This must be the place!

In the photo above, you can see RachelL proudly holding all three volumes of the Fog Mound trilogy, a series of graphic novels that chronicle the exciting adventures of a talking chipmunk named Thelonious in a post apocalyptic world inhabited by intelligent animals and animal-human hybrids, some but not all of whom can speak and have opposable thumbs. Pure-bred humans are long gone but ruined cities, canned food, and some functional machinery remain as evidence of what is commonly referred to as the Human Occupation.

The part of the first Fog Mound book where Thelonious Chipmunk's sister, Dolores, is trying to warn him to leave his tree and head to safer ground -- i.e. his mother's house.

When we’re introduced to Thelonious in the first book (Travels of Thelonious), he’s living in a tree in the Untamed Forest. A tattered paper postcard depicting part of an intact human city serves, for him, as incontrovertible evidence that humans once existed and he believes the stories about humans and the origins of the intelligent animals that he’s heard to be the literal truth. Naturally, his family and friends are more skeptical.

In a stroke of what is ultimately fantastic luck for Thelonious, a storm comes along, the river near his tree overflows its banks, his home is destroyed, and he’s carried away by raging floodwaters. That sounds quite dreadful and it would be a disaster — except for the fact that our plucky little chipmunk washes up far downstream, where the river meets the sea. This just so happens to be the location of the City of Ruins, which is where Thelonious’s adventures really begin.

Here’s TiffanyH showing off her complete set of Fog Mound books:

Travels of Thelonious was very popular with our students so the other two volumes in the series seemed like a fitting reward for the two children, TIffanyH and RachelL, who had achieved the highest cumulative reading comprehension scores in their classes on the assignments pertaining to the first book.

In this scene from the third and final Fog Mound book, Thelonious and his friends have discovered the Mattakeunk Institute, an abandoned scientific research facility from the last days of the Human Occupation.

In the lushly-illustrated scene in the photo above (from the third and final Fog Mound book), Thelonious and his pals have discovered the Mattakeunk Institute, an abandoned scientific research facility dating from the last days of the Human Occupation. There, they find a time machine and …

Read the books to find out more!