Emma T. Elias
YA Once Upon a Time Meets Six of Crows
THE UNFORTUNATE AND UNEXPECTED FALL OF MR. HUMPHREY DUMPTON 102,000 words
Emma T. Elias is a Sydney-based author of Labanese descent. She is the youngest of nine children and has always had an overactive imagination. As a child, she would steal her siblings’ old exercise books to scribble stories on the back pages and write scripts of movies for her and her friends to film on the weekends. At the age of eleven she decided she was going to be an author when she grew up and has been steadily working toward that dream ever since.
Emma graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor in History and worked as a teacher and a librarian before making writing her full-time job. She made a career of writing children’s nonfiction and educational books, but her passion has always been YA novels.
As well as being an avid reader, Emma has a range of hobbies including art, travel, cooking, archery, sewing, video games and learning random skills like lock picking and sleight of hand. She has a keen interest in history and mythology with a particular focus on legends and storytelling traditions. Promoting literacy and reading for children and teenagers is one of her greatest passions in life.
It was the glistening spider web in a tree outside her classroom window that inspired the reimagining of Little Miss Muffet when Emma wondered “what if the spider was massive.” Over the years, Emma played with as many nursery rhymes as she could find to connect to each other and create the remarkable and imaginative world of Merepoule, England. THE UNFORTUNATE AND UNEXPECTED FALL OF MR. HUMPHREY DUMPTON is her debut novel.
Pitch
The son of Humpty Dumpty teams up with his childhood sweetheart, Mary Muffet, and the thieves Jack and Jill to uncover the truth about his father's fall from the wall and ends up tangled in a conspiracy larger than he could've ever imagined.
Opening Lines
Remarkable stories often begin in the most unremarkable of places, and the Dumpton household, on the very outskirts of Merepoule town, whilst certainly peculiar, was no exception.
You see, Humphrey and Viviana Dumpton were never wealthy, that was a fact. When the newlyweds first bought their home, it was nothing more than a single-storied little cottage; perfect for a couple just starting their lives together. However, as the family grew so too did the need for space—and grow the family did. With a heroic generosity and cheerfulness, they welcomed a total of eight children into this world. Humphrey took the task of building more space upon himself, and so bedrooms were built on top of the old ones, and more on top of those ones, and so on and so forth. The house eventually took on the slanted appearance of an old ankle boot, for which it was labeled around town The Shoe.
Comp Titles
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
A Twisted Tale Anthology edited by Elizabeth Lim
Enola Holmes and the Clanging Coffin by Nancy Springer