Hi! I have posted before but now am narrowing things down.
My book combines memoir and fantasy. It begins with the highly imaginative MC living in an idyllic setting, in a picture-perfect house with his Mom, Dad and dog, on a big green hill, knowing nothing of the outside world. He spends his days dreaming and drawing. One day, his favorite cartoons are interrupted with BREAKING NEWS—there is a great big world out there beyond his hill, and it is dying.
With nothing but his diary, he sets off to a mysterious isle, and magical school, filled with creatures from across the world's mythologies. There's Pele the Passionate, Herc the Hunk—Lucy the Lightbringer, Ava the Adventurer, from his own stories. To save the island and the outside world from the evil which is continuously erasing, and return home to his peaceful, big green house upon a hill, he'll have to find his own story. His Me. And whatever he does, not lose his diary.
After getting suggestions from here and elsewhere, I think it would be best to find two comp titles that I can use with the format of FANTASY TITLE x MEMOIR TITLE. I would love to find a book that begins with a child living in a house on a hill, always looking out, yearning for an adventure. I feel like this is such an archetypal image and I must have read it somewhere, but I can't find it, and am wondering if it's just my own experience that I've painted so vividly! I would also love to find a memoir that is about a child setting out on an adventure, very much a hero's journey, and growing up, ending up at a school.
My current thoughts are WIZARD OF OZ x EDUCATED. But Wiz is very old and Dorothy lives on a flat-as-a-pancake prairie. Also thought of LOTR but again that's very old, although I do like the high fantasy connotations.