Combine The Phantom Tollbooth, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and you might end up with a book like this, by gay dad Raphael Simon, better known as children’s author Pseudonymous Bosch. In this fantastical and funny tale, middle-schooler Mickey’s mom and dad are divorced, and each is now engaged to a woman, both of whom happen to be named Charlie. (All are presumed White.) If that wasn’t bad enough, his father teaches his Human Development class (“the last subject you would want your parent to teach”), and his annoying older sister is is dating a boy who constantly calls everything Mickey does “gay” (as a slur). Mickey wants all of them to “get lost.”
Mickey therefore follows the urging of an ad inside his pack of gum and orders a copy of The Anti-Book, a book for those who “wish everyone would go away.” When it arrives, Mickey follows the instruction “To erase it, write it.” He writes their names in the book and is soon free of parents, sister, school, and everything that bothered him. He quickly finds himself, however, fully in the anti-world, where things from his life reappear with strange twists. His sister is four inches tall, he’s advised by a tiny talking house with wings, and a mysterious shadowy boy looks strangely familiar. The boy advises him to visit the Bubble Gum King to help him sort things out and get back to the world he knows. But can he?
Clever, zany, and occasionally sophomoric (which may or may not be a selling point, depending on your tastes), the book also carries a powerful underlying message about discovering yourself and finding a sense of belonging. While Mickey’s sexual orientation is not the major part of his self-discovery here, the book does raise the question about whether he is in fact gay. Mickey isn’t sure, but leaves it an open question, which feels appropriate for his particular point in life and his current amount of self-awareness. (I’m tagging the book as having a gay/queer boy character, though, just because readers looking for books about gay/queer boys may wish to find it. It’s clear that that identity could be a possibility for Mickey.)
Occasional illustrations by Ben Scruton add to the tale, but this is not a picture book. It skews towards the younger end of the middle grade range, however.
