It's the End of the World and I'm in My Bathing Suit

March 15, 2022
Epic end-of-summer plans go awry for five kids in Ohio. Twelve-year-old Eddie Gordon Holloway is ready to have a blast at Beach Bash with his friends--it's the day when everyone in town heads to Lake Erie for great food and live music. However, when his mom unearths the mountain of smelly laundry that he's ignored for the entire summer, Eddie is left home in a literal funk, with nothing to wear but his glow-in-the-dark pineapple swim trunks. After a power outage, Eddie links up with four other left-behind kids, and they all enjoy fun times until the streetlights come on--but none of their families return from the party. The kids take action to prepare for whatever is happening in their new world without parents, gathering necessities from their neighbors' empty houses and trying to keep each other's spirits up with dad jokes and teasing, except in the truly gentle spaces where they admit their fears to each other. Ultimately, the buildup to the to-be-continued ending doesn't quite deliver. Long-winded digressions interrupt the flow of the storytelling, and it takes almost half the book to get to the zany situations that provide most of the laughs. Matter-of-fact scenes with Eddie taking his ADHD medicine and talking through school and home pressures with Trey, their school's all-star athlete, offer insightful representations of Black boys bonding on different emotional levels. All main characters read as Black. An unevenly paced celebration of wacky summer adventures. (Fiction. 8-12)

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April 15, 2022
Grades 3-6 Eddie Holloway hates doing laundry, and when his mom and stepdad give him a summer of freedom, he decides to wear all of his clothes and put off doing laundry until after Beach Bash. His lawyer mom is aghast to find out about this plan and grounds him to do laundry all day--on the same day as Beach Bash. His laundry experience quickly goes downhill when the power goes out, his phone loses service, and, all of a sudden, he and a few friends left behind from Beach Bash have to figure out how to handle the end of the world, no matter what they're wearing. With Reynolds' signature witticisms and jump-off-the-page jokes, the writing style of this middle-grade novel perfectly captures the stream of consciousness explorations of a young boy facing the perils of laundry and of the end of the world. Equal parts friendship story, coming of age, and comedic apocalypse, this will be a great read for unengaged readers and kids looking to take their summers into their own hands.

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May 2, 2022
It’s been 40 days since the last day of school, and 12-year-old Eddie Gordon Holloway, diagnosed with ADHD, is proud of the plan he’s hatched: to avoid doing laundry, he will simply wear everything in his closet until he has nothing left. When his mother uncovers his mountain of unwashed garments, though, Eddie is immediately grounded and must clean his clothes while his parents attend their Ohio town’s annual Lake Erie Beach Bash without him. Then the power suddenly goes out throughout the neighborhood, and Eddie, joined by a ragtag group of kids who were also left behind, decides that if they can’t go to the party, they’ll make their own fun. But once night falls and their parents don’t return from the Beach Bash, the group worries they might have to survive on their own. While the conclusion feels abrupt, Reynolds’s animated prose and eclectic characters propel this quirky summer adventure. Eddie’s community is predominantly Black. Ages 8–12. Agent: Beth Phelan, Gallt & Zacker Literary.

January 20, 2023

Gr 4-7-Having worn every piece of clothing he owns, Eddie Holloway, a 12-year-old Black boy in Ohio, is stuck at home doing laundry in his swim trunks instead of accompanying his family to the town's annual Beach Bash. While an unlikely scenario, his plans are foiled when the neighborhood loses power. Eddie and the four other kids left behind must figure out how to survive when the rest of the community mysteriously disappears. Told from a first-person perspective, the narration has lengthy asides that interrupt the pacing and flow of the story. Heavy on personality, this book is light on plot and has an unsatisfying ending, though it is clearly set up for a sequel. Glimmers of depth come through in Eddie's feelings about dealing with his father's loss, mother's remarrying, and attitudes about his ADHD and therapy. VERDICT Recommended for purchase only where there are gaps in humorous middle grade offerings, especially with BIPOC leads.-Monisha Blair

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