Matt Malone

Hobbs Crane doesn’t like distractions.       He lives for football, rules the basketball court, and does his best to avoid the neighbor girl with the Jupiter-sized crush on him. With a new kid out to steal his starting basketball position, Hobbs needs to feel in control again. Then Hobbs finds a boy living inside a giant blue spruce on an empty city lot who becomes the biggest distraction of all. How long has he been there? Where did he come from? And why does he seem to be following Hobbs?

The boy named Up is in survival mode.    Leaving his real name and a neglectful home life behind, Up is running away to Florida to find his older sister who left home years ago. But he’s hungry and desperate, and he finds the overgrown evergreen next to the old factory the perfect hideout until he makes a plan. 

         Can Hobbs and Up help each other face their own uncertain futures while forging an unlikely friendship? Or are they too different?