BOYCE, Frank Cottrell

Life as Rory Rooney knows it flips upside-down the day he inexplicably turns broccoli-green. Whisked off to a hospital isolation unit, the weedy, undersized boy wonders if his dad could be right: “The Incredible Hulk, Swamp Thing, the Green Hornet, the Green Goblin…All green and all superheroes. It seems to me that if you turn green, there’s only one possible diagnosis. Namely—Super.” But there’s a wrinkle in Rory’s comic-book life. Turns out he’s bunking with another patient: Tommy-Lee Komissky, who just happens to be Rory’s real-life bully. And Tommy-Lee has also turned green. So, will Tommy-Lee be Rory’s superhero friend, or foe? Shenanigans ensue as the boys escape the hospital night after night, wreaking havoc (mostly unintentionally) around London. Boyce’s mash-up of comic-book tropes and coming-of-age struggles is funny—sometimes painfully so. Ditto for his skewering of adults and his send-up of media-fueled paranoia (Christmas may be cancelled due to the “Killer Kittens” flu, a mild but highly contagious virus). Race, identity, individuality, courage, friendship—Boyce’s young heroes tackle these serious themes, too, offering up wise-beyond-their-years takeaways like: “The thing that makes you different from everyone else