20 July 2026 CARDBOARD KNIGHT by Matthew Dicks, Macmillan/Holt, January 2027, 240p., ISBN: 978-0-250-17160-1

“Sometimes it's hard to look up under

The times we're going through

I scratch my head and stare and wonder

How to face the day anew”

– Todd Rundgren (1973)

I am feeling rather nostalgic at the moment.

A generation ago, when my kids were kids–like my grandkids are these days–I would regularly attend twice-a-year American Library Association conventions, which are held in the country’s larger cities. I also attended the now-extinct Independent Booksellers annual conventions, BookExpo. 

Nowadays, I attend ALA occasionally, when it’s close to or in California.

For me, putting aside the honor and excitement of sometimes serving on ALA selection or award committees, the big deal about attending these bookseller and librarian get-togethers has always been getting to hang out on the convention floor and at publisher get-togethers with the children's and YA authors and artists whose work I spend so much time immersed in the rest of the year.

I have a special affection for the great comical tween novels that I would have gone nuts over, had they been around when I was a quiet, studious, obsessively-reading tween. The great ones these days let me revert to my 10- or 12-year-old self, laughing hysterically or feeling my heart pounding because of the situations in which characters find themselves.

I’m feeling nostalgic, thanks to the passing of generations, and the passing of those authors from my parents’ generation whom I adored and idolized. It was always such a big deal for me to listen to and yak with them at ALA, guys gone but not forgotten like Richard Peck (1934-2018) and Gary Paulsen (1939-2021).

I also miss getting to hang with the great guy authors from my own generation, like Gary Schmidt (two years younger than me) and Christopher Paul Curtis and Jack Gantos (both two years older than me), with whom I always loved spending time back in the day.

I’m feeling nostalgic because reading CARDBOARD KNIGHT reminds me of that exhilaration I’ve felt in the past when reading one or another of my favorite guy authors. CARDBOARD KNIGHT is one of those books that could have readily been my favorite of the year, had it been published back when I was a fifth- or sixth- or seventh- grader. It’s that good. 

I’ve never before heard  of teacher, author, and stand-up-comedian Matthew Dick (born 1971). But if this guy can turn out a few more books that make me alternately roll on the floor laughing and clench the book, gasping, the way this one did, I bet he’ll soon be on everyone’s radar–a member of Great Guy Authors: The Next Generation.

“Lisa is in trouble because she’s doing that dance that little girls do when they have to pee. She probably doesn’t even know that she has to pee yet. Little girls’ feet seem to know that their owners need to pee before their brains do. It’s as if their bladders are connected to their toes. Lisa is staring at the clouds and singing the ABCs, but she’s shuffling her feet from side to side, too. That’s the dance. The pee-pee dance.

Any second, she’s going to realize that she has to pee, and she’s going to be in trouble. We’ll both be in trouble. The bus will be here soon. There’s no time to pee. She always chooses the worst times to need to pee.

Then it happens. Her bladder and her brain finally connect. The pee message is sent.

‘Uh-oh,’ she says. ‘I have to pee.’ Then she looks at me. As the oldest, I’m always the one she looks to when she has a problem.

Mrs. Allen told us that you’re the oldest of five kids, so you probably understand.

I sigh. ‘We don’t have time for this,’ I say, but I know that can’t be the answer. The bus ride is

about twenty minutes long. It’s bumpy. She won’t be able to hold it. She’ll have an accident for sure. 

I know Mrs. Allen would kill me for asking, but do you have accidents when you’re flying to space?

What if you need to pee just before blasting off?

Forget I asked. Dumb question.

Unless you want to answer it.

With Lisa, there’s no time to solve this problem.

She has to pee, but the bus is also about to arrive at any minute. It’s one of those problems that has no solution. I feel like my life is filled with them.

‘It’s okay, Jack,’ Owen says as if reading my

mind. ‘She has time.’

