Quagmire Tiarello Couldn’t Be Better

Gr 3-7–Larsen plucks Quagmire Tiarello from the ensemble cast of her debut novel, Playing Through the Turnaround, to give him a star turn in her second one. As he joins Cassie (his crush from the earlier book) in developing a radio play at the YMCA, his mother shows up suddenly and takes him away. Quag is used to his mother spinning through mental health cycles, and he’s mostly learned how to deal with it; but as they drive from their home in upstate New York westward through multiple states, he begins to realize he may need some help this time. When he gets separated from his mother in Iowa, he reaches out to Uncle Jay—the uncle he never knew he had—and that proves to be the climactic turning point. A running thread about bird behaviors—Quag has taken the hobby up to impress Cassie—is a brilliant exploration of the themes of survival and resilience. Filled with heart, humor, and exceptional sentence-level writing, Larsen’s tale makes Quagmire Tiarello an easy character to root for.