Mechaboys

February 5, 2018
Kochalka delivers another joyously strange, boyish fantasy of a piece with his SuperF*ckers. High school seniors and best friends Zeus and Jamie are working on building a robot suit out of dismantled appliances. Jamie, physically small and naive, spends his free time reading superhero comics. Zeus, sarcastic and beginning to grow a spotty mustache, is the driving force behind their “mecha project.” On their very first test run, Zeus crashes the suit into their gym teacher’s car, accidentally creating the hero-team’s new nemesis. At school, the boys are social outcasts, regularly the target of homoerotic taunts; during one run-in with a bully, Zeus dumps a milk carton over his own head, aiming to puncture the bully’s mood with his wit. This catches the eye of a popular girl who invites him and Jamie to a party in the woods. To which, of course, they bring their mechanized suit, and expected hilarity ensues. The cute, cartoony stylized characters and backgrounds, reduced to their bare essentials, are inked in black and white. Like its protagonists, this book teeters between adolescent and adult storytelling—the high jinks are decidedly teenaged, but the swearing and the creator’s trademark dirty jokes go R-rated. While it presents a shelving challenge, this quirky adventure will surely satisfy Kochalka’s fans.

March 15, 2018
Grades 9-12 With his signature, off-the-wall humor and thick-lined, bouncy cartoons, Kochalka offers a classic high-school prom story with a zany twist. Jamie and his best friend, Zeus (don't you dare call him Zachery!), don't even register on the popularity pyramid, but endearingly churlish Zeus couldn't care less, especially because he and Jamie are building an awesome mechanical suit that turns them into veritable superheroes. Kochalka includes the standard high-school plot points?party in the woods, gym class rope-climb, an obnoxious bully, secret crushes, crass teenage repartee?but he deftly keeps it clich�-free by imbuing each of those moments with his particular brand of kooky humor. The party in the woods devolves into a fight between Zeus in a mech suit and a teacher dressed as a bear, and instead of romance at the prom, everyone joins in a gleeful punch-up. The doodle-like artwork perfectly matches the loose, slapstick tone of this rowdy story about a bunch of lovable dirtbag teens. Pure cheeky fun, perfect for teens who turn their noses up at stories with a lesson.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)