While slowly falling under the winsome spell of sixteen-year-old Sebastian Pendergrast, the main character in The House of Tomorrow, I made a crack about how an author could increase the chances of me liking his/her book by 38% merely by mentioning The Replacements. Author Peter Bognanni didn’t need the ‘Mats bump. His coming of age tale about a young, home-schooled boy discovering the joys of the world outside his grandmother’s geodesic dome is a charming mix of intelligence, innocence, and earnestness. You have to fight pretty hard not to be won over.

Sebastian is thrust into the world (the world in this case being a small town in Iowa) after his grandmother suffers a stroke. Lucky for him, the day Nana keels over, Janice Whitcomb and her son, Jared, are touring the dome. The Whitcombs accompany Sebastian to the hospital and wait with him to hear Nana’s prognosis. Jared, a chain-smoking kid who is recovering from a heart transplant introduces Sebastian to punk rock music. And even when Nana semi-recovers, Sebastian decides to strike up a friendship with Jared.

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