Who knows that Victor Hugo drew fortresses with coffee grounds, that Jack London truly was a gold prospector, or that Balzac once owned a pineapple plantation? The Encyclopedia of Great Writers for Young Readers is the creation of Buvard and Ricochet, twin brothers who slip into the grown-ups' library by night. Modern explorers venturing through literature as through an uncharted land of adventure, the two children steal into the pages of books to uncover, through the span of an alphabet, the fantastical lives and worlds of twenty-six great writers.