The Expanded Earth

'Mikey Please has one of the most brilliant minds I know; the perfect combination of science, philosophy and madness' Daniel Kwan, Oscar-winning director of Everything Everywhere All At Once 'The Expanded Earth genuinely changed the way I look at the world around me. I loved the fantastic, horrifying, heartwarming, mind-boggling adventure of it. Mikey Please is a singular breed of genius and this book proves it yet again' Emma Hooper, author of Etta and Otto and Russell and James 'Immense' Financial Times, 'Best Summer Books 2025' Humankind has been reduced to the height of a handspan - a transformation that is both potentially lethal and exasperatingly inconvenient. On a remote coastal path, Giles awakes in his new body to discover a world reshaped and magnified into a place of astounding abundance and deadly peril. Desperate to reconnect with his loved ones, he seeks the help of fellow survivors, and together they embark on a quest across the altered landscape. But as their journey unfolds, the more the question persists - are they still truly human, or has their reduction in size marked the beginning of a descent into savagery, an evolution into something other? Elsewhere, one week earlier, Professor Elizabeth Goodwin makes a monumental discovery - God is alive and physically among us, but not in the form we've been taught to expect. As Goodwin prepares to make first contact with the omnipresent ocean-spanning creature, forces conspire in the wings, and the spectre of imminent catastrophe inches closer and closer still . . . Dark, witty, and wildly ambitious, Mikey Please guides us into The Expanded Earth, a high-stakes adventure packed with jeopardy and life-affirming beauty - a story that ultimately celebrates the capacity of small things to effect great change. The first in a spellbinding trilogy, this beautifully illustrated debut novel marks the arrival of a new talent and perhaps a new genre - the world of the micropocalypse.

Mikey Please is a Bristol based BAFTA-winning and OSCAR-nominated writer, director, animator and illustrator. An alumnus of the Royal College of Art (MA Animation) his music videos and short films have garnered over 60 international awards. In 2023 he was appointed as a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Café at the Edge of the Woods (HarperCollins), his critically acclaimed debut picture book, has been published in a dozen languages and was the winner of the 2025 Waterstones Children's Book Prize. A career in making and animating miniature puppets makes him particularly well placed to write a book about tiny people. The Expanded Earth is his first novel.