Have you experienced a case of the wednesdays?

Last week, THE WEDNESDAYS by Julie Bourbeau was released by Knopf Books for Young Readers!  THE WEDNESDAYS is Bourbeau's highly imaginative, oftentimes hilarious, and sometimes creepy middle grade debut.

Max V. Bernard lives in a village that is perfectly normal...except on Wednesdays.  The very worst that can happen does when a villager or visitor is caught outdoors on this most inauspicious of days.  To protect themselves, the villagers lock themselves indoors and shutter up their windows in an attempt to evade the otherwise unavoidable and peculiar happenings, like one's hair catching on fire or one's cat getting stuck up a vacuum cleaner.  No one wants to catch "a case of the wednesdays."  But, this Wednesday, Max refuses to stay home.  When he ventures into the great (and deserted) outdoors, he runs into the wednesdays themselves, the silver-eyed, impish creatures causing all the weekly mayhem.  What will Max do when the wednesdays want him to become the next member of their legion?

Bourbeau has undertaken a number of fascinating blog interviews to celebrate her book's release. 

Over at Random Acts of Reading, she revealed a bit about what inspired her to make the wednesdays actual beings: "My son was literally growing up with the book as I wrote, and as a toddler he was quite the little imp.  (He still is, in fact.)  He was responsible for quite a few wednesday-like mishaps--colorful marks on walls, even more colorful spills, remote controls gone missing, and so on."  You can read the full interview here.

On another blog, So I'm Fifty, Bourbeau offered advice for others who are writing books for children: "Read you book out loud to a child who isn't afraid to play critic.  It's amazing how quickly you'll stumble over awkward phrases or boring lulls in the action when you have a precocious seven-year-old rolling her eyes or yawning while you read to her!"  Don't miss the full interview here.

THE WEDNESDAYS will be honored as an Indie Next List title for Autumn 2012.  Below are several of the excellent reviews the book has received thus far:

"Lighthearted and entertaining....Bourbeau's story is filled with slapstick humor...[A] gentle sense of magic and mayhem." --Publishers Weekly

"I wanted more of everything...Max is hilarious...I want to be best friends with [Max]...Recommended for: People who have ever wondered how powerful their mind actually is." --Wear the Old Coat Blog

Knopf Books for Young Readers, August 2012