Full Text Reviews: Booklist - 05/01/2021 Promoting the insight that we all have the superpower to help people in need, even if only in small ways, Cameron hooks up a traumatized family that has lost a child to cancer with an extended clan of Reality Shifters who, led by a veteran in a wheelchair wonderfully styled “Papa Wheelie,” dress up in homemade costumes and pick up garbage, visit shelters, and, yes, even fight crime. Once they learn why their new upstairs neighbors dress so peculiarly, sixth-grader Zinnia and her visiting teenage aunt, Willow, become eager recruits who are energized by both the comradery and the eye-opening encounters with less fortunate residents of their Maine town. Happily, the author is careful to individualize those residents rather than lump them into overly tidy categories. Run-ins with a purse snatcher and a ring of internet café thieves, while superfluous to the main story, add drama to the do-gooding. An afterword on actual costumed “real-life superheroes” and other support groups supplies leads for readers inspired to try similar “extreme altruism” of their own. - Copyright 2021 Booklist. Loading...
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