Life is not easy for twelve-year-old Erec Rex. His single mother can barely support her six adopted kids. And they've moved into an apartment so tiny that Erec sleeps with the washing machine. Worse, there is a strange force within Erec that is making him do odd things. His urge to obey these thoughts grows -- until it becomes impossible to resist them.
Then one morning, Erec's mother is missing. The force inside Erec commands him to find her, leading him on an adventure that will change him forever. When he arrives in Alypium, a hidden world where old knowledge of magic is kept, Erec learns that his mother and the entire kingdom are in peril. And he might be the only one who can save them.

At six o'clock every day, without fall, with no excuses, Sam Vlmes must go home to read Where's My Cow?, with all the right farmyard noises, to his little boy. There are some things you have to do.It is the most loved and chewed book in the world. But his father wonders why it is full of moo-cows and baa-lambs when Young Sam will only ever see them cooked on a plate. He can think of a more useful book for a boy who lives in a city. So Sam Vimes starts adapting the story. A story with streets, not fields. A book with rogues and villains. A book about the place where he'll grow up.

A father starts adapting his son's favorite book about farm animals to fit life in a city environment. Instead of moo-cows and baa-lambs, he weaves a tale about streets, not fields, and about rogues, villains, and the place his son will grow up.