FREAKY STUFF

In a second round of droll ups and downs, Brian, the young narrator of Weird Stuff (2006), struggles to cope with his little brother Matthew’s total identification with a crew of kickboxing zombie fighters on a new TV show. This while trying to look out for Sebastian, a kindergartener who sports cardboard fairy wings, flower garlands and pockets of strangely effective “fairy dust,” and in the meantime earning instant notoriety for a role in a fruit juice commercial as “The Kid Who Sucks.” As before, Brian reports all this to his favorite author, who responds by complimenting him on his fertile imagination. Brian’s divorced parents don’t believe him either—until Matthew starts a riot at the local mall and Brian helps Sebastian quell it with liberal applications of . . . guess what. Aside from an earnest, unconvincing screed about violence on TV, this otherwise nonstop romp, which is strewn with faux-crude ink drawings done on torn loose-leaf (plus a set of small flip-page images), is perfectly tuned to its intended middle-grade audience. (Fiction. 9-11)