The Super Miraculous Journey of Freddie Yates

March 15, 2020
A trio of 11-year-old boys goes on a zany, coincidence-packed journey after one experiences a death in the family. Fred's got only his dad and his grandmother, and his dad's been laid up ever since the accident with the mail truck. His two best mates will soon be away for the summer. Ben's going to the States and Disney World, which would be brilliant except for Ben's horrible stepmother, and Charlie's off to vegan camp because his mother wants him to lose weight. The beginning of the summer holidays takes a turn from merely bad to horrible when Fred's grandmother dies suddenly. A letter Grams left for him reveals something Fred had assumed he'd never learn: the name and birthplace of his biological father, Alan Froggley, who abandoned his pregnant mother before he was born. (She died shortly after.) In a flash of inspiration that makes complete sense to the grief-stricken Fred, he decides on a quest to find Alan Froggley in Wales. Fred has no intention of replacing his real dad, whom he adores, but he's seeking...something. Family? Connection? Answers? Ben and Charlie join him for a slapstick adventure across Wales, with cinematic middle school humor marred only by Charlie's characterization via an endless stream of fat jokes. The boys (seemingly all white) are mistaken for both superheroes and saints by Welsh villagers, and they are chased by a taxi-driving, gun-wielding criminal. By some fluke, all their adventures are connected, as Fred the narrator continuously foreshadows. Goofball comedy with heart . (Fiction. 9-11)

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March 15, 2020
Grades 4-6 Prompted by his Grams' sudden death, 11-year-old Freddie impulsively slips away from his widowed real dad and sets out with two equally clueless mates, in this debut, to find the birth father he's never met. Besides repeated encounters with sheep, the ensuing odyssey over the Welsh countryside is punctuated with both Monty Python-style mishaps (having lost their clothes in a fire, the three filch superhero costumes to replace them . . . aaannnd Freddie has to take the Supergirl one) and incredible twists and coincidences as the lads, trying to keep their heads down, nonetheless become social media celebrities by solving a historical mystery and foiling a robbery, a jewel theft, and a possible murder. Freddie relates all of this in a matter-of-fact tone that serves the comical plot but also leaves room for him to work through realistic tides of grief and confusion on the way to a climax that mixes generous measures of farce with poignant family revelations. Freddie ends up with expanded definitions of both family and miracles, and readers will, too.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)