Refreshingly sharp and emotionally layered…
In Lloyd’s fun middle-grade novel, a socially isolated seventh grader obsessed with being right begins to unravel when his intelligence fails to shield him from failure, vulnerability, and unexpected friendship. Twelve-year-old Daniel Diamond is the smartest kid at Winded Beaver Middle School, and he knows it. Dressed in pressed clothes and armed with weekly reports of his teachers’ mistakes, he treats school like a system to correct. When strange things start happening a few weeks into seventh grade, Daniel’s usual certainty falters. For the first time, he’s not sure what’s real, or how to fix it.
Lloyd uses humor and absurdity, particularly Daniel’s recurring fantasy battles with a stuffed pink gorilla, to show how intelligence alone can’t compensate for emotional underdevelopment. His writing is crisp, witty, and loaded with sarcasm, perfectly mirroring Daniel’s inner world. But beneath the humor is genuine sincerity. The book handles big emotional terrain: loneliness, self-doubt, the fear of failure, without melodrama. Daniel’s growth doesn’t come from a single revelation, but from a series of small, sometimes painful realizations that being smart isn’t the same as being right, and that being vulnerable isn’t weakness. This is a story about learning to exist in a world that doesn’t bend to logic. Daniel isn’t always likable, but he’s always honest. His classmates, teachers, and even his family are given moments of grace and clarity that round them out beyond caricature.
A clever, heartfelt, and deeply human story that will resonate with any reader who’s ever felt like the smartest one in the room—and the loneliest. A knockout.
Pub date November 19, 2024
ISBN 979-8992041309
Price $15.99 (USD) Hardcover, $10.00 Paperback, $6.99 KIndle edition
Reading age 8-16 years