I turn to look at my brother. Owen is lying in the street, his ear pressed to the pavement. It’s not a busy street, but it’s a fast one. Cars drive by at forty or fifty miles per hour. We can see them coming from a ways away, but still, I wish he wouldn’t do this.

‘Still no bus,’ he says. He gives me the thumbs-up.

Owen believes that if he presses his ear to the pavement, he can hear the bus coming. He’s been saying this since first grade. Lisa and I aren’t very nice to Owen, so I’ve always let him have this one. I pretend to believe him because we make fun of him for almost everything else.

‘Fine,’ I say. I grab Lisa by the wrist and drag her back up the gravel driveway to the house.

‘Hurry. The bus will be here any minute.’

No one is home. Our stepfather left for work a couple of hours ago, and Mom left for the hospital about forty-five minutes ago. She’s something called a pharmacist technician, which means the

pharmacist gets to boss her around.

Mom ties a house key around my neck every morning—tight enough that I can’t get it over my head, because I took the key off once in gym class and lost it, so now she doesn’t trust me.

This key is probably going to kill me someday. The string will get caught on something like a bicycle pedal or a chain link fence and choke me to death, but at least I’ll still have the key when

I breathe my last breath. I’ll be dead, but I’ll be responsible, and being responsible means a lot to Mom.

It also means that opening the door isn’t easy. I have to sort of squat down and line my neck up with the lock on the doorknob. Then I have to lean forward and jiggle the key around until it finally finds the lock and slides in. I look ridiculous doing it. Kind of like I’m squatting to take a poop in the woods. But I’ve gotten good at it. I can usually unlock the door in just a couple of seconds.

But today there is pressure. I need to move quickly. The bus is coming, and Lisa has a full bladder. The clock is ticking. I hate pressure. Some people eat pressure for breakfast. I bet astronauts eat pressure for breakfast. Not me. Pressure eats me or breakfast. I’m like its bowl of Fruity Pebbles. It takes me at least a minute to finally get the door open.

‘Hurry,’ I say to Lisa. ‘I’ll hold the bus for you.’

‘Thanks!’ she says. She’s smiling. She doesn’t have a worry in the world, and I know why. It’s

because I’m here. It’s because I’m the oldest, and she’s the youngest. She plops her problems down into my lap and doesn’t give them a second thought.

That must be nice.”

It’s September of 1985, and for his first writing assignment of sixth grade, Lisa and Owen’s big brother Jack is required to write a letter to soon-to-be space voyager and first “Teacher-In-Space” Christa McAuliffe. 

Starting with his pee-pee dance tale, Jack gets into writing McAuliffe therapeutically, recounting day-by-day what is going on in his crazy and troubled life. The result of that writing assignment–this book–often rises to the level of first-rate stand-up comedy, as Jack explains to Ms. McAuliffe what has happened next. The story’s waves of humor are mixed with the weightiness of Jack’s situation: He seems to work endlessly to be a good and responsible big brother, while his father is totally out of the picture, his divorced mother is struggling psychologically and economically, and his new stepfather is scary and not the tiniest bit fatherly.

And, for us readers old enough to remember the Challenger disaster, we cringe in anticipation of Jack’s possible reactions to the upcoming 1986 demise of Ms. McAuliffe and the other six members of that ill-fated flight.

Page-by-page, day-by-day, and letter-by-letter, Jack’s letters to Ms. McAuliffe careen wildly between hysterically funny anecdotes about his and his sib’s past and present antics, and the hard reality of his situation.

“I’ve felt like I’ve been on my own for a long time. I’ve tried to be the parent I’ve always wanted my parents to be, but I’ve also never given up hope. Never stopped believing that, someday soon, Mom and Kevin and maybe even Dad would realize what their job is supposed to be and start doing it.

Hope. It’s the thing that I have clung to for so long. It’s the thing that makes tomorrow seem better than today.”

A spectacular tween coming-of-age tale, I urge you to read and share it. And I hope to someday get the opportunity to yak with this new-to-our-scene, Next Generation author.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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