7 Good Reasons Not to Grow Up
by Jimmy Gownley; illus. by the author
Middle School    Graphix/Scholastic    272 pp.    g
11/20    978-0-545-85931-8    $24.99
Paper ed.  978-0-545-85932-5    $12.99
e-book ed.  978-0-545-85937-0    $7.99

Kirby Finn is a hero to the students at Greycliff Academy. In addition to the “Seven Good Reasons” videos he sends out, which delineate why it’s best not to grow up, he leads his After-School Resistance team of students in cleverly dispatching bullies and other jerks, saving a friend’s local business, and waging an underground war on Principal Cudgel, puppet of school board president Darth Finkenboner. Best friends Raja Ahmed and Kelly Rose are there for Kirby, even after discovering that the friend they thought they knew has been harboring secrets about his identity. Gownley’s (the Amelia Rules! series; The Dumbest Idea Ever, rev. 3/14) pen-and-ink drawings, hand lettering, and full-color panels combine for a dazzling array of busy, action-filled pages with blizzards of speech bubbles, and an occasional quiet pause in the form of a cityscape, nighttime sky, or neighborhood scene. The writing works well with the illustrations to create a sensitive portrait of friends, each with a well-developed backstory, who realize that they “weren’t just a bunch of random kids,” but rather a constellation of young people who were big and powerful together. Back matter includes an author’s note and a look behind the scenes at the book’s creation.

From the March/April 2021 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.