Squint - Hardcover

Chad Morris; Shelly Brown

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1629724858 ISBN 13: 9781629724850

Publisher: Shadow Mountain, 2018

Synopsis

My name is Flint, but everyone in middle school calls me Squint because I'm losing my vision. I used to play football, but not anymore. I haven’t had a friend in a long time. Thankfully, real friends can see the real you, even when you can't clearly see.

Flint loves to draw. In fact, he's furiously trying to finish his comic book so he can be the youngest winner of the Find a Comic Star contest. He’s also rushing to finish because he has keratoconus an eye disease that could eventually make him blind.

McKell is the new girl at school and immediately hangs with the popular kids. Except McKell's not a fan of the way her friends treat this boy named Squint. He seems nice and really talented. He draws awesome pictures of superheroes. McKell wants to get to know him, but is it worth the risk? What if her friends catch her hanging with the kid who squints all the time?

McKell has a hidden talent of her own but doesn't share it for fear of being judged. Her terminally ill brother, Danny, challenges McKell to share her love of poetry and songwriting. Flint seems like someone she could trust. Someone who would never laugh at her. Someone who is as good and brave as the superhero in Flint's comic book named Squint.

Squint is the inspiring story of two new friends dealing with their own challenges, who learn to trust each other, believe in themselves, and begin to truly see what matters most.

 

About this title

About the Author:

Chad Morris grew up wanting to become a professional basketball player or a rock star. Neither of those plans quite panned out, so he wrote and performed sketch comedy while going to college. Now he’s a teacher and a writer.

Shelly Brown loves to write books for children. In her spare time, she enjoys the theater and traveling. In addition to her five children, she has three chickens and sixty-four Pez dispensers.

Their previous book is Mustaches for Maddie.

From School Library Journal:

Gr 5-7-Sixth grader Flint (aka Squint) is feverishly trying to finish making his comic book in order to enter it in the "Find a Comic Star" contest. Due to a genetic eye disease, keratoconus, he wears thick glasses and has double, sometimes triple or quadruple, vision. Flint, who lives with his grandparents, spends most of his time alone working on his comic book. When McKell, a new girl at school and part of the popular group, sits with him at lunch, he's wary at first, but she seems genuine. She invites him to take a hike after school and talks about her brother Danny's YouTube videos where he posts challenges asking people to push themselves and try new things. After Flint tears his cornea and has surgery, he sees better than he has in years, a cause for celebration until he sees his comic more clearly and realizes that it isn't as good as he thought. He quits drawing, but after Danny dies of heart disease, a consequence of having progeria, a disease where you prematurely age, he works with McKell to fulfill Danny's last challenge, a chance for them both to achieve their dreams. Flint and McKell are sympathetic protagonists with relatable concerns and issues. The challenges of middle school are leavened with humor through the "Middle School Rules" sprinkled throughout the story. The use of the comic book as a metaphor for Flint's experiences would have been more impactful if it had been shown as the actual comic rather than written as text. This small flaw aside, this is a moving story about friendship, loss, and seeing life from other people's point of view. VERDICT Recommended for any library serving middle grade readers.-Kefira Phillipe, Nichols Middle School, Evanston, ILα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

About this edition

• Publisher: Shadow Mountain
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1629724858
• ISBN 13: 9781629724850
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256