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INTERMEDIATE FICTION
Uss, Christina

The Colossus of Roads

197 pp. | Holiday/Ferguson | May, 2020 | Trade ISBN 978-0-8234-4450-2 $17.99 | Ebook ISBN 978-0-8234-4824-1
(2) 4-6 Eleven-year-old Rick Rusek is a traffic-pattern savant. He lives in Los Angeles, where he studies the streets and highways of the metropolis looking for ways to ease traffic. When Rick becomes involved in a street-art project with his friend Mila Herrera, he realizes it's his chance to secretly implement some of his traffic solutions and in so doing boost his parents' catering business and solve their financial troubles. An eccentric cast of supporting characters surrounds Rick, including Mila and her extended family. As Rick works on his project, he learns that his neighbors and friends have hidden hobbies and talents (Mila's mom is a member of a traffic-disrupting guerrilla bicycle club; her abuelita belongs to a club of senior citizens who weave erratically through neighborhood traffic, determined to slow down other drivers and protect pedestrians) and that he himself is gifted at more than just moving cars around the city. This is a quintessentially Southern California story, in which highway traffic over the Sepulveda Pass is more of an antagonist than even an earthquake. Uss (The Adventures of a Girl Called Bicycle, rev. 7/18) invites her readers to suspend disbelief just long enough for Rick to save the day.
Reviewer: Maeve Visser Knoth | Horn Book Magazine Issue: July, 2020

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