For most of his childhood, the old lacquered box had been beyond his reach in his father's study. Now he was being summoned home to discover its carefully guarded secrets.Opening the red box, Peter Sis finds the diary his father kept when he was lost in Tibet in the mid-1950s. As he turns the brittle pages, covered with faded handwriting and fine drawings, and examines the small treasures that were hidden with the diary, Sis becomes the accidental traveler trekking through Tibet. At the same time he remembers the small boy who longed for his father to come back and recalls the fantastic stories his father told him on his return - stories that seemed more like fairy tales than real life. Bit by bit, the mystery of his father's journey is revealed; in reliving it, Sis finds the man who had been taken from him many years before and the magical place that held him hostage.

Peter Sís is an internationally acclaimed author, illustrator, and filmmaker. He was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, and studied painting and filmmaking at the Academy of Applied Arts in Prague, and at the Royal College of Art in London. His most recent book, Starry Messenger: Galileo Galilei, was the winner of a Caldecott Honor citation, and his illustrations often appear in The New York Times Book Review. He lives in New York City.