By Tim Federle
A theater-obsessed boy from small-town Pennsylvania buses himself to New York alone to try out for a Broadway musical.
Nate Foster is thirteen, mad about musicals, and stuck in a Pennsylvania town where loving Broadway gets you shoved into lockers. Then he hears about an open casting call in New York for a musical of E.T., and he and his best friend Libby cook up a plan: Nate slips onto an overnight bus and rides into the city by himself, with one shot at the audition and no real idea what he's doing. The next twenty-four hours are a blur of open calls, a fake ID, and an aunt he's barely met. Somewhere in the middle of the chaos, Nate finds a place where he actually fits. He narrates the whole thing himself, fast and funny, like his life is already the show.
If your child tore through Diary of a Wimpy Kid for that wry, everything-is-a-disaster narrator, Nate is that voice a few years older and with a lot more heart. It's still laugh-out-loud funny, but there's real weight under it now: a boy who doesn't fit his hometown taking a huge swing at the one thing he loves. Nate is also starting to wonder whether he's gay, and the book folds that in gently, with the same humor as everything else. It's just part of who he is, not a lesson stapled on. Good for a confident reader ready for a longer story that still moves fast.