Wonderkid — Wesley Stace

From Wesley Stace -- formerly known as singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding -- the hugely entertaining novel about the touring life of America's unlikeliest rock stars

Sold-out concerts, screaming fans, TV shows, Number Ones. This is the rock and roll dream, and the Wonderkids are living it. But something's wrong. The gigs are sold out, sure, but the halls are packed with little kids -- not sexy hipsters. And that screaming? It sounds more wailing, actually. The TV appearances are PBS on Saturday morning, rather than Saturday Night Live, and as for Number Ones ... you don't want to know.

Exposed in his impressionable youth to the absurdist literature of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, the Wonderkids' lead singer, songwriter, and resident mad genius Blake Lear has always written lyrics as silly as they are infectious. Why make sense, he says, when nonsense is so much more fun? Rock and roll has always been for the kids, right?

This is why Blake has no objection when the band is offered a deal with the devil: the Wonderkids will be rock stars, adored and revered. The catch? Their audience will be children. They will be a “kindie” band avant la lettre, before the Wiggles and Dan Zanes were a twinkle in Raffi's eye. The band takes America by storm, and things go very right -- until they go very wrong. The temptations of the road are many, and the Wonderkids are big kids, too.

Narrated by Sweet, a boy Blake adopts on a whim, who becomes the band's disciple, merch guy, amateur psychologist, and -- eventually -- damage control guru, "Wonderkid" is a delirious and surprisingly touching novel of the dangers of compromise, thwarted ambition, and fathers and sons, told with tremendous humor and energy by Wesley Stace -- the rare writer who is as comfortable inside a rock club as he is inside a bookstore. A backstage epic of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, but also sippy cups, pillow fights, and Baby Bjorns, this is "Almost Famous" through the looking glass.