Stuntboy, in the Meantime (Unabridged)
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
WINNER OF THE 2023 AUDIE AWARD FOR MIDDLE GRADE!
NAMED A 2023 ALA NOTABLE CHILDREN’S RECORDING!
An Odyssey Children’s Award winner
A Schneider Family Award Honor Book for Middle Grade
From Newbery Medal honoree and #1 New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds comes a hilarious, hopeful, and action-packed middle grade novel about the greatest young superhero you’ve never heard of, filled with illustrations by Raúl the Third!
Portico Reeves’s superpower is making sure all the other superheroes—like his parents and two best friends—stay super. And safe. Super safe. And he does this all in secret. No one in his civilian life knows he’s actually…Stuntboy!
But his regular Portico identity is pretty cool, too. He lives in the biggest house on the block, maybe in the whole city, which basically makes it a castle. His mom calls where they live an apartment building. But a building with fifty doors just in the hallways is definitely a castle. And behind those fifty doors live a bunch of different people who Stuntboy saves all the time. In fact, he’s the only reason the cat, New Name Every Day, has nine lives.
All this is swell except for Portico’s other secret, his not-so-super secret. His parents are fighting all the time. They’re trying to hide it by repeatedly telling Portico to go check on a neighbor “in the meantime.” But Portico knows “meantime” means his parents are heading into the Mean Time which means they’re about to get into it, and well, Portico’s superhero responsibility is to save them, too—as soon as he figures out how.
Only, all these secrets give Portico the worry wiggles, the frets, which his mom calls anxiety. Plus, like all superheroes, Portico has an arch-nemesis who is determined to prove that there is nothing super about Portico at all.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Jason Reynolds, author of the best-selling Track series, has given us a tween superhero we can truly relate to. His feel-good tale follows the adventures of Portico Reeves, an anxious 10-year-old boy with the ability to transform into the superpowered Stuntboy—in his imagination. This unusual talent gives Portico the courage to deal with his anxiety (which he calls “the frets”) and his parents’ fights, and even to stand up to Herbert Singletary the Worst, who bullies Portico and his BFF, Zola. Turning a graphic novel into an audiobook may not sound easy, but as Stuntboy, Guy Lockard leads a nine-person cast whose energetic performances keep the story zipping along. (The silly sound effects are a great touch, too!) Portico’s story will delight superhero-loving listeners of any age, not to mention anyone looking for a fun, approachable way to address anxiety.