Simultaneous audio publication coming from Hachette Audio!

Contact: Julie Guacci Marketing & Publicity Coordinator 212-364-1355 / Julie.Guacci@hbgusa.com

By James Patterson and Joey Green

"Readers will chortle at the relentless wordplay, a supporting cast made up almost entirely of caricatured grown-ups and young pranksters, and Norbert's winning mix of glibness and

gullibility. Aly's scribbly ink-and-wash line drawings add punchlines as well as comical portraits of the major characters."

-- Booklist

James Patterson's rollicking new middle grade novel is a hilarious adventure into a futuristic world, where different is dangerous, imagination is insanity, and creativity is crazy!

Norbert Riddle lives in the United State of Earth, where normal means following the rules, never standing out, and being exactly the same as everyone else, down to the plain gray jumpsuits he wears everyday. He's been normal his whole life--until a moment of temporary hilarity when he does a funny impression of their dictator, Loving Leader...and gets caught! Now, Norbert's been arrested and banished to planet Zorquat 3 in the Orion Nebula, where kids who defy the rules roam free in the Astronuts camp. Norbert has been taught his whole life that different is wrong, but everyone at Astronuts is crazy, creative, and insane! Norbert wants nothing more than to go back to earth where things are awful but at least they're familiar. But he soon realizes that being different could be better--and maybe the crazy farm is exactly where he belongs after all.

James Patterson received the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community from the National Book Foundation. He holds the Guinness World Record for the most #1 New York Times bestsellers, including Middle School, I Funny, and Jacky Ha-Ha, and his books have sold more than 350 million copies worldwide. A tireless champion of the power of books and reading, Patterson created a children's book imprint, JIMMY Patterson, whose mission is simple: "We want every kid who finishes a JIMMY Book to say, 'PLEASE GIVE ME ANOTHER BOOK.'" He has donated more than one million books to students and soldiers and funds over four hundred Teacher Education Scholarships at twenty-four colleges and universities. He has also donated millions of dollars to independent bookstores and school libraries. Patterson invests proceeds from the sales of JIMMY Patterson Books in pro-reading initiatives. Joey Green, a former contributing editor to National Lampoon, is the author of more than sixty books. He has appeared on The Tonight Show, Good Morning America, The View, and other national television shows, and has been profiled in The New York Times, People, USA Today, and The Washington Post. A native of Miami, Florida, and a graduate of Cornell University (where he founded the campus humor magazine, the Cornell Lunatic, still publishing to this day), he lives in Los Angeles.

For more information or to request an interview with Joey Green, please contact Julie Guacci: 212-364-1355 or Julie.Guacci@hbgusa.com.

NOT SO NORMAL NORBERT

By James Patterson with Joey Green On-sale date: July 2, 2018

JIMMY Patterson $13.99 |368 pages

ISBN: 9780316465410

Also available in audio! Audio CD: $25.00 | 9781478995630 Audio DN: $19.98 | 978147899564

1. Congratulations on your new collaboration with James Patterson, NOT SO NORMAL NORBERT!

How did you come up with the story?

Thank you! Well, I’m just a kid in the body of a grown-up. I was playing around in my head with the word “astronauts” and came up with the possible book title Astro-Nuts, which got me thinking about a bunch of crazy people on a spaceship heading to a lunatic asylum on another planet . . . sort of like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in space. Jim suggested a dystopian Earth where anyone who is creative is considered crazy, arrested, and sent to the lunatic asylum on another planet. The asylum turns out to be a wonderful place filled with creative kids, where everyone encourages each other to be even more creative and imaginative. I loved the idea!

2. Norbert’s story begins in the United State of Earth and introduces readers to a futuristic world where everyone must follow Loving Leader, the society’s dictator. Can you speak to your process in creating this world?

When my wife Debbie and I got married, we backpacked around the world for two years, and during that time we traveled through several totalitarian countries run by dictators. In the African country of Malawi, the dictator was called “His Excellency the Life President.” His picture was on the money. And his framed photograph hung on the wall in every office. We went to the movies and before the main feature they played the national anthem and showed the flag of Malawi blowing in the breeze on a flagpole. There were only eight people in the audience, but the law requires everyone to stand for the national anthem. If you don’t stand up, you can be arrested and sent to jail. Even though it was dark in the theater and there were no uniformed police standing guard, everyone in the audience stood up. We did too. After all, who knows? One of the other people in the audience could have been an undercover cop with the secret police. Or a snitch. And we definitely didn’t want to end up in jail in Malawi for something so trivial. That’s how dictatorships work. They instill you with fear to make you conform to ridiculous rules. We also traveled through the Soviet Union, where our hotel room was bugged with listening devices. And we went to Singapore, where you can be arrested for chewing gum in public or failing to flush a toilet in a public restroom. Dictators are the same everywhere. They bully and oppress everyone else just so they can stay in power . . . because they only care about themselves. So I created a futuristic world based on dictatorships I’ve experienced to show how stupid and dangerous they are.

