Brewster Gaines just wanted to make a video and get a million views - he didn't count on needing friends to get there. From the author of Spontaneous and the Locker 37 series comes a heartfelt story of friendship, family, and filmmaking. Brewster Gaines loves everything about making videos. The planning, the filming, the editing, and especially the feeling of watching his YouTube views tick up and up. So what if he doesn’t have friends to film with or parents who are home every night for dinner? He’s got a phone and a tripod and a lofty goal: A million views. But when he enlists the acting chops of charismatic new kid Carly for a ten-second video, he gets more than he bargained for. Her intimidating friend Rosa soon steps in with funding to produce an epic fantasy trailer, and before long, their tiny team is adding cast and crew. What started as a simple shoot mutates into a full-fledged movie production, complete with method-acting cosplayers, special effects, and a monster made out of a go-kart. That’s when Brewster realizes that getting to a million views may be harder than he ever imagined . . . “Lights, cameras, AND action! A celebration of the creative spirit in all of us! This story has a lot of heart and a ton of fun. It charmed my inner twelve-year-old wannabe filmmaker!”—Rob Harrell, author of Wink   “ A Million Views turns its lens on YouTube fame in a way that’s fun, educational, and inspiring. Its relatable characters and super satisfying story make it not just worth a view . . . they make it a hit.”—Ryan North, New York Times best-selling author of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl “A well-rounded, heartfelt tale of creativity and family.”— Kirkus Reviews , starred review "Gentle humor buoys personal growth in this character-driven novel of filmmaking and found family by Starmer."— Publishers Weekly "Starmer delivers his signature offbeat humor here through quirky secondary characters and quippy narration."— Booklist Aaron Starmer was born in northern California and raised in the suburbs of Syracuse, New York. Before pursuing writing full-time, he worked in New York City for over ten years as an editor for a travel bookseller and as an operations director for an African safari company. His middle grade and young adult novels have been translated into multiple languages and have appeared on best of the year lists from Time magazine, the Wall Street Journal , New York Public Library, YALSA, Bank Street College of Education, Chicago Public Library, and School Library Journal . His novel Spontaneous was recently made into a film. He lives in Vermont with his wife and two daughters. Chapter 1: The Problem with Bottomless Pits Brewster Gaines had to push a friend into a bottomless pit. Simple enough, right? All he needed was the pit and the friend to push in. Plus some special effects to add in post. Post, in case you don’t know, is what directors call postproduction. And that’s what Brewster was: a director. He made movies. Or to be completely accurate, he made videos. The latest video he was working on was called “What Do You Do with Friends Who Don’t Return Your Messages?” The answer to that age-­old question? Push them into a bottomless pit, of course. The whole thing was going to be about ten seconds long. The first five seconds would feature a boy, played by Brewster, holding a phone and approaching his friend while saying, “Hey, I messaged you two days ago! Why didn’t you answer?” Then the friend would shrug, and the boy would run over and push the friend into the pit. The other five seconds of the video would show the friend falling through the darkness of the pit, screaming, “I deserve thisssss!” while their body would get smaller and smaller but never hit anything. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that simple. In fact, Brewster discovered it was nearly impossible. First, digging a bottomless pit was no easy task, even one that wasn’t technically bottomless. Brewster only needed to dig one that looked bottomless from a certain angle, with specific lighting. It still took him hours to carve out anything even halfway suitable. He was a director, after all, not a backhoe. Second, finding a friend to push into a bottomless pit was a little bit easier, though not much. Brewster had to convince someone to fall over backward multiple times. Because this video would require multiple takes. Twenty, at least. Maybe as many as fifty. The fall needed to be perfect, with the perfect windmilling arms and the perfect panicked facial expression. Anything less than perfect would mean the video would have no chance of going viral. Finally, there was post—­the aforementioned postproduction. That’s all the editing and manipulating that Brewster had to do to the video once he completed the principal photography. In other words, after digging a suitable bottomless pit and finding a talented actor willing to be pushed into it over and over again, Brewster needed to create the special eff