Erik vs. Everything

This funny book shows an anxious boy confronting his fears with the help of his fearless sister and the rest of his Viking-descended family. Although Erik begins the novel mired in an inability to deal with his fears in any constructive way, Brunhilde takes her brother's fear as another challenge to conquer and defeat through a systematic process of research and staged confrontations. The novel features many wacky situations, such as when Brunhilde locks Erik in a librarian's office with a sardine can clip and the librarian begins yodeling at the top of her lungs in order to get the attention of the library's repair worker in a nearby room. Such quirky creativity, combined with the novel's honest and nonjudgmental treatment of anxiety as something to conscientiously focus on and work at treating, make it a delightful and worthwhile read.

However, at times author Christina Uss' characterization of the Sheepflatteners can become heavy-handed and one-dimensional, with several of Erik's family members speaking in a blunt, contraction-free syntax that leaves them stranded more in the losing battleground of stereotype than at the winner's podium of humor.