Albas Abduction of Prince Oleomargarin

In a hotel in Paris, one evening in 1879, Mark Twain was staying with his daughters, who begged him to tell them a story. Choosing a sketch from a magazine to start with, Twain told them the story of John, a poor boy in possession of some magic seeds who finds himself faced with the task of rescuing the kidnapped prince. Tuein would later drop some rough notes about this story, but the tale remained unfinished… until today. Extracted from Mark Twain's archive at the University of California, Berkeley, Twain's notes are today the basis of a fairy tale, retold over a hundred years later. With fragments of Twain's tale and an interrupted story, author Philip Stead has written a tale that makes us imagine what Twain's work would have been like had it been written in full. Adorned with Erin Stead's sleek, fun and compassionate illustrations, this is a story that comes to us for the first time in children's picture book form. This story of the most legendary American author comes under the vision of two of the most important names in today's children's literature.