  | Sawyer Lee and the quest to just stay home Author: Weinersmith, Zach | |
| Price: $23.28 | ||
Summary:
Chronically unmotivated eleven-year-old Sawyer Lee is reluctantly swept into an adventure and mystery surrounding the town's annual gourd festival, forcing him to choose between preserving his couch-bound lifestyle and getting involved.
Reviews:
Kirkus Reviews (05/01/26)
Booklist (06/01/26)
Full Text Reviews:
Booklist - 06/01/2026 Sawyer would love to spend his life loafing on the couch and goes out of his way to avoid getting involved in, well, anything. But when his best friend Angela goads him into helping her with a display for their town’s weirdly important gourd festival, he can’t wriggle out of it. But there’s something afoot at this year’s gourd festival: one by one, every contestant is caught cheating, even Angela’s own father, and all signs point to Sawyer’s suspiciously well-behaved classmate Anderson. As Sawyer and an increasingly conspiracy-brained Angela investigate Anderson, the clues get stranger, the list of not-disqualified contestants gets shorter, and Sawyer keeps failing to stay out of it. With interspersed comics panels to amplify the ridiculous comedy, Weinersmith brings arch humor to this offbeat story of a gourd-fest gone wrong, and while the glib attitude starts to get a bit tiresome after a while, the over-the-top characters going bonkers over cheating accusations and the town’s inexplicable gourd obsession will entertain kids who appreciate cartoonish antics. - Copyright 2026 Booklist.
