By Brandon Sanderson
On his thirteenth birthday a foster child inherits a bag of sand, learns his clumsiness is secretly a magic power, and finds out a cult of evil Librarians is quietly running the world.
Alcatraz Smedry has bounced through foster home after foster home, mostly because he breaks everything he touches. On his thirteenth birthday he inherits one thing from the parents he never knew: a bag of sand. Within a day it's stolen, a grandfather he's never met crashes into his life talking nonsense, and Alcatraz learns the truth the rest of us aren't allowed to know. A secret society of evil Librarians controls the world, hiding real knowledge and feeding everyone lies, and Alcatraz's talent for breaking things is actually a family superpower. To get the sand back, he'll have to break into the local library, which is enemy headquarters, armed with a talking cast of relatives whose powers include arriving late and tripping over nothing.
Brandon Sanderson wrote this to be the opposite of a chore, and it's relentless fun. Alcatraz narrates it himself, breaking off to tease you, spoil his own cliffhangers, and start most chapters mid-crisis, which keeps a reluctant reader turning pages just to see what the smart-aleck says next. The joke, that a family of world-saving heroes has powers like breaking things and being late, means a clumsy or ordinary child gets to see their worst trait recast as a secret strength. It's quick, it's short-chaptered, it never sags, and there are more books waiting if the humor lands.