After being run out of Boneville, the three Bone cousins -- Fone Bone, Phoney Bone, and Smiley Bone -- are separated and lost in a vast, uncharted desert. One by one, they find their way into a deep, forested valley filled with wonderful and terrifying creatures. Eventually, the cousins are reunited at a farmstead run by tough Gran'ma Ben and her spirited granddaughter, Thorn. But little do the Bones know, there are dark forces conspiring against them and their adventures are only just beginning
This is the first volume in a series of nine that collects the popular underground comic BONE. When one of pompous entrepreneur Phoney Bone's shady schemes gets him kicked out of Boneville again, his loyal cousins--the intrepid and kindhearted Fone Bone, and the ever-cheerful, cigar-smoking Smiley Bone--accompany him into exile. A plague of locusts separates them in the desert, and each of the three must make his way alone into a mysterious valley, populated by helpful bugs, tough, cow-racing Gran'ma Ben, her lovely granddaughter Thorn, a reclusive dragon, and monstrous but dim rat creatures interested in eating Fone Bone and capturing Phoney Bone for some unknown purpose. Originally published in black and white, the art in this reprinted edition is in muted full color. The illustrations range from the whimsical (e.g. the Bone cousins, who are the cutest anthropomorphized bones ever, and the supposedly frightening dragon, who resembles a seriously peeved donkey) to the fairy-tale lovely (Thorn looks like a princess disguised as a peasant).
- Genre: Fiction + Literature Themes, Science Fiction + Fantasy, Juvenile Fiction
- Subgenre: Graphic Novels + Comics, Comics + Graphic Novels / General, Literary Genres + Types of Novels, Alternate + Parallel Worlds
- Age: 9-12 years
- Publisher: Scholastic Paperbacks
- Pages: 138
- Language: English
- Format: paperback
- Release Date: February 1, 2005
- Date Published: February 1, 2005
- Author: Jeff Smith