The Last Last-Day-of-Summer by Lamar Giles, illustrated by Dapo Adeola

It's the last day of summer in the rather strange town of Fry in equally strange Logan County, Virginia and Otto (Octavius) Alston is up early and wants to make the most of it. Maybe even have such an awesome adventure solving a big enough problem that the mayor would award the Legendary Alston Boys a third key to the city, especially now that he's just learned that the Epic Ellisons - twins Wiki and Leen - just received their third key. Unfortunately, his cousin Sheed (Rasheed) Alston isn't quite as enthusiastic.

While hanging around the hillside that overlooks the town Fry, as Otto furiously makes notes about possible adventures, tall thin man wearing a stovepipe hat suddenly approaches asking if they are the Legendary Alston Boys of Logan County. Introducing himself as Mr. Flux, he has a gift for Otto and Sheed - an big, heavy, old fashioned camera and insists they take a picture of the spectacular view of Fry. No sooner does Otto take the picture, but a blinding flash of light produces a man from the sky, knocking Mr. Flux out and asking "Did it work? Is this the right day?" and tells the boys to take the camera and run.

Which they do - right on home to Grandma's house, where they find everything is frozen, including Grandma, and though she is standing at the stove cooking, there are none of her good cooking smells wafting through the house. Figuring they have found their problem to solve, they manage to unfreeze their bikes and head in to town, noticing that everyone and everything is also frozen in the last position of what they were doing, just like Grandma. They stock up supplies they might need at the hardware store, but just as they leave, there's a loud commotion on the street. It's a large crowd of strange-looking people stampeding by, followed by a giant furry creature with legs as big as an elephant's.

Back out on the street, Otto and Sheed hear someone moaning. It tuns out to be two shiny stylists named Golden Hour, A.M. and Golden Hour, P.M., who are actually agents of time called Clock Watchers. The boys follow them to the high school library, where they find a gathering of people all involved in time, including Father Time. It seems that time is frozen and they need to discover why and how to undo it and get it moving again. Along the way, the Legendary Alston Boys get help from a superhero named TimeStar (the same guy who came out of the sky and knocked Mr. Flux out, who, if you haven't already guessed, is the villain in this novel), Father Time, the Golden Hour twins, Petey from the hardware store, and yes, even their rivals, the Ellison Twins.

The Last Last-Day-of-Summer is a very zany, very quirky book. I'm not a big fan of this kind of science fiction, but I did find it entertaining, and I loved Otto and Sheed. I was also glad there were illustrations to help visualize some of the odd characters Giles has included, even though his descriptions were sufficient on their own. I quite liked that fact that this isn't Otto and Sheed's first problem solving adventure, they have already had a number of exciting and unusual exploits that summer, and have quite a reputation in Logan County for their deductive and investigative skills. All this experience have led the cousins to formulate a list of useful Maneuvers for getting out of sticky situations (see the Appendix for a list of the ones used in this book).

Some of the time-related characters were, I thought, clever and amusing. For example, there's the giant creature called Time Sucks; the indecisive Second Guessers who work with the Minute Men, who handle some of the more tedious time management tasks; Witching Hour, the maker of the magical camera Mr. Flux gives to Otto and Sheed; and of course, Mr. Flux, time trickster extraordinaire. They are all personifications of time related expressions and each plays a part in the story according to the expression they are named after.

The carpe diem approach to the last day of school was a nice touch and the idea of making the most of it will probably resonate with young readers, but there's a nice lessons about being careful what you wish for and about missed opportunities.

The real importance of The Last Last-Day-of-Summer is it shows readers that kids of color, like Otto and Sheed, can be heroic main characters in books, that they are smart and that they can have wonderful imaginative adventures. This is one of the first books published by Kwame Alexander's imprint Versify and it certainly does live up to their goal of publishing books that "engage, entertain, and empower young people." I've already read a few books published by Versify and can't wait to see what the future will bring from this imprint. Who knows, maybe even some more adventures for Otto and Sheed.

This book is recommended for readers age 9+
This book was borrowed from the NYPL