Dropping Beats

When their livestream beatboxing practice goes wrong, 13-year-olds Growls, real name Shaun, and Shanks, aka Zachariah, go viral in the most humiliating way they can imagine. Now that they’re the laughingstocks of the school, Growls’s dream of landing his crush Tanisha go out the window, as do his and Shanks’s plans of winning this year’s Raptology, a competition whose prize money would be a boon for Growls’s financially struggling family. Things seem unsalvageable after Shanks goes MIA. But when Growls meets the new girl on the block, everything changes for the aspiring rapper. Utilizing the protagonist’s immediate-feeling first-person POV, debut author Lessore crafts a hilarious look into one teen’s struggles to reach for the proverbial stars (highlights include “So Much Beef the Steaks Are High” and “Man’s Got More Dates than a Calendar”). Lessore doesn’t rest on comedic laurels: the inclusion of Growls’s beatbox poems throughout allows readers a glimpse into his intimate thoughts and deep internality as an artist and adolescent, highlighting that Growls is more than his goofy outward persona. The cast is intersectionally diverse. Ages 12–up. Agent: Clare Wallace, Darley Anderson Agency. (Feb.)