Meet The Creator: MEGA Awesome Notebook by Kevin Moore

A long time ago in a microwave far far away....

Mom! Mom!

A kid wakes up in a silent house. In the kitchen there's a note:

Sorry, sweetie!Had to leave early for work. Lunch is in the fridge.Mom X0XX0

Pulling a slice of cold pizza from the fridge, he put its paper plate down on top of his green notebook and rushing to nuke it, he puts both in the microwave.

A cloud of awesomeness was released into the world.

When the kid recovers, he rushes for school. and when he opens his notebook, he begins to draw a dude he names Dud. And then a dog for Dud. And then another Dud. (They are a pair of palindrome pals!) Ha! Now it's a duel of Duds. The two compete at efforts to erase each other. It's a nasty little battle between the two little duds.

This is war, with a series of characters--the dumpy algebra teacher, a little smart alecky Einstein, devils, dragons, monsters, space cats, aliens, warring medieval fantasy critters, even Mark Twain and Tom Sawyer. Dud #I even creates Little Cretin, who provides rude sounds from several orifices.The Kid thinks it's time to shut down the whole notebook world.

SLAM!

The Kid stuffs his notebook into his backpack and it falls out as he runs down the hall, leaving footprints that say, "You're Not Crazy!" behind him. He runs for the front office to call Mom, who can't leave work to check him out. The school secretary offers him a Tylenol.

But as he trudges to his next class, he meets a girl named Val, who returns his notebook.

"It's hilarious," she says with a shy smile.

Inside the green notebook, Dud has had enough. He finds The Way Out and runs into the creator, who explains the notebook.

"It's where the creator hides his fears. Where no one can see."

And maybe the way to erase those fears is to face them out in the world, where they really live, in Kevin Minor's Mega Awesome Notebook (Schiffer Publishing, 2019), in which the real conflict is working out his fears about his family split-up. Resolving the conflicts inside and outside are one of the difficult tasks in early adolescence. Dealing with divorced parents, awkwardness with a girl, a grouchy math teacher, those can be more dread than dragons and deadly erasers, but maybe if he tells Val about his day....? That may just be the Way Out.