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Competitive eating vies with family expectations in a funny, heartfelt novel for middle-grade readers by National Book Award winner Pete Hautman.
David can eat an entire sixteen-inch pepperoni pizza in four minutes and thirty-six seconds. Not bad. But he knows he can do better. In fact, heāll have to do better: heās going to compete in the Super Pigorino Bowl, the worldās greatest pizza-eating contest, and he has to win it, because he borrowed his momās credit card and accidentally spent $2,000 on it. So he really needs that prize money. Like, yesterday. As if training to be a competitive eater werenāt enough, heās also got to keep an eye on his little brother, Mal (who, if the family believed in labels, would be labeled autistic, but they donāt, so they just label him Mal). And donāt even get started on the new weirdness going on between his two best friends, Cyn and HeyMan. Master talent Pete Hautman has cooked up a rich narrative shot through with equal parts humor and tenderness, and the result is a middle-grade novel too delicious to put down.