Sawyer Lee and the Quest to Just Stay Home

From the Eisner-nominated author of Bea Wolf comes a cartoon-illustrated middle grade novel starring a ferociously unadventurous kid who is dragged into the hilarious misadventures of his friends and family. Eleven-year-old Sawyer Lee descends from an endless lineage of tiresomely adventurous people—explorers, rocket scientists, revolutionaries, pirates, captains of industry, movie stars. Even as the story begins, his mother and father are away on some expedition to, oh, was it the Marianas Trench? Space? Sawyer isn’t interested—you see, he has decided that after thirty generations of hard effort, it’s time for this bloodline to spend one lifetime on the proverbial couch. Or, in Sawyer’s case, on an actual couch at his friend Gary’s house, while screen-addicted Gary plays video games hour after hour and Sawyer eats candy and looks at magazines filled with pictures of boats. Sawyer’s one desire is a life resolutely devoid of struggle, ambition, or anything else that might interfere with his plans to do nothing and go nowhere. The problem is that he keeps getting caught up in the exhausting expectations of his domineering aunt Celia, his complex relationship with his hyper-ambitious other friend, Angela, and the enflamed passions of everybody else in town regarding winning the prize sash at its yearly festival—The Gourd Thump, Ovelaville’s annual celebration for nature’s dullest vegetable. In this story of cheating, betrayal, mystery, husbandry, and an imaginary love triangle, Sawyer knows he will have to invest a regrettable amount of time and energy into escaping all his entanglements and finding a way back to his happy place on Gary’s couch, with a cozy throw blanket, some candy, and an empty schedule. Illustrated throughout with over a hundred black-and-white cartoons from the author, Sawyer Lee and the Quest to Just Stay Home is a gut-busting comedy of errors, eccentricities, and everyday antics starring a titular hero who would rather be anything but heroic.

Listed under Juvenile Fiction · Humorous Stories · Social Themes · Friendship