Bound To Stay Bound

Booklist - 06/01/2023 *Starred Review* Just getting from his mom’s apartment on the fourth floor to his dad’s on the third for “Dad-urday” takes Portico “Stuntboy” Reeves all day in this equally funny and tumultuous follow-up to Stuntboy, in the Meantime (2021). First, there’s almost getting stuck in the elevator and then having to negotiate the stairs past all the “weenagers, the treenagers, and the freenagers. Then there are the 17 loose iguanas in 4Q to recapture, and the empty apartment with the unlocked door on the eighth floor that, to Portico, with fellow superheroes Zola and Herbert, just begs to have its walls decorated with magic markers—an act that results, like so many episodes of awesome TV series Super Space Warriors do, in an “Explosion of Great Magnitude” when the super finds out. Once again, Reynolds adroitly weaves emotional business into the teeming tapestry of apartment houselife by surrounding his caped protagonist, still struggling with his parents’ recent separation, with a colorful cast depicted by Raúl the Third in typically snappy, dynamic flurries of motion on nearly every page. Zola’s dazzling Grandpa Pepper, who names nail-polish colors for a living and takes over the vacant apartment with his own purple haired Gran Gran in tow, makes a particularly unforgettable entrance. But Pepper fits right in, as readers will be yearning to do, with the distinctive residents of Skylight Gardens. - Copyright 2023 Booklist.

Booklist - 06/15/2023 *Starred Review* Just getting from his mom’s apartment on the fourth floor to his dad’s on the third for “Dad-urday” takes Portico “Stuntboy” Reeves all day in this equally funny and tumultuous follow-up to Stuntboy, in the Meantime (2021). First, there’s almost getting stuck in the elevator and then having to negotiate the stairs past all the “weenagers, the treenagers, and the freenagers. Then there are the 17 loose iguanas in 4Q to recapture, and the empty apartment with the unlocked door on the eighth floor that, to Portico, with fellow superheroes Zola and Herbert, just begs to have its walls decorated with magic markers—an act that results, like so many episodes of awesome TV series Super Space Warriors do, in an “Explosion of Great Magnitude” when the super finds out. Once again, Reynolds adroitly weaves emotional business into the teeming tapestry of apartment houselife by surrounding his caped protagonist, still struggling with his parents’ recent separation, with a colorful cast depicted by Raúl the Third in typically snappy, dynamic flurries of motion on nearly every page. Zola’s dazzling Grandpa Pepper, who names nail-polish colors for a living and takes over the vacant apartment with his own purple haired Gran Gran in tow, makes a particularly unforgettable entrance. But Pepper fits right in, as readers will be yearning to do, with the distinctive residents of Skylight Gardens. - Copyright 2023 Booklist.