Tucker MacBean would love to be a superhero. Unfortunately, he wasn’t born with anything marginally close to a super power. In the real world, the talents he does possess—drawing his favorite superheroes, making up stories about his favorite superheroes, acting out scenes involving his favorite superheroes—are more likely to earn him a permanent wedgie than the admiration of his fellow seventh graders. So he spends most of his time in the world of comic books. It’s safer there.

But when his family starts to unravel before his eyes and the arch nemesis of the seventh grade suddenly becomes his little brother’s babysitter, Tucker must reach inside and find his own kind of superpower.

The Adventures of Beanboy will be released next fall by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.