In a world where paper is obsolete, twelve-year-old Lydia must solve the disappearance of her parents, save her home and the Paper Museum, and repair her relationship with her best friend before her town descends into chaos and everything is lost.
Everything has changed since the last day Lydia saw her parents. Technology is on the fritz, the town’s transport cubes are unreliable, and the mayor is waging a campaign against the Paper Museum, where Lydia has been living with her Uncle Lem, the curator, for the past three months. It’s a future where magic has been forbidden and paper has been replaced by plasticress, a product used for everything. People rely on the palm-sized projections their aer readers produce for information and entertainment. But Lydia knows the Paper Museum is someplace special. It’s the only place where paper and books are reverently preserved. Soon Lydia discovers the museum is also hiding a secret. Her search for clues to her parents’ disappearance leads Lydia to uncover mysterious symbols, hidden rooms, and magical elixirs. . . and triggers a countdown. Lydia has thirty days to find her parents or she risks losing their home and the museum to the Mayor’s destructive plans. Everything will be lost forever, including the secrets of the museum that hold this world together. Can Lydia find the answers in time?
In a world where paper is obsolete and magic is all but forgotten, Lydia has moved into the Paper Museum with her Uncle Lem following the disappearance of her parents. Convinced the key to finding them lies in the museum’s book collection, Lydia spends her days digitally scanning her way through the museum’s library. But when Uncle Lem is called away and her Uncle Renald is put in charge of the museum, Lydia’s scanning project comes to an abrupt halt. Uncle Renald takes her aer reader—the personal device that everybody uses for reading, shopping, messaging, and more—but not before Lydia makes a desperate attempt at filing a missing persons report for her parents. The report activates a countdown, and now with nothing but a secret typewriter in her dogwood fort and a cryptic message, Lydia has thirty days to find her parents and stop the mayor from commandeering the museum. Otherwise, both her family home and the Paper Museum itself will be reassigned to someone else. With aer readers on the fritz and the town descending into chaos, Lydia needs to find her parents before the Paper Museum—and her parents—are lost for good. The Paper Museum is a story of family and friendship with a hint of magic.