publishers Weekly
Best Children’s Book of the Year
H “This fantastical picture book, like its hero, is
bursting at the seams with creativity.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
H “From the personal hieroglyphs on the endpapers
to the lacrosse-like game played on pogo sticks,
ideas present themselves, ready to pollinate fertile
young imaginations. While this book offers a highly
inventive approach to any number of topics — bullies,
anthropology, individuality, gardening, summer
vacation — don’t wait for a reason to share it.”
— School Library Journal (starred review)
H “Playful wit and cleverness mark the text as
practical, farsighted Wesley wins over his detractors
and validates himself. A lot of the charm is in the large,
richly colored, double-spread artwork. Children will
want to spend plenty of time with it.”
— Booklist (starred review)
H “Combining the allure of fantasy and science fiction
with the dismissal of socially acceptable norms creates
a true paradise for today’s preteen. . . . The story works
for younger children, who will be drawn to the art and
appreciate Wesley’s inventiveness, indomitable spirit,
and ultimate triumph.”
— The Horn Book (starred review)
“Hawkes has vividly imagined Fleischman’s puckish
text, capturing both the blandness of Wesley’s suburban
surroundings and then the fabulous encroachment of
the rainforest-like vegetation of his green and growing
place. Children will be swept up in Wesley’s vision, and
have a fine time visiting Weslandia.”
— Kirkus Reviews
Illustrations copyright © 1999 by Kevin Hawkes
Celebrate the 20th Anniversary!
Enter the witty, intriguing world of
Weslandia! Now that school is over,
Wesley needs a summer project. He’s
learned that each civilization needs a
staple food crop, so he decides to sow a
garden and start his own — civilization,
that is. He turns over a plot of earth,
and plants begin to grow. They soon
tower above him and bear a curious-
looking fruit. As Wesley experiments, he
finds that the plant will provide food,
clothing, shelter, and even recreation.
It isn’t long before his neighbors and
classmates develop more than an idle
curiosity about Wesley  — and exactly
how he is spending his summer vacation.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HC: 978-0-7636-0006-8 • $16.99 ($20.00 CAN)
Paul Fleischman won the Newbery Medal for Joyful PB: 978-0-7636-1052-4 • $7.99 ($10.99 CAN)
Noise: Poems for Two Voices and a Newbery Honor for Ages 4–8 • 40 pages
Graven Images. He is the author of numerous picture
books, including The Animal Hedge and The Matchbox
Diary, both illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline, and The
Dunderheads and The Dunderheads Behind Bars, both
illustrated by David Roberts, as well as young adult
fiction, poetry, plays, and nonfiction. Paul Fleischman
lives in Santa Cruz, California.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Kevin Hawkes is the illustrator of many books for
children, including the award-winning Library Lion
by Michelle Knudsen; There’s a Dinosaur on the 13th
Floor by Wade Bradford; Handel, Who Knew What He
Liked by M. T. Anderson; A Little Bitty Man and Other
Poems for the Very Young by Marilyn Nelson, Pamela
Espeland, and Halfdan Rasmussen; and The Three
Mouths of Little Tom Drum by Nancy Willard. Kevin
Hawkes lives with his family in southern Maine.
W eslandia introduces a misfit named Wesley
who develops his own civilization, an alternate
world in his backyard. For anyone who has
ever felt left out and friendless, this wonderfully
inventive picture book promises relief in a
celebration of the triumph of imagination
and initiative over that most humble of evils,
conformity.
Newbery Award winner Paul Fleischman
says that the story of Weslandia germinated for
fifteen years. “In notebook after notebook, I
played with the idea of a farmer who plows the
earth but lets the wind seed his crop — as Wesley
does — thrilled to ‘open his land to chance, to
invite the new and unknown.’” He believes
homeschooling his two sons also inspired him: “It
added elements of nonconformity and discovery
to the story.” In many ways, his own education
took place at home. “We had a printing press,
a telescope. We printed our own books, and my
father [writer Sid Fleischman] read his works-in-
progress aloud.”
“The lure of Weslandia for kids is this
notion of a hidden world,” says Fleischman. “It’s
a variation on the tree house, a complex culture
apart from the mainstream.”
Illustrator Kevin Hawkes says the text of
Weslandia spoke to him “immediately, on every
level,” and he affectionately likens Wesley to
“Robinson Crusoe on his island.”
“I grew up in a military family,” Hawkes
says, “and we moved all the time. I was always
the new kid, always a bit apart. On one base
in Virginia, I took great satisfaction in roaming
the nearby woods. I spent hours alone, hiking,
exploring, constructing forts and towers, tracking
animals. At home, my dad’s garage was a builder
and inventor’s heaven . . . with everything from Luckily, both Paul Fleischman and Kevin
bowling-ball wax to World War I gas masks.” Hawkes share with Wesley the gift and passion
Hawkes hopes Weslandia will encourage young for creating alternate worlds — stories, novels,
people to be resourceful, roam outdoors, invent poems, and illustrations bearing bright and
games, and connect with nature. curious fruit. Weslandia is a world that kids, in
While the illustrator empathized with his their infinite wisdom, will eagerly inhabit — and
child subject, it’s the author who best identifies that no reader will soon forget.
with Wesley’s status as an outsider. But Fleischman
says he drew more from the present than from his
youthful past: his childhood was nothing like his
character’s. His childhood neighborhood of Santa
Monica little resembles Wesley’s rigid suburban
world with its two styles of housing (“garage
on the left and garage on the right”), and while
Fleischman and friends did invent games like
“skrugby” (football played with the banana-
shaped fruit of a local plant) and produced an
underground newspaper, he was no outcast.
Unlike Wesley, Fleischman was popular because
he was smart — and funny. “All said, I wasn’t
even necessarily the sort of kid who would come
to Wesley’s defense, which is enormously difficult
to do at that age. But as an adult, you admire
such people.”