THE HUGGLEBEEZ

Sixteen-year-old Michelle Alvarez is a few shoots away from wrapping up her starring role in the inaugural season of The Hugglebeez, a modern spiritual successor to puppet-centric TV shows of the 1970s. But when she wakes in a very real Huggsburg with the blood of one of its most beloved citizens on her hands, Michelle’s technicolor nightmare becomes a reality.

The show’s colorful cast—puppets made of felt, foam, and pungent craft glue—are as alive and friendly as ever. That is until they realize that one of their friends is missing, and someone in Huggsburg is to blame. While they’re used to answering elementary questions about plants and recycling, their way of life is challenged when faced with more adult moral dilemmas: How do you find a missing person, and what do you do to the person who killed them?

Michelle races to cover up the murder before the stitches holding Huggsburg together come undone. Facing monsters made of ink and memory, a communist investigator, and a glue-like hallucinogenic, Michelle teams up with a seven-foot-tall pink bird to end the carnage and find a way home. As the bodies start to pile and the puppets question their existence, Michelle must face secrets buried in her past under guilt and resentment or risk being held hostage in Huggsburg forever.