Phil's "grouchy" father sends him to check on their well after something goes wrong with the pump. In the well's bucket, the teen finds a message in a bottle--a cry for help. Anatole, Phil's "trusty friend" and donkey, advises, "forget the whole thing" when Phil spies a second bottle--but then the teen falls into the well. A series of realistic panels and full-spread illustration charts Phil's entry into shark-ridden waters. He surfaces in a world with two suns that cast two shadows of him onto a sandy beach. Next Phil meets a gnome-like man called Bartholomew--the "well digger" who disappeared through Phil's well 40 years ago, and author of the message in the bottle--and Bartholomew's butler, a centaur named Friday.
Psychedelic colors set off the island of A, where Bartholomew resides. Phil's host points out the literal "A" on which they stand, the first "A" of "Atlantic Ocean" spelled out on a map. As Bartholomew says, "On an island that doesn't exist, anything can exist!" Phil helps Bartholomew decode a unicorn's cryptic clue about how to get home, and one of Fred's greatest visual inventions is a labyrinth that leads to a destination with a "liquid ceiling." Thoughtful endnotes provide further reading and ruminating. --Jennifer M. Brown, children's editor, Shelf Awareness