Dropping Beats
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
"Funny, bursting with heart, goofy, wise, and did I mention– wildly wonderfully funny."
—Jon Scieszka, First National Ambassador of Young People's Literature and Founder of Guys Read
A hilarious and heartfelt young YA comedy about the misadventures of an aspiring young rapper as he navigates school, family, and friendship.
Thirteen-year-old Growls (aka Shaun) is an aspiring (awful) rapper who hopes to enter this year’s Raptology competition with his best friend, Shanks (aka Zachariah). After all, what better way to land his crush (Tanisha) and get the respect he finally deserves than winning the contest and going viral?
But when a livestream practice goes epically wrong, the two friends do go viral– and not in the way they’d hoped.
Now the laughingstock of the school, Growls is sure he’ll never have another chance to date Tanisha. Even worse, Shanks has gone MIA, leaving him terribly alone.
But when Growls meets the new girl on the block (Siobhan), things don’t seem so terrible after all. And with some patience, a little luck, and a whole lot of practice, he just might win the Raptology competition and be a hero to both Siobhan and Shanks.
Either way, he’s ready for this. He’s steady for this. It’s comeback season and they call him comeback king for a reason.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When their livestream beatboxing practice goes wrong, 13-year-olds Growls, real name Shaun, and Shanks, aka Zachariah, go viral in the most humiliating way they can imagine. Now that they're the laughingstocks of the school, Growls's dream of landing his crush Tanisha go out the window, as do his and Shanks's plans of winning this year's Raptology, a competition whose prize money would be a boon for Growls's financially struggling family. Things seem unsalvageable after Shanks goes MIA. But when Growls meets the new girl on the block, everything changes for the aspiring rapper. Utilizing the protagonist's immediate-feeling first-person POV, debut author Lessore crafts a hilarious look into one teen's struggles to reach for the proverbial stars (highlights include "So Much Beef the Steaks Are High" and "Man's Got More Dates than a Calendar"). Lessore doesn't rest on comedic laurels: the inclusion of Growls's beatbox poems throughout allows readers a glimpse into his intimate thoughts and deep internality as an artist and adolescent, highlighting that Growls is more than his goofy outward persona. The cast is intersectionally diverse. Ages 12–up.
