Penelope The Invisible (Toasterverse Book 1)

A Girl So Forgettable, She Might Just Save the World

Penelope Rogers is used to being invisible—literally. No one remembers her, not even her parents. Only her twin brother Aiden knows she’s real. But when two new classmates arrive with answers to her lifelong mystery, Penelope discovers a hidden world where forgotten things—and people—belong.

Together with Aiden and their new friends, Penelope travels into the shadow world, a strange and colorless place where imagination becomes reality and the creatures they once dreamed up now stand in their way. With the help of Toaster, a giant baby spider with a heart of gold, they must retrace their steps through a world shaped by their wildest thoughts.

Whimsical, heartfelt, and full of wonder, Penelope the Invisible is the first book in the Toasterverse series by David Rogerson—a middle-grade adventure about memory, belonging, and the extraordinary power of imagination.

Start the journey into the Toasterverse today.

Excerpt from the book

Penelope Rogers had always thought she was a very ordinary ten-year-old girl. So ordinary that most people never even remembered she was there. That’s right, poor Penelope could be riding a unicycle on top of the dinner table, and no one would so much as look in her direction. In fact, she once tried just that, and despite falling off the unicycle and directly onto a chocolate cake, no one paid her any attention — except Aiden.

Her twin brother always seemed to remember her, so that was good enough for Penelope. She adored her brother and could not remember a time when he was not by her side.

They weren’t identical twins, of course, because Aiden had light hair whereas Penelope had darker hair. That’s the only difference I can think of right now.

Poor invisible Penelope never really questioned why she was always being forgotten. But one day something quite extraordinary happened.

Now, I suppose you want to know what that was.

Well, it all started on a Monday morning, but I’ve never really liked Mondays (or mornings), so let’s start on a Tuesday evening instead.

Penelope Rogers lived in a small two-storey house at the very end of Day Lane, with Aiden and their pesky younger brother, Sebastian. Mr and Mrs Rogers lived there too, of course, as parents tend to do.

This particular Tuesday evening, Mrs Rogers was cooking dinner. That wasn’t out of the ordinary because she cooked dinner every night. She wore a dress with flowers all over it and, over the dress, she wore a long orange apron with a giant sunflower on it.

In case you haven’t realised, Mrs Rogers simply adores flowers. There were paintings of flowers on the walls, real flowers in vases on almost every table in the house, and she even had all the furniture in the house re-covered in floral fabric at great expense.

One time, Mrs Rogers even bought Mr Rogers a bright yellow floral suit, which he decided was much too fancy for him to wear to his job. Instead, Mr Rogers wore the suit any time he worked in the garden, which was his favourite pastime. Because he worked such long hours at his job, the only time Mr Rogers could find to garden was at night. The neighbours always smiled whenever they saw Mr Rogers out in the flower bed with a torch tied to his hat as he watered the plants or pulled up weeds — dressed in his bright yellow flowery gardening suit.

“Sebastian… Aiden!” Mrs Rogers yelled from the base of the stairs, “dinner’s ready!”

As usual, Sebastian raced to the stairs before anyone else. His long blond hair trailed behind him like smoke from a rocket ship.

“Anyone would think you hadn’t eaten for a week!” Aiden yelled as he zoomed past the bedroom door. Sebastian turned and poked out his tongue. At least, Aiden thought he did. Sebastian was moving so fast he was a blur.

Penelope didn’t see any of this. She was lying on the floor by the bed, looking at the ceiling glumly. Her mother had forgotten to call her down for dinner again.