for the disgraced Foxman, “a failure, and
a drunk,” as Evan puts it. Evan’s smartass
narration, dangerous run-ins with evil
Hoods, tough moral quandaries, and a
wild range of superpowered heroes and
villains—including Blurshift, a gender-fluid shapeshifer, and the Fluffinator,
who commands an army of “plush collectibles” (don’t call them teddy bears)—
make this an excellent choice for any
reader awaiting the next Marvel film.
Ages 10–14. Agent: Jack Byrne, Sternig &
Byrne Literary Agency. (Aug.)
Fuzzy Mud
Louis Sachar. Delacorte, $16.99 (192p) ISBN
978-0-385-74378-5
Sachar blends elements of mystery, suspense, and school-day life into a taut environmental cautionary tale about the insatiable hunger for energy sources and the
cost of not doing the right thing.
Marshall’s routines at Woodridge
Academy—including his daily walk to
and from school with his anxious
neighbor Tamaya—are upended by the
arrival of blowhard bully Chad. A quiet
seventh-grader, Marshall becomes a target
for Chad, who challenges him to an after-school fight. Rather than suffer a beating,
he and Tamaya take a shortcut through
the off-limits woods and come across what
Tamaya dubs “fuzzy mud,” a strange substance they don’t realize harbors great
danger for them and the town at large.
Amid chapters following the children’s
exploits, Sachar includes transcripts of
secret Senate hearings with the scientists
who engineered the microorganisms that
generate fuzzy mud. In a tense sequence of
events, readers learn more about Marshall,
Tamaya, Chad, and the peril they face. A
dramatic conclusion celebrates the positive ripples of friendship and honesty, and
will leave readers with much food for
thought. Ages 10–up. Agent: Ellen Levine,
Trident Media Group. (Aug.)
The Creeping
Alexandra Sirowy. Simon & Schuster, $17.99
(448p) ISBN 978-1-4814-1886-7
Stella Cambren cannot recall what
happened in the woods of Savage, Minn.,
when, at age six, she returned home
without her friend Jeanie. Eleven years
later, a girl resembling Jeanie has been
found murdered. As the old case is
who reluctantly attends a fussy finishing
school in turn-of-the-20th-century San
Francisco when she’d rather be making
house calls with her father, a kindly
doctor. (She and Jacqueline Kelly’s
Calpurnia Tate could’ve been BFFs if they
had lived nearby.) When Lizzie overhears
talk about a bubonic plague outbreak, her
father and her uncle, a wealthy newspaper
publisher, dismiss it as rumor. Within
days, however, Chinatown is quarantined,
trapping the Kennedys’ beloved cook,
Jing, and marooning his son, Noah, who
he had secretly hidden in the Kennedy’s
servants’ quarters. Ignoring the social
mores that would prohibit Lizzie from
befriending a boy her age, a servant’s
child, or a Chinese person, she finds Noah
much better company than her snooty
classmates. A powerful subplot involving
Lizzie’s older brother, Billy, shows that
the controversy over immunization has
long roots. Choldenko, who won a
Newbery Honor for Al Capone Does My
Shirts, delivers another engaging histor-
ical novel about a little-known event.
Ages 9–12. Agent: Elizabeth Harding,
Curtis Brown. (Aug.)
★ School for Sidekicks
Kelly McCullough. Feiwel and Friends, $16.99
(336p) ISBN 978-1-250-03926-2
Adult author McCullough (the Fallen
Blade series) offers a rousing parody of
superhero tales in his
first book for children.
Thirteen-year-old Evan
Quick is obsessed with
“Masks” (McCullough’s
term for superheroes)
and particularly loves
the great Captain
Commanding. After
Evan witnesses the
Captain’s defeat by
the supervillain
Spartanicus, he
manages to turn the tables on the villain,
discovering that he himself is a budding
Mask. But the egocentric Captain takes
credit for Spartanicus’s capture, por-
traying Evan as an abject wimp. When
Evan enrolls in the Academy for
Metahuman Operatives, aka the School
for Sidekicks, he learns that Captain
Commanding has had him blackballed—
no adult Mask will work with him except
and that he expects Robyn to play a role in
toppling Crown’s regime. Essentially
orphaned, Robyn falls in with a (not-so-
merry) band of other free-range kids and,
like Robin Hood before her, becomes
Public Enemy No. 1 when she daringly
acts on the injustices she sees in how
resources are distributed. Set in the future
and paced with one death-defying escape
after another, Magoon’s (How It Went
Down) story doesn’t end so much as pause.
Readers—and Robyn—must wait until at
least the second book in the Robyn
Hoodlum series to learn the fate of her
parents. Ages 8–12. Agent: Michelle
Humphrey, Martha Kaplan Agency. (Aug.)
A Whole New Ballgame
Phil Bildner, illus. by Tim Probert. Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, $15.99 (256p) ISBN 978-0-
374-30130-9
Rip and his best friend Red, who is on
the autism spectrum, can’t wait to be on
their school’s fifth-grade basketball team.
But budget cuts, a focus on test prep, and
a new teacher/basketball coach with tattoos, ear piercings, and a wealth of unconventional ideas are shaking things up. Rip
isn’t sure that Mr. Avecedo’s methods will
work (on or off the court), especially when
he has to work on a group project paired
with a hostile classmate, Avery, who uses a
wheelchair. But through Mr. Avecedo’s
guidance, Rip, who some see only as “the
black kid who plays basketball,”
and his classmates learn to see
beyond the labels society places on
them. The book’s messages about
teamwork, test-prep dependency,
and stepping outside one’s comfort
zone can be overpowering, but this
warm slice-of-life novel from
Bildner (the Sluggers series)
engages and entertains even so.
Probert’s energetic illustrations
match the positive exuberance of
the story as both test day and the
big game approach. Ages 8–12. Author’s
agent: Erin Murphy, Erin Murphy Literary
Agency. (Aug.)
Chasing Secrets
Gennifer Choldenko. Random/Lamb, $16.99
(288p) ISBN 978-0-385-74253-5
“Aunt Hortense says I try hard to be
peculiar. But she’s wrong; I come by it
quite naturally,” says Lizzie Kennedy, 13,