Publishers Weekly - May 18, 2015

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.)