The Ambassador of Nowhere Texas

November 1, 2020
This sequel to Holt's National Book Award winner, When Zachary Beaver Came to Town (1999), revisits Antler, Texas, 30 years later; this time our guide is Toby's daughter, Rylee. Rylee, 12, is a passionate booster of her tiny hometown. Unlike her mercurial best friend, Twig, she's blessed with a happy family. Rylee's stunned by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, then heartsick over their faltering friendship. Joe, a new classmate from Brooklyn, provides welcome distraction. He ridicules Antler but warms to self-appointed tour guide Rylee, who piques his interest in Zachary Beaver. Learning how the attacks affected Joe's family makes 9/11 personal to locals. Stalwart Rylee, navigating tween angst, is engaging, but comprehensive updates on characters from the first novel slow the narrative. Little has changed for the White residents. Antler's success story is Juan Garcia, the impoverished teen from the Mexican side of town, now a world-famous golfer, his childhood home a tourist attraction. Juan's affluent extended family includes the brilliant Garcia twins, Rylee's classmates. A new character, Vietnamese immigrant Mr. Pham, cooks for and lives at the bowling alley's cafe. He suddenly buys the town's mansion, planning to open an upscale restaurant. White residents' struggles, missteps, and achievements are affectionately chronicled; the Garcias and Mr. Pham get no humanizing backstories, and they seem to serve to validate Antler's post-racial bona fides. Sticks to the shallows. (Fiction. 10-14)

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December 1, 2020
Grades 5-8 *Starred Review* In this companion to the author's memorable When Zachary Beaver Came to Town, 30 years have passed and it's 2001. Former protagonist Toby Wilson is now an adult with a 12-year-old daughter, Rylee, who tells this quiet story of a small Texas town and its friendships. The book begins, however, with a friendship's end, as Rylee and her long-time best friend, Twig, have a falling-out. But nature abhors a vacuum, and soon a new boy, Joe Toscani, comes to town from Brooklyn and--after a rocky start--becomes Rylee's new friend. She soon discovers that Joe and his mom, Maria, have fled Brooklyn to distance themselves from the still-raw memory of the tragedy of 9/11, when Joe's fireman father was killed at Ground Zero. It's Joe who decides that--to surprise Toby--he and Rylee should start the Zachary Beaver Project, searching for the ""Fattest Boy in the World,"" as Zachary had been billed in the first novel. But how on earth will they find him, these many years later? Evocatively written ("stiff as burnt bacon"), this is an altogether absorbing and affecting novel. It's obvious that Holt loves her fully realized characters and their small-town setting, and readers can't help but feel the same.

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January 11, 2021
Following rising seventh grader Rylee, this post–9/11 companion to 1999’s When Zachary Beaver Came to Town revisits familiar characters—including Rylee’s father, Toby, that novel’s protagonist—to poignantly capture a narrative centering both true friendship and national grief. After longtime town librarian and photographer Miss Myrtie Mae dies, she bequeaths Toby a photo of himself; his best friend, Cal; and Zachary Beaver, whose sideshow visited Antler, Tex., in the summer of 1971. Recently shunned by her longtime best friend, Rylee forges a new friendship with Joe, a newcomer from Brooklyn with a painful secret. Determined to locate Beaver, Rylee and Joe comb through the past at the library, piecing together the circus’s timeline after 1971 while contending with their own personal upheavals. Returning readers will appreciate National Book Award winner Holt’s attention to detail as she revisits characters, while newcomers will be drawn to Rylee’s empathy, protectiveness of her community, and curiosity about the world and her place in it. The thoughtfully drawn setting circumvents the ease of contemporary internet access, creating a hearty mystery unraveled with local librarians’ assistance and earnest intergenerational conversations. A quiet celebration of friendship, no matter how brief. Ages 10–14. Agent: Amy Berkower, Writers House.