Unbelievably Boring Bart

Gr 3–5—Bartholomew Bean, an excessively boring middle schooler, and his gym-teacher dad have just moved to Rancho Verdugo, CA. Bart is used to being invisible and living in his own world; his new environment is no different. Until, that is, Bart creates an augmented reality (AR) app, Hecklr, that brings an alien species, the Lerkians, to destroy all the technology in Rancho Verdugo. When the app craze takes over the country, Bart decides to change the code to exact revenge on his bully enemies right before they live stream the game on a popular gamer's channel. Despite what could have been a promising premise, the story line falls flat. Quibbles about augmented reality and virtual reality aside [the app is clearly an AR program, but is referred to as VR (virtual reality) through the entire book], Bart's motivations are confusing and his character is one-dimensional. It is unclear how Hecklr actually works, and its widespread popularity while only being actually playable while in the town of Rancho Verdugo is baffling. Even the chapter design is perplexing; chapter headings are denoted by an illustration of gems, coins, and hearts—the iconic currencies of a "pay to win" game. However, Bart mentions that his game is free to play and he's not in it for money.