A Fabulously Epic Middle Grade Adventure
Monsters, a treasure hunt and an EPIC road trip, The Fabulous Zed Watson! by father and child co-authors Basil Sylvester and Kevin Sylvester is a roller coaster ride of amazing.
When Zed Watson, along with a lot of help from @FlorAida, crack the code in the hunt for The Monsters Castle, a long lost, and most certainly epic novel of monster love, they set off on a road trip across the US looking for clues that will eventually lead them to the book.
When I say epic I mean EPIC. The road trip is anything but smooth, taking them to some pretty unusual places throughout the United States. All of the places have the most wonderful names and eclectic people who all help Zed and company solve the mystery of The Monster’s Castle.
Zed, Sam, Gabe and the many people they encounter along the way are so endearing. I LOVE Zed! They are a clear character with such a distinct voice. They are someone readers would love to meet in real life. Positive and hilarious and maybe a little irrational at times, but so lovable and relatable. Gabe is the perfect foil to Zed, although both have the same love for The Monster’s Castle, they come to that love in different ways and for different reasons. Sam is the perfect pseudo grownup and really the only person perfect to chaperone this crazy road trip. If the authors had chosen a parent as the driver, this would have been a totally different story, entirely less epic. To have a young adult helm the trip there is more trust in Zed and Gabe and more leeway given turning this story into a true adventure.
At the heart of this story is friendship and understanding. The adventure is fantastical, suspenseful and wild and keeps you turning the pages. Readers will not want to put this story down because you will just HAVE to know where it leads. Readers are also treated to some pretty important lessons in gender identity and acceptance. Right from the beginning readers are told that Zed is non-binary and uses the pronouns they/them. Throughout the story Zed is misgendered. Just about every place they stop, that isn’t a significant place to the journey, they are misgendered, so much so that the travel companions begin to make a game out of it, putting a positive spin on something that can be quite painful. So many readers will see their experiences reflected back to them in this story. It’s such an important element of the story and one we should be more aware of. I know there are times when I have inadvertently misgendered someone. We are all so coded in the binary, not so much children now but certainly their grownups, I find that reading stories like The Fabulous Zed Watson! is an important reminder to shift my thinking and really try hard to use more gender neutral terms, especially when addressing groups of children.
Young readers are so fortunate to have amazing authors, editors and publishers championing stories like Zed’s. The next generation of adults, as a whole, is going to be so much more self aware and understanding than previous generations and it is thanks to beautiful people like Basil Sylvester, Kevin Sylvester and the whole team responsible for ensuring this story has a place for children.
