ARTHUR AND THE MINIMOYS

Arthur has read all about the tribe in his grandfather''s notebooks, but he can hardly believe they are less than an inch tall. Until one day he discovers a secret message and a map to the land of the Minimoys, hidden by his vanished grandfather, which sets him off on a wild adventure. Arthur has three days to discover the Minimoys, recover stolen treasure, fight a force of mosquito-riding warriors, defeat an evil wizard and return to save the family home. All the more difficult if you have been shrunk to the size of a Minimoy...This is the first exciting part of the Minimoys adventure, by the acclaimed writer and film-maker Luc Besson. This and the second are being made into a film, released in 2006. Luc Besson, writer, director and producer of The Fifth Element and La Femme Nikita, makes his children''s book debut with this over-the-top middle-grade fantasy first published in France. Ten-year-old Arthur and his grandmother are doing just fine on their own -- except for that Grandpa has been missing in Africa for four years and a developer villain is evicting them from their own house. Things sour further when antique dealers haul away all of Grandpa''s priceless African artifacts and books. Arthur is certain that his grandfather must have left some hidden message somewhere that will reverse their current downward spiral. He hopes to discover some way to enter the world of the beautiful, red-haired, blue-eyed African Princess Selenia that he saw in his grandfather''s sketches; member of a tiny (less-than-an-inch-tall) tribe called the Minimoys that he suspects might live in Grandma''s garden. But how, when Grandpa''s attic has been stripped of clues?