Friday, June 26, 2026
Sawyer Lee and the Quest to Just Stay Home
Grant, Katy. Slow Burn
Weinersmith, Zach. Sawyer Lee and the Quest to Just Stay HomeJune 16, 2026 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
E ARC provided by Edelweiss Plus
Sawyer lives in Ovelaville with his Aunt Cecilia because his parents are always traveling. His aunt is a big fan of accomplishing things, but Sawyer is so lazy that he doesn’t even want to take phone calls from his friends Gary and Angela, because he knows they will ask him to do things. Because Ovelaville’s annual Gourd Festival is such a big event, he ends up partnering with Angela on a gourd display, because arguing with her takes too much effort, and he figures she will do all of the work anyway, because her parents are very interested in the festival. Sawyer’s nemesis is Anderson, who is always going around doing good deeds, so when Gary starts hanging out with Anderson and taking on some of the more motivated boy’s characteristics, Sawyer is outraged. Not enough to actually do anything about it, but outraged nonetheless. The gourd display project gets underway, but halts when Anderson finds that Angela’s parents have gourd enhancer, and their gourds are pulped. They claim to have been framed, so Angela mounts an investigation while her father becomes unhinged. Anderson uncovers a lot of other “cheaters”, including Bus Driver Stu and half the town. Will Angela, with Sawyer’s lukewarm help, be able to locate the culprit?
This is a highly illustrated novel that your readers will probably like more than I did, since many of them also aspire to do absolutely nothing with their days other than be on screens. I did enjoy Gary’s transformation away from being a game playing zombie when he hung out with Sawyer, but Anderson ends up not being as nice as we think he is. I can see this being popular with Stanton’s Funny Kid series, Pastis’ Timmy Failure, or Patterson’s Middle School books.
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