So.

This book is about a boy named Calvin undergoing a schizophrenic break.

He has always had a connection with the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, being that there are so many similarities between his life and the comic strip (including a toy tiger and a girl next door named Suzie), so when Hobbes starts talking to him again at age seventeen, Calvin decides the only way to make it stop is to take a pilgrimage across Lake Erie to meet Bill Watterson, the creator of the comic strip. If he can make one last strip about a seventeen-year-old Calvin who is “normal,” Calvin will be healed.

And so he heads off.

I loved it. I loved everything about this book: the format (it’s a letter to Bill Watterson and the dialogue is written like a play), the main character (brilliant, brilliant boy; adored Calvin!), the humor, AND the fact that I didn’t know if what I was reading was actually happening in real life or in Calvin’s head. I thought it was so rife with thought-provoking conversation and delightful humor. I read over half of it in one setting and finished it off the next night.

Fans of Calvin and Hobbes will especially love this book, all the references to the comic strip and to Spaceman Spiff, what a great dose of nostalgia. I’m not sure how close it was to describing a real schizophrenic break– it had a tremendously different tone than Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman (review), which I read a few months ago.

It was a total delight, one of my favorite reads of 2016 so far. If you read it, let me know! I wanna hear your thoughts– Goodreads is a little split, and it’s hard for me to understand why!