A few years ago a friend of ours went to Comic-con in NYC and grabbed an autographed copy of Plucker, an illustrated novel by Brom. He stopped at our house on the way home and left the copy on our kitchen table.  After several years and hundreds of returns to my house, our friend never asked for it in return. It simply slipped his mind.

At the time, from the other posters of Brom he brought over that day, I believed Brom's work to be a bit strong for my taste. Bleeding, half-naked princesses and gory horns jutting out the forehead of humans and non-human-looking creatures....I was just not interested in it.

Into our bookshelf the book went.

Then, my daughter turned eight and her interests started expanding. She went to our small but eclectic library in our bedroom, filled with Amy Tan and Julia Alvarez novels leaning against a series of Asterix hard-cover comic books and Our Dumb Century from the folks at The Onion, and spotted Plucker wedged in between. She pulled it out and took a peek.