Dungeons & Dragons, Atari, and a Family on the Verge of Exploding

It's the 1980s. Dungeons & Dragons is taking over basements across America, Atari is in every other living room, and banana clips are somehow a fashion statement. Jonathan Schwartz is just trying to get through adolescence. Unfortunately, he's doing it in a family like no other.

That's the setup of Fun & Games by David Michael Slater, a coming-of-age novel that is, as its own description promises, both heartbreaking and hilarious.

Jon's household is a masterpiece of chaos. His sisters are a force of nature. Nadia is the dark genius. Olivia is the gorgeous tease and temptress. Together, they manipulate Jon and his friends purely for their own entertainment. His father is famous, which comes with its own complications. And then there are his grandparents, Holocaust survivors whose coping techniques are, from a teenager's point of view, beyond embarrassing.

Then his grandmother pays a visit to Jon's class, and it's a disaster. The fallout unhinges his famous father and sets off a chain of events that threatens to send the dysfunctional Schwartz clan up in flames once and for all.

What makes Fun & Games special is the way it blends comedy with something much deeper. Beneath the side-splitting shenanigans is a serious and moving exploration of what historians and psychologists call intergenerational trauma: the way the experiences of one generation, especially experiences as devastating as the Holocaust, can ripple down through families for decades. Children and grandchildren of survivors often grow up surrounded by silences, fears, habits, and rules they don't fully understand, shaped by a past no one explains. Jon's grandparents' behavior might seem strange or mortifying to him, but readers come to understand that it grows out of unimaginable loss. The novel captures the confusing experience of trying to understand your own family at an age when you're already overwhelmed by friendship, romance, and the desire to be independent.

That balance of humor and heartbreak is incredibly difficult to pull off, and Slater does it beautifully. The book never makes light of the Holocaust, but it also recognizes that families who carry grief still laugh, fight, embarrass each other, and love each other fiercely. In many ways, the comedy makes the serious moments hit harder. It's a story of faith, family secrets, betrayal, and loss, but it's also a tale of friendship, love, and the wild ride of growing up.

For readers who grew up in the 1980s, the details are pure joy: the tabletop role-playing games, the early video game consoles, the fashion, the feeling of being a kid in a decade that now seems both distant and vivid. Dungeons & Dragons, first released in 1974, had become a cultural phenomenon by the early '80s, and Atari's home console had turned video games into a household obsession. Slater uses that backdrop to anchor the story in a specific, lovingly recreated time and place.

David Michael Slater is a versatile writer who writes for children, teenagers, and adults, and he is also an educator. His other books with Library Tales Publishing range from the historical fantasy The Vanishing to the family tragicomedy UGLY to the picture book Hanukkah Harvie vs. Santa Claus. In Fun & Games, his gifts for humor, family drama, and emotional truth all come together.

This is a perfect read for fans of funny, heartfelt coming-of-age stories, readers who love 1980s nostalgia, and anyone who has ever been embarrassed by their family and loved them anyway.

Fun & Games by David Michael Slater is available now in paperback and hardcover.