Book 1: The Great Kidsboro Takeover to be Released

Review and Herald Publishing will release The Great Kidsboro Takeover, the first novel by AIO writer/director Marshal Younger, on March 1.  It is the first in a series of Kidsboro novels about a town where all of the citizens are under 14 years of age.  The book series is specifically for 9-12 year-olds and is 126 pages. It is a fun and exciting adventure that teaches moral life lessons, but also teaches in subtle ways the concepts of economics, government and politics.

The town of Kidsboro has a church, a police station, a store, a bakery, a weekly newspaper, even a jail. The ramshackle town sits in the woods behind the house of founder Ryan Cummings, age 12. It started as a school project, then took on a life of its own. The population has mushroomed from 5 to 29. Kidsboro has a chief of police, lawyers, a newspaper reporter, an insurance salesman, and one perplexed mayor, Ryan.  But Ryan's got problems.  Valerie wants to change the rules. "If I don't get what I want," she says, "I'm gonna take over this town and run you out." The peace of Kidsboro is about to be disturbed.

Marshal first got the idea for the story from a friend who read a screenplay he had written called "Staying Through the Closing Credits."  Marshal relates, "There was a scene where a bunch of kids made a movie together. He thought the whole script was going to be about kids creating their own world. Then he was disappointed when that wasn't what the movie was about. But I liked that idea, and decided to write one like it."  It took Marshal about a month to write an outline for the story and week to write the first draft.

Asked whether it was harder to write novels or radio dramas, Marshal replied, "The length of a novel is a different, and I think, more difficult discipline.  The story has to have so many more plot points and you have to figure out ways to hold the audience's attention so much longer. However, in a novel, you have the advantage of being able to narrate through someone's mind, and this is easier than doing it in dialogue."

"Kidsboro has been the most fun project I've ever worked on." says Marshal  "I love Odyssey, but Kidsboro is my creation, and there is so much satisfaction that comes with making something out of nothing."  Right now Marshal is working on Kidsboro 3: The Creek War (Kidsboro 2 is set to come out in Spring 2001), along with his radio drama Just South of Normal, which is set to record six more shows soon.  In addition to his AIO episodes, he also recently finished adapting a new AIO video to book form.  It's called The Last Days of Eugene Meltsner and it's due out this fall.

Get your own autographed copy of The Great Kidsboro Takeover

To get your own copy of The Great Kidsboro Takeover, there are several options.  It will be available to be ordered in virtually all bookstores March 1. Some time after that, it will be on Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, I Believe.com, and adventistbookcenter.com. Sometime after March 1, it will be available through Focus on the Family.