The American children’s author Jason Reynolds (Long Way Down, All American Boys, Ghost) rightly won the Carnegie medal this year for Look Both Ways, his collection of interlinking stories about what happens to children on their way home from school. Now he has returned with a collaboration with the Mexican-American artist Raúl the Third, to produce a heavily illustrated book with a comic feel for children aged 7-12.
Our hero, the stuntboy of the title, is Portico Reeves, a child with anxiety who transforms into a superhero to protect his friend Zola, navigate his parents’ break-up and attempt to understand Herbert Singletary the Worst, a classmate and new boy in his block.
Portico lives in Skylight Gardens, the engine of the story, which he refers to with pride as a “castle”. When his separating parents start arguing about who will take the clock and the TV and announce he will now live in two apartments in the building, Portico, who unsurprisingly has what he calls “The Frets”, realises that he needs to act. Even if his neighbour Herbert is trying to stymie him at every turn. Li’l Herb, it turns out, has his own domestic issues: he takes refuge in the block’s boiler cupboard to stew on his new stepdad and absent father.
Obsessed with a TV show called Super Space Warriors, Portico uses the antics of those fictional characters to inform his own life (and we get Raúl the Third’s fantastic sci-fi drawings to complement these segments). Reynolds knows what makes this age group tick and brilliantly animates life in a big American apartment building, from the block parties to the trash chutes. It’s impossible not to root for Portico and pray that, as he tries so hard to save everyone else, someone might think to save him too. Perfect for fans of the Tom Gates books.
Stuntboy, in the Meantime (7-12) by Jason Reynolds, drawings by Raúl the Third, Knights Of, 272pp; £7.99
