WHAT IF YOU BUILT A CONTINENT OF YOUR OWN? AND WHAT IF IT WAS ON A COLLISION COURSE WITH AUSTRALIA? Rick and Evie Lane have finally converted the Great Pacific Garbage Patch into an eighth continent. But their dream of a new homeland for their family turns out to be short-lived. Because when robots from the villainous Condo Corp crash into their continent, a fatal oversight in the building process is revealed: the land mass was never anchored to the ocean floor! Now, the eighth continent is sent barreling toward the coast of Australia, thrusting Rick and Evie’s dreams, 23 million people, and countless plants and animals into jeopardy.  If Rick and Evie are ever to get their family back together and have a continent to run—and not run after—they must find a way to root their beloved paradise to the Earth’s crust. Or else everything that they built will go pow like Pangaea! BUILD IT - RUN IT - RULE IT at 8thContinentBooks.com Praise for the 8TH CONTINENT series: "Fast-paced action, cool inventions and remarkable robots combine for an auspicious opener." -- Kirkus Reviews  "Good fun in the tradition of M. T. Anderson’s Pals in Peril series." -- Booklist "Zippy pace and original premise." -- School Library Journal “Kids will especially enjoy George’s outlandish robotic and vehicular inventions . . . in this fun yet thought-provoking story.” -- Publishers Weekly "This is a delightful start to the adventures of the Lane family, with their flying tree and their mechanical bird tutor.  Evie and Rick and their brilliant if eccentric parents are wonderfully vivid, and the villains who try to impede them in their quest to save the Earth, equally memorable.  It's all in the great tradition of adventure fiction for young readers, running back through Akiko and Freddy the Pig all the way to Tom Sawyer." --Kim Stanley Robinson, author of  Red Mars Matt London (themattlondon.com) is a writer, video game designer, university instructor, and avid recycler who has published short fiction and articles about movies, TV, video games, and other nerdy stuff. Matt is a graduate of the Clarion Writers Workshop, and studied computers, cameras, rockets, and robots at New York University. When not investigating lost civilizations, Matt explores the mysterious island where he lives — Manhattan. Follow Matt on Twitter @theMattLondon and build your own eighth continent at 8thContinentBooks.com! “SOMETHING TELLS ME THEY’RE NOT HERE TO WELCOME US TO THE NEIGHBORHOOD.” Evie Lane squinted, trying to count the number of robots racing through the ocean toward her family’s new home, the eighth continent. There were hundreds of them, row after row of birds and beasts and sea monsters that stretched back to the horizon. It looked like the whole zoo had attended swimming lessons, then escaped, taken a detour through a pink-paint factory, then another detour through a turn-you-into-a-robot factory, and now were after revenge. “Something tells me they’re not here to help us build, either.” That was Rick, Evie’s older brother by one year, who was a total nerd, but a cool nerd. Evie had decided this because when she and Rick were racing all over the world trying to create the eighth continent, they saved each other’s lives five or six times, and now they were a pretty good team. Like when Evie said something like, “Holy smoked salmon! That’s a lot of robots!” Rick would say something like, “According to my calculations they’ll be here in six seconds.” And then at the exact same moment they would realize these hot-pink robots weren’t just something conceptual to discuss and analyze, but were actively trying to mangle, maul, and masticate the duo. And then they’d leap, often literally, into action. “Something tells me we should run! Quick children, to the Roost !” That was Dad—more famously known as George Lane, the President of Lane Industries, and the super-genius inventor of the hover engine, the Eden Compound, talking robots, and the turkey caramel sandwich (don’t ask). Prior to the arrival of the unwanted robot intruders, the Lane family had been sitting around a campfire on the shore of the eighth continent, debating what to name their new home. It was hard to believe that what was now a fertile landmass larger than Madagascar had been a reeking pile of floating garbage in the Pacific Ocean just six weeks earlier. Thanks, however, to Dad’s trash-transformation formula—the Eden Compound—the Lane siblings had successfully converted the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, as the pile of floating garbage had been called, into a beautiful paradise, the first new continent in fifty million years. But now there was no time for toasting marshmallows and reminiscing. Still clutching their barbeque skewers, the Lanes turned and ran, desperate to escape from the oncoming pink army. Following closely behind was Mom Lane, given name Melinda, known at Cleanaspot, the global soap manufacturing company she managed, as “Boss Lady.” And known in the Lane h