Someplace Else: A Voyage to Zodiac Island by Barbara Linick

Twelve-year old Johnny lives way up in a high rise in a big city. When he looks out the window, he sees the world bustling to and fro, but doesn’t understand what everyone is doing. Fortunately, he happens to have a big imagination that conjures up an odyssey of discovery and transformation.

One night Johnny’s pure and naive thoughts appear in the form of jewels, and fly him away to captivating Zodiac Island – whose gatekeeper is an enormous dragon. There, Johnny meets each of the 12 astrological signs in its living form. The problem is, they all want Johnny to choose between them as to which sign is the best!

In “Someplace Else,” Johnny’s delightful decision tells us that, while each of the 12 signs is very much alive and a thing unto itself, when assembled together, they compose a whole new scheme. This provocative idea reveals to Johnny that he should worry no longer when he looks outside his window: life is a system made up of infinite things, and that system works.