3. Norbert does the unthinkable when he gets on top of his teacher’s desk and does a funny impression of Loving Leader, which lands him first in jail and then exiled to Astro-Nuts Camp. What makes Norbert brave enough to do this?

You’ll have to read the book to find out for yourself.

4. All the inmates at Astro-Nuts Camp are sent there for being “different,” but Norbert insists he isn’t different and wants to be sent back to Earth. But, at Astro-Nuts Camp, there are freedoms that none of the inmates had before, and while many embrace the lack of rules and new lifestyle like Backwards Day (who doesn’t love ice cream for breakfast?!), Norbert is determined to show that he doesn’t belong there. Can you speak to Norbert’s inner struggle of trying to get sent back to the Earth while also finding new friends at Astro-Nuts Camp?

When I was eleven-years old, I went to sleep-away camp for what was supposed to be four weeks at Camp Ocala in the Ocala National Forest in Florida, about a five-hour bus ride from our house in Miami. I’d never been away from home before and I was incredibly homesick. My first letter to my parents read: “If you love me so much, why did you send me here?” A week later, my parents drove up for visiting day, prepared to take me out of camp and bring me home. By then, I loved camp and didn’t want to leave. I stayed the entire four weeks. So Norbert goes through a similar experience, which a lot of kids can relate to. Learning how to adjust to a new environment, without your family being there, is an important step in growing up and being self-sufficient. Also, even though life for Norbert on totalitarian Earth is oppressive, he’s grown accustomed to the conformity. The dystopia is gray and dreary, but, to Norbert, it’s also familiar and comfortable in its predictability. When he’s sent to Astro-Nuts Camp on another planet with freedom of choice and where creativity is encouraged, he goes into instant culture shock. He longs for the familiarity of home. And as he makes friends with kindred spirits who share his creative spark, he finds himself being pulled in two directions. Should I stay or should I go?

5. There are several gadgets in the book such as Sergeant Sergeant’s Truthcorder, camper Dominic’s divergent gibberish transducer, and the TruthScreen –how did you come up with these creative devices?

I think people put too much faith in smartphones and artificial intelligence. The GPS built into your smartphone makes you trackable, and without your knowledge, the National Security Agency collects that information to keep a record of your whereabouts. The FBI can remotely activate the microphone or camera in your smartphone, whether the phone is powered on or off, to eavesdrop on nearby conversations or see what you’re doing. So if you think about it, nearly every American is carrying around surveillance equipment to bug themselves, giving the government the ability to spy on anyone. So I just imagined what would happen if a totalitarian dictator took control of the country and decided to use flat-screen TVs, iPads, and iPhones to spy on us and control our behavior. I came up with the divergent gibberish transducer when I asked Siri a simple question and got a totally nonsensical response. I think it’s dangerous to rely on artificial intelligence, which can easily misinterpret your directions, or a website like Wikipedia, which isn’t vetted by fact checkers. It’s important to think for yourself and use reliable sources. By the way, my favorite gadget in the book is the Helicycle, a pedal-powered helicopter made from a unicycle. As a kid, I dreamed of building one.

6. At its core, this story is all about being yourself and embracing individuality. What do you hope that children and parents take away from NOT SO NORMAL NORBERT?

When our eldest daughter Ashley came home from her first day of kindergarten, I asked her, “So, what did you do in school today?” She said, “We stood up and said some silly words to a flag.” I loved how she saw the absurdity in the Pledge of Allegiance, because when you think about it, teaching children to recite words to a piece of fabric is ridiculous. Right from the start, we’re teaching kids to conform, to fit in, to think alike, rather than to stand out, question authority, and be true to their own passions. And anyone with the courage to flaunt their uniqueness is often ostracized as an oddball, bullied, or sent to the principal’s office. I was constantly getting into trouble in fifth grade because I was a class clown with a wild imagination. I found school monotonous and boring. Most of my teachers didn’t know how to nurture and encourage my creativity. But some did. I wrote a parody of a “math packet” to make fun of the impersonal way we were being taught math, and my math teacher—Ms. Dostal, who was a former nun—let me print up a stack of copies and hand it out to the class as a practical joke. So, I hope NOT SO NORMAL NORBERT helps kids and parents discover how to celebrate creativity and imagination as a blessing and find healthy outlets to encourage and nurture it, like with the improv comedy group in the book.

7. What’s next for you?

Lunch.