From the Publisher
“Scott shows today’s youth how strong and powerful they can be.”—Medium
"Jeremy Scott brings his familiar snark from his CinemaSins YouTube channel to the book’s epic battles, plot-twists and super-villains.”—San Francisco Book Review
The heroes of this wildly inventive and unpredictable superhero epic don't want to be ignored, or pitied, or placed on a pedestal. They want what all of us want: The chance to forge their own destiny. The fictional world The Ables inhabit struggles to admit it needs its team of Special Ed heroes. But it does, and I would say our pop culture landscape (and, you know, your bookshelf) needs them even more.
-David Wong
Executive Editor of Cracked.com and NY Times Bestselling Author
Kirkus Reviews
2019-05-08
A congenitally blind boy discovers that he's a superhero.
When his dad took him aside for "the talk" when he was 12, wisecracking Phillip expected a humiliating lecture on sex. Instead, he learned that, like everyone else in their small town, he's a "custodian": a superhero. Phillip has inherited telekinesis, which his blindness complicates. Relegated to the special education class at Freepoint High School, Phillip befriends Henry, an overweight, telepathic wheelchair user; Bentley, who has cerebral palsy and a hypersmart mind; Freddie, whose asthma hampers his power of gigantism; and James, also blind, who teleports. When a mysterious villain appears, the friends—dubbing themselves "the Ables"—must combine their skills to save the town. Scott's debut squanders an intriguing premise in a cliché-riddled plot; fans of superhero fare will guess twists long before they're revealed. Preachy, expository dialogue and Phillip's summary-laden narration slow the pace, and weak character development renders even tragedy flat. Despite the (mostly) realistic portrayal of Phillip's blindness, stale disability tropes abound, including disability-negating superpowers, Phillip's "fantastic hearing," and the glaringly infantilizing portrayal of a teen with Down syndrome as a "big teddy bear" with "the mind of a young child in the body of a grown man." Most characters are assumed white; Henry is black. Occasional line drawings illustrate the text.
For an action-packed superhero tale sans egregious stereotyping, skip this and stick with Rick Riordan's The Lightning Thief (2005). (Fantasy. 12-15)
