Hum

A chance encounter with an old llama astonishingly reveals a language Allen didn’t know he could speak in this captivating and one-of-a-kind middle-grade novel.

Eleven-year-old Allen has a recurring nightmare, a persistent habit of humming, and difficulty connecting with other people. Making a fresh start, he and his grandmother move to a small village in northern New York. But when he meets an old llama at a winter festival, the encounter reveals a language he didn’t know he could speak and unveils repressed memories that contradict what he has long believed about his earliest years and his parents’ deaths.

When the llama’s life is threatened, Allen vows to free it. Together they begin a desperate trek through a snowy wilderness, a journey on which Allen must wrestle with lies about his past while struggling against the elements to survive.When William David Thomas was very young, he wanted to be a cowboy. Then he wanted to be a baseball pitcher. Then he wanted to be an artist. None of those things worked out. Then he discovered he loved writing for young people and his first book was published in 2005. He has written lots of nonfiction and Hum is his fiction debut.