Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson

November 2, 2022

Now is Not the Time to Panic by Kevin Wilson

Two misfit kids, Frankie and Zeke, are 16 and living in the small town of Coalfield. Their families are falling apart, since both fathers ran off with other women. It's summer, they're bored, so they decide to spend their summer break making art. They design a poster with a variety of images and a couple of nonsense sentences, make hundreds of copies, and hang up the posters all over town, just to see what kind of reaction they get. Everyone in town has an opinion, from cults to heavy metal bands. Then the poster spreads beyond their town, like it's taken on a life of its own. Twenty years later, a journalists unearths the truth about the poster and advises Frankie that she is planning to publish an article.

I read and enjoyed the author's previous book Nothing to See Here. I live in Chicago and I've seen similar art installations, hundreds of copies of a poster stapled to the wooden barrier around a construction site or on boarded up store windows, and wondered about the artist's intentions. The story is sweet without being cloying, and it starts out with a YA feeling but quickly evolves into so much more. The two main characters are so young, so lovingly created and so stunned at the consequences of what was basically the way to pass the summer months. Frankie's mom and brothers are wonderful characters, too. The ending was a little disappointing since the reader doesn't get to find out what happens when the article is published, but we know that Frankie and Zeke are all right. Be sure to read the author's note at the beginning about his inspiration for the story.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an eARC.