Weekly Reads: Slider

Slider is the newest middle grade novel by Pete Hautman. I have never picked up a book from Hautman, but the description of this book plus the PHENOMENOL COVER drew me in. I'm obsessed with competitive eating, and even think I could've made a good competitor back in my day! This book was cute, clever, quirky, and made me really hungry (which I don't think was the point, I will surely be in the minority on that front). It's a great book for 5-8 grade kids, or adults who are young at heart!

My rating: 5 stars

Review from Goodreads:

Competitive eating vies with family expectations in a funny, heartfelt novel for middle-grade readers by National Book Award winner Pete Hautman.

David can eat an entire sixteen-inch pepperoni pizza in four minutes and thirty-six seconds. Not bad. But he knows he can do better. In fact, he'll have to do better: he's going to compete in the Super Pigorino Bowl, the world's greatest pizza-eating contest, and he has to win it, because he borrowed his mom's credit card and accidentally spent $2,000 on it. So he really needs that prize money. Like, yesterday. As if training to be a competitive eater weren't enough, he's also got to keep an eye on his little brother, Mal (who, if the family believed in labels, would be labeled autistic, but they don't, so they just label him Mal). And don't even get started on the new weirdness going on between his two best friends, Cyn and HeyMan. Master talent Pete Hautman has cooked up a rich narrative shot through with equal parts humor and tenderness, and the result is a middle-grade novel too delicious to put down.