First published 2015
Calvin was born the day Bill Watterson published the final Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. His grandfather placed a stuffed tiger named Hobbes in his crib. He had a best friend named Susie. The connections felt meaningful then. Now Calvin is seventeen and doctors have diagnosed him with schizophrenia. Hobbes has returned, but not as a stuffed animal. This Hobbes talks back and won't disappear when Calvin wants him gone. Calvin believes he has found the solution. If Bill Watterson would create just one more comic strip, one where Hobbes doesn't exist, Calvin's delusions will end. He convinces Susie to join his quest, though he questions whether she is real or another hallucination. Together with Hobbes, whose reality Calvin cannot determine, they venture across the frozen surface of Lake Erie to find the reclusive cartoonist. The journey becomes treacherous as Calvin struggles to distinguish between what exists in his mind and what exists in the world. His desperate search for Watterson becomes a search for his own grip on reality.
Genres: mental-illness, contemporary, young-adult
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Erie, Lake Erie
Period: 17th Birthday
181 pages · Hardcover · Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
Content warnings: mental-illness