The Season of Styx Malone

It's summer, and Caleb and his big brother Bobby Gene are free!  They have the whole woods behind their house to explore.  When they sort of accidentally trade their baby sister for some possible stolen fireworks, things take a different direction. 

Enter Styx Malone.  He's older, much cooler, and he has a great plan for how to move those possibly stolen fireworks before anyone gets in trouble.  His solution is The Great Escalator Trade.  It works like this.  You make a series of trades where each item is just a little bit better than the last.  All they have to do is listen to Styx, and that bag of fireworks will eventually become the shiny green scooter sitting in the hardware store window. 

There are only a few complications, the extra chores for giving away their sister and the trades involve increasingly dubious activities.  Bobby Gene has his doubts, but Caleb sees Styx as the antithesis of his cooped up small-town life. 

Kekla Magoon's new middle grade novel is a great adventure with a tender heart. Caleb is too young to understand his father's fears about the world outside their town where everyone knows and accepts them, but savvy readers will understand his concerns about racial violence.  Caleb and Bobby Gene also have trouble seeing Styx clearly.  They see a clever kid who makes his own rules without really understanding the struggles of a sixteen-year-old African American boy in the foster system.   This book has that golden summer vibe where it seems to the characters that nothing can go so wrong it can't be fixed by September.  Highly recommended.