The Lumbering Giants of Windy Pines

Gr 3-7–Almost-12-year-old Jerry uses a pink wheelchair, has a Yiddish-accented dragon named Paul, and lives with her widowed mother at the Slumbering Giant motel where Mama cleans rooms. Excessive bullying led to homeschooling, “which just means [she] read[s] a lot of books.” She’s made a new friend, Chapel, whose family’s home recently burned down. Lately, Mama’s day job has turned nightly, until one morning, she doesn’t return. Jerry and Chapel must face demons, ghosts, and monsters to save Mama, and then their entire town. Newhouse earnestly enlivens debut author Metz’s quirky cast—young and older, human and not. Metz, who also uses a wheelchair, writes with experienced understanding about being truly seen as disabled or different: Jerry’s chair is obvious but isn’t “weird” or “limiting”; ignoring Chapel’s Blackness is neither equalizing nor accepting.