From National Book Award finalist, two-time Newbery honoree and Printz honoree Gary D. Schmidt comes a tale of high fantasy, where a peaceful civilization of a faraway planet has been besieged by a dark lord, and in a desperate attempt for survival send their most previous gift across the cosmos, hurtling past a trillion lighted stars...all the way into the lunchbox of Tommy Pepper, sixth grader, of Plymouth, Massachusetts. Mourning his late mother, Tommy doesn"t notice much about the chain he found, but soon he is drawing the twin suns and humming the music of a hanorah. As Tommy absorbs the art and language of the Valorim, their enemies target him. When a creature begins ransacking Plymouth in search of the chain, Tommy learns he must protect his family from villains far worse than he"s ever imagined.