When Pigmen Fly

Book excerpt: Before they can graduate, they must face their greatest challenge! It’s the last semester at Redstone Junior High and Pixel, Sky, and Uma are about to enter into their most exciting adventure yet. The students must complete a bold and dangerous challenge by graduation: travel to the End and ride the notorious Ender dragon. Their first step is to gather the valuable items needed to complete this quest, but a treacherous storm is brewing and nothing is going according to plan. What begins as a simple trade with a villager leads to an accidental explosion, and the students and Mr. Z are cast out of a remote village into the raging storm. The kids survive the night in a cave only to discover that their beloved teacher Mr. Z, has gone missing. Pixel, Sky, and Uma will use every trick in the book to find him, but they risk revealing his deep secret in the process. It will take precious resources, courage, and teamwork to complete their quest in time for graduation, but not everyone is working well together. An old nemesis has joined the class, so Pixel and Uma are watching their backs every step of the way. Tensions are high between even the best of friends as old enemies become friends and old friends become rivals. A journey to the Nether fortress tests their bonds as together they battle blazes, magma cubes, ghasts, and zombie pigmen to get the blaze rods they need. Sky finds himself in need of rescue with no plan for escape. Can Pixel and her friends find Sky, secure the blaze rods, and make it back home in time to build a portal, or will they fail their final project and be trapped in the Nether forever? The students must find a way to band together to make their final days at Redstone Junior High memorable and triumphant.