Middle Grade Monday and Arc Review: Dan Unmasked by Chris Negron

Image: HarperCollins Publishers

Dan Unmasked by Chris Negron. 368 p. HarperCollins Publishers, July 28, 2020. 9780062943057. (Review of arc courtesy of publicist.)

Middle Grade Monday features an impressive debut, Dan Unmasked by Chris Negron. Dan and Nate are best friends, baseball teammates and comics aficionados. Like most baseball players, Dan and Nate have their tics and rituals on and off the field. One includes the entire team when a new issue of the reclusive George Sanderson's Captain Nexus releases. The whole team meets in Nate's basement with their new issue and follow strict RULES for the ritual reading. The only non-team member invited to this club is Ollie, Nate's geeky little brother. Dan is begrudging about this and outright floored when Ollie brings a friend! Not only is his friend a girl, but Courtney flouts the rules of the reading. All this takes a back burner when, a few days later at baseball practice, Nate is beaned by a hard throw and falls into a coma. Nate is the team's pitching ace and they are heading into a tournament Dan feels they have no hope of winning without him. He feels terrible guilt because Dan thinks it's his fault that Nate is in a coma. 

Nate's an all-around nice guy - accepting, approachable and athletic. Dan's a bit intense and possessive of Nate, even begrudging Ollie's need for Nate's attention. This may be because Dan's dad has been unavailable for awhile due to increased work demands. Dan is crushed by the guilt he feels over Nate's injury. Readers will find a lot to relate to as Dan navigates the guilt, hurt, feelings of helplessness and grief. The book's leisurely pace and page count allow for these explorations.

I do have a few quibbles, which are major for me as an adult, but young readers absolutely will not notice. My twelve-year-old self would've loved this book. First, one pitcher does not a baseball team make even in the major leagues. It bugged me that Nate seemed to pitch every game and once he was injured, his back-up pitcher pitched them all. No way that happens - Little League, Major League, any league.

Second, regular readers of this blog know what's coming. The coma. Lots of drawn out drama with little coinciding with real life, such as allowing anyone but family members at the bedside and unspecified crises, presumably having to do with cranial pressure, which should be relieved with surgery, but didn't happen here. As I mentioned, kids won't notice. Indeed many adults probably won't either, as this (and amnesia) is the stuff of soap operas and they're not going away. My soapbox. I'm stepping off now. 

Chris Negron combines great baseball action with graphic novel fandom in this story of friendship and male bonding. Fans of both will love the combo. Happy book birthday tomorrow. 

Chris Negron grew up outside Buffalo, NY, where he spent a huge chunk of his childhood collecting comic books and loving sports. But it was the hours of playing Dungeons and Dragons in friends’ basements that first gave him the dream of one day writing his own stories. That dream kept him company through college at Yale University and years of programming computers for big companies. Dan Unmasked is his debut novel, and he now lives outside Atlanta with his wife, Mary. Visit him at www.chrisnegron.com.

Find Chris on Instagram or on Twitter

Happy Book Birthday! Arc Review: Falling Over Sideways by Jordan Sonnenblick

Falling Over Sideways by Jordan Sonnenblick. 261 p. Scholastic Press/ Scholastic Inc., September 27, 2016. 9780545863261. (Review of arc courtesy of the publisher)

I have a list of authors who are automatic purchases no matter what. I become so confident in them that I stop needing to read reviews and/ or the book to make sure each new book is the right fit. This isn't a long list. Jordan Sonnenblick is on that list. He's also on a much shorter list of authors whose work I will not only automatically buy but also make sure I read. I always approach a new Sonnenblick book with the predisposition toward liking it and usually end up loving it. He has never disappointed nor does he here. In fact, with this book being his first in which the narrator is a girl, Falling Over Sideways is a delightful surprise.

Which is not to say there will be no tears. We fans know to expect much humor and many tears. Claire is our goofy, sarcastic, smart and talented, with a side of clueless and selfish, narrator. She's a dancer about to be left behind by her dancing bffs when they are placed in an advanced class and she is not. She's a saxophonist who's happy to play second chair except that the first chair saxophonist, Ryder takes sadistic pleasure in constantly, well, riding her about it. And then there's the pressure of living up to her perfect older brother, Matthew's, reputation. Her parents can drive her crazy but they're pretty good as parents go and she can always count on her father to jolly her out of a bad mood with his trademark humor.

All the drama and angst suddenly seem insignificant after her father suffers a stroke one Saturday morning. One moment, he and Claire are sitting at the breakfast table amiably ignoring each other, the next her father is acting bizarrely and unable to speak. Claire's quick thinking helps to save her father's life and possibly minimize the brain damage from the blood clot. But her father is a writer. Words are important to him. What will he do; what will he be if he loses his words permanently?

Just like Steven, in Sonnenblick's debut, Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie, Claire keeps her family's emergency and her father's condition a secret as long as possible. Understandably, this poses some unique and sometimes hilarious problems. Sonnenblick's years as a middle school language arts teacher may have honed his ear for authentic middle school, tween/ teen dialogue and drama but his compassion and affection for middle school students shines in each of his books. Life lessons great and small are seamlessly woven into compelling storytelling. His characters could step off of the page and fit in in nearly any middle school.

Falling Over Sideways is highly recommended and a 2016 favorite of mine. Don't miss it!