Mateo and the Quiet Courage Quest

About This Book

Mateo is the boy everyone counts on for a joke. He fills every silence at his locker with a punchline, because loud feels safer than letting anyone glimpse the timid thoughts curled in his chest — and lately his cheeks ache from grinning before homeroom even starts. Then Ms. Pritchard casts him as the narrator of the school play, and his writing club hands out a prompt he can't laugh off: write about a time you felt brave. His battered green notebook already knows the honest answer. Saying it out loud, to friends who love the funny version of him, is something else entirely. A warm middle-school story about the kind of courage that doesn't shout.