Gravity Falls: Dipper’s And Mabel’s Guide To Mystery And Nonstop Fun
Gravity Falls is an animated Disney show set in Gravity Falls, a small town in the wilds of Oregon filled with all sorts of paranormal activity. Visiting for the summer are twins Dipper and Mabel Pines, who are determined to the get to the bottom of the town’s supernatural occurrences.
Gravity Falls: Dipper’s and Mabel’s Guide to Mystery and Nonstop Fun features tips, activities, and quizzes that will help prepare the reader to laugh their way through confrontations with any mystical entity, be it the lowly ghost at the local convenience store or a triangular trickster from the Nightmare Realm.
Dipper provides the occult knowledge on such subjects as supernatural omens, creature communication, and possessed sock puppets. Everyone knows about werewolves, but Dipper discusses were-bears, were-pigs, and were-waffles. And he probes some of the most pressing questions of our age like, “What do I do if I wake up as my sister?” and “Is that goat watching me?” He reviews the history of codes dqg krz wr ghflskhu wkhp. (Don’t know what that means? You will once you read the book.)
Mabel pumps up the fun with tips on how to have a successful sleepover and how to make a fashion statement while invisible. She crafts adorable, definitely-not-possessed sock puppets and concocts spooky brews with names like “Drink of the Dead” and “Ghoul’s Spittoon.” She ranks all the boys of Gravity Falls, human, clone, and otherwise, on her “Yeah or Bleah” list and discusses the pros and cons of vampire boyfriends.
Soos, the handyman who works at the Mystery Shack tourist trap, pops in occasionally to show readers how to create cool gadgets like an eclipse viewer and an “upside-down box of magic.” He provides a useful diagram of a bottomless pit, and dispenses helpful tips on how to navigate the living room when you’re only two inches tall.
Stan Pines, veteran conman and owner of the Mystery Shack, has also muscled his way into the guide. Readers should be skeptical of Stan’s claim that only he can purify their “haunted” currency. And resist the urge to invest in Stan’s merchandise, like rubber monster hands, mystery specs, and official police handcuffs (slightly used.) Just don’t send him your cash for any reason.
This is the first book that Rob wrote for Disney Publishing. It’s the first book he ever wrote for anyone, anywhere. Rob’s co-author on this book was none other than Shane Houghton, who along with his brother Chris, would go on to create Disney’s Big City Greens just a couple of years later. At that time, Chris Houghton was working on Gravity Falls as a storyboard artist and recommended Shane as a co-author. Everyone, especially Rob, was glad that he did because Shane and he had a lot of nonstop fun collaborating on the book. They had such a great time that, after the production on Gravity Falls was completed, Rob went to work with the Houghton Brothers on Big City Greens.
Before Dipper and Mabel explored mystery and fun in book form, they did it in videos, which you can see below.