Sunny Rolls the Dice

 From my school's Fall book fair.

Title: Sunny Rolls the Dice
Publisher: Scholastic
Date: 2019
Writer: Jennifer L. Holm, Matthew Holm
Artist: Jennifer L. Holm, Matthew Holm
Colorist: Lark Pien
Letterer: Fawn Lau
Editor: David Levithan

This is the third book in Jennifer and Matthew Holm's Sunny series about a girl growing up in the Pennsylvania suburbs in the late 1970s. Of course, the thing that attracted me to this book was the main character's introduction to Dungeons and Dragons, right out of the classic blue boxed set.

The nostalgia runs thick here, in all of the best ways. The D&D scenes are loads of fun, and really capture the feeling I remember as a sixth-grader trying to figure out this new kind of game.

The rest of the plot is pretty standard middle school slice-of-life fare, as Sunny tries to figure her way through peer pressure and the standards of "groovy" (complete with a handy "groovy-meter", which Sunny is distressed to find is usually in the red). As Sunny's friends begin to pursue teenage interests, Sunny has to make some choices about what path she wants to follow.

She is hoping that path won't end with her walking into a gelatinous cube.

Rating: 7/10