CODY SELTZER AND THE CREEPING SHADOWS

A young boy must save his quirky neighborhood from insidious forces of soul-sucking negativity in this lively middle-grade adventure from Williams.

Eleven-year-old Cody lives in West Adelfi, a neighborhood where weirdness is considered normal, and the various oddballs accept one another’s individuality. Cody’s dad is a bearded man-child skateboarder, his mum a heavily tattooed save-the-planet campaigner. Cody’s best friend, Zeke, has an obsessive-compulsive need to keep everyday items methodically arranged. Cody himself is a talented artist who draws comics with his older brother, Wyatt. Recently, however, Wyatt has grown distant. Cody, in turn, has become embarrassed to hang out with Zeke. He is eager instead to impress his new soccer friends from across the river. A shadowy darkness seeps into Cody’s drawings, reflecting both his inner turmoil and a menacing change that is spreading through the town. Masked shadow figures commit acts of vandalism. Shop owners are targeted. Most mysteriously, the latest reality TV phenomenon and its associated augmented-reality app have come to West Adelfi, afflicting residents with a hypnotic ennui. Can Cody embrace his sense of identity and keep the neighborhood from tearing itself apart? Williams, whose last book was The Rage (2019), writes from Cody’s perspective, crafting a free-flowing narrative very much in tune with West Adelfi’s peculiarities. The prose, simple but effective, focuses on storytelling and allows the cast room to breathe. Cody himself is a well-realized protagonist—relatively “normal” but with doubts, insecurities, and an incisive self-awareness. As per characters in some of the best middle-grade books, he and his friends at times show more maturity than the adults. Their personalities emerge through dialogue as well as action, their talk enlivened by inventive swear substitutes, like “bullhonky” and “boogersnarfs.” The self-acceptance moral is overt but not too heavy-handed. The sinister conditioning by the reality show evokes a chill similar to that of Gillian Cross’ Demon Headmaster novels. All told, young readers will embrace Cody’s world.

A fast, fun friendship tale filled with joie de vivre.