Monster Club: A Hilarious Fantasy About Magic, Friendship, and Battling Your Own Creations for Kids (Ages 8-12)

From the award-winning screenwriter-director Darren Aronofsky and his screenwriting partner, Ari Handel, comes Monster Club. Their debut novel is the first book in a thrilling, new adventure series about growing up, letting go, and facing down your monsters.

Like almost everything in eleven-year-old Eric “Doodles” King’s life, King’s Wonderland―the amusement park his great-great grandfather founded―was seriously damaged when a hurricane hit his beloved Coney Island neighborhood. Now hungry property developers are circling the wreckage of the once-awesome King’s Wonderland, and Eric’s family is falling apart from the threat of losing it all.

If it weren’t for Monster Club―the epic roleplaying game that Eric and his friends created―Eric’s life would be pretty terrible. Drawing his favorite monster battling with his best friends’ creations is the one thing that still gets Eric excited. So when his friends start to think of Monster Club as a kid’s game and get more interested in other things, Eric just can’t deal. But then Eric happens across a long-lost vial of magic ink that brings their monster drawings to life, and suddenly, Monster Club isn’t just for fun anymore.

The monsters Eric and his friends created are wreaking havoc across Coney, and it’s on the Monster Club to save their city, the amusement park, and maybe, just maybe, Eric’s family, too. It’s a hilarious, heartfelt adventure from the creative minds of Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel that fans of Last Kids on Earth and Spy School are sure to love. 

What happens when the monsters you draw suddenly jump off the page?

• Drawings Come to Life: Eric “Doodles” King always loved creating monsters for his roleplaying game, but he never expected a vial of magic ink to make them real—and really destructive.
• An Amusement Park Adventure: It’s a battle across the boardwalk to save his family’s historic amusement park, King’s Wonderland, from greedy developers and his own rampaging creations.
• The Power of Friendship: With his friend group drifting apart, Eric has to reunite the Monster Club to wrangle their creatures and prove that some games are worth fighting for.
• Kids vs. Monsters: It’s up to a small team of friends to save Coney Island from the very beasts they designed, leading to epic showdowns from the Cyclone to the Spook-a-Rama.

Darren Aronofsky is a Coney Island–raised, Academy Award–nominated screenwriter, director, and producer. He is best known for his surreal, high-concept work in films like Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan, The Wrestler, and mother!

Ari Handel is a scientist, writer, producer, and storyteller. He and Darren Aronofsky have worked together for more than twenty years on many projects, including The Fountain, Noah, and the National Geographic series One Strange Rock, Welcome to Earth, and Limitless.