STARRED Book Review: Deadpan by Harold Eppley

Reviewed by Melissa Suggitt

In a world obsessed with smiles, Jackson’s story shows what it really takes to be seen.

Deadpan lands with the ease of a well-told joke: light on its feet, but carrying more truth than you expect when the laughter fades. It looks light on the surface, a story told in free verse, peppered with jokes and puzzles, but underneath is a beating heart full of vulnerability, courage, and that painfully familiar ache of growing up when the world hasn’t quite figured out how to make room for you.

Jackson, our 12-year-old narrator, has lived his whole life with a rare form of facial paralysis that means he can’t smile, and that one detail shapes almost everything in his day-to-day life—how classmates treat him, how adults misread him, and how he learns to survive the in-between. As readers, we’re ushered into his inner world where the feelings are anything but frozen. His wit is sharp, his observations are tender, and his longing to be seen pulses through every page.

What’s so refreshing here is that this book never talks down to its intended audience. The verses carry a playful rhythm, but the emotional truths hit with honesty. Author Harold Eppley threads together themes of bullying, grief, self-doubt, and the complicated love between parents and children with a light hand that still lands heavy; the kind of heaviness that feels true rather than manufactured.

Jackson’s relationship with his estranged father, a comedian who breezes back into his life just as the pandemic hits, gives the story an unexpected twist. The way comedy functions as both shield and bridge between them is so smart and so rarely explored in my experience with middle-grade fiction.

Watching Jackson step into a new school, masked, and for the first time unburdened by how others see his face is both heartbreaking and hopeful. The mask becomes a strange sort of liberation, giving him the chance to be known for his humor rather than his difference. But this book never lets us forget the cost of hiding or the courage required to show your whole self to the world again.

As adults we tend to forget the brutality of those formative years; the sting of exclusion, the small cruelties that stay with us longer than they should, the way confidence shatters before we even know we had any. Deadpan brings all of that back with clarity and compassion. And as someone who has spent nearly two decades working alongside people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, this felt especially important. Jackson’s story is a powerful reminder that disability isn’t a punchline, a character flaw, or a plot device. It’s a lived experience shaped as much by the world’s reactions as by the condition itself.

This is the kind of book I want every middle schooler to read. Not because it’s instructive, but because it’s human. It’s funny, tender, quietly devastating, and ultimately triumphant. Jackson’s growth from beginning to end made me proud of him in a way that only really good storytelling makes possible. It’s the sort of story that stays with you and makes you think a little more carefully about the faces we assume we understand. A standout, through and through.

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