An 8-year-old guerilla author’s 81-page graphic novel now has a four year-long waiting list at the Lake Hazel branch of the Ada Community Library in Boise, Idaho, whose shelves he snuck it onto. The Adventures of Dillon Helbig’s Crismis by “Dillon His Self” – aka Dillon Helbig. is about fictional events that happened after the star explodes on his Christmas tree. Hint: there’s time travel, Santa and the first Thanksgiving—and plenty of adorable grammar and spelling mistakes that are frosting on this literary cake.
Ada Community Library shared Dillon’s book after his mom called them to report that her son had written a book and slipped it on the shelves so it could be checked out.
After spending four long days writing and illustrating his story in an empty journal—which is an actual eternity in kid time—Dillon slipped it in the stacks on a trip to the library with his grandmother in December. Had it not been for the call his mother made to let the librarians know and to arrange pick-up, his masterpiece might have gone unnoticed. However, the manager of the library branch, a gentleman by the name of Alex Hartman (who we’ve never seen but imagine looks a lot like Mr. Rodgers and is a complete rock star), decided to hold onto the book. “It deserves a spot on our library shelves,” he said to the New York Times on Monday. “It’s a good story.”
Now the book is officially listed in their catalog system (with the publisher category blank), and it’s been recategorized from fiction to graphic novels since it has so many page-length illustrations. We don’t know whether to love Dillon or Mr. Hartman more.
—Shelley Massey
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