Andrew North Blows Up the World by Adam Selzer
Here's an odd one. The title character believes that his father and his older brother are spies. His entire imaginative life, and many of his actions, are predicated on a large and elaborate framework of delusion, fostered by his older brother's good-natured tall tales. The fact that the brother is lying to him, and that his family is in fact an ordinary suburban family, is apparent to the reader fairly early on. Events and information finally shake Andrew's faith, but at the end of the book he has rebuilt his false worldview to encompass the new information that he has gained.
Ok. Andrew is self-deluded, but he is happy. In a Walter Mitty-like way, the adult reader may consider this an acceptable outcome, but I have serious doubts about kids. This book would be really perfect for a kids' book group, or for a class read, but I think I would be reluctant to shove it at an individual reader and say, "Here, read this!"
Granted, my sample group consisted of myself and my son, a voracious 3rd-grade reader, but I came to the conclusion, especially after the boy rejected the book quite violently, that the concept is a bit much, a bit meta, a bit too sophisticated for the middle-grade audience, though I hesitate to say that, as I think that the sophistication of that audience is often underestimated.
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