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Okay for Now, by Gary D. Schmidt
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2011 National Book Award Finalist
As a fourteen-year-old who just moved to a new town, with no friends and a louse for an older brother, Doug Swieteck has all the stats stacked against him. So begins a coming-of-age masterwork full of equal parts comedy and tragedy from Newbery Honor winner Gary D. Schmidt. As Doug struggles to be more than the “skinny thug” that his teachers and the police think him to be, he finds an unlikely ally in Lil Spicer—a fiery young lady who “smelled like daisies would smell if they were growing in a big field under a clearing sky after a rain.” In Lil, Doug finds the strength to endure an abusive father, the suspicions of a whole town, and the return of his oldest brother, forever scarred, from Vietnam. Together, they find a safe haven in the local library, inspiration in learning about the plates of John James Audubon’s birds, and a hilarious adventure on a Broadway stage. In this stunning novel, Schmidt expertly weaves multiple themes of loss and recovery in a story teeming with distinctive, unusual characters and invaluable lessons about love, creativity, and survival.- Sales Rank: #245989 in Books
- Brand: Clarion Books
- Published on: 2011-04-05
- Released on: 2011-04-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x 1.34" w x 5.50" l, 1.04 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 368 pages
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Exclusive: A Q&A with Author Gary D. Schmidt
Q: Did you always want to become a writer?
A: Nope. In high school, I wanted to go to the Naval Academy at Annapolis and become a career naval officer. Then, late in high school, I wanted to be a vet—mostly because of the James Herriot books and the PBS show, I suppose. Then, in college, I decided to become a lawyer—until my senior year, when I switched to an English major to become a teacher, which I did become. Somehow becoming a writer happened along the way.
Q: What did you read when you were a kid?
A: In my school, we were tracked—meaning that we were put into classes depending on how well we had done in testing. This happened in first grade. I had tested poorly and ended up in the pumpkin group—no kidding. We were the poorest readers, and so since I was told I wasn’t any good at this, I didn’t read much. Then I got taken up by Miss Kabakoff, who just liked me, and who brought me into her class and taught me how to read.
Once that happened, I read everything I could. The Freddy the Pig books, the Doctor Dolittle books, any Greek mythology I could get my hands on, and the Norse mythology that I liked better, the biographies in the Childhood of Famous Americans series, the tales of the Grimm Brothers and Hans Christian Andersen, the Herbert series and the Henry Reed series, Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson, Howard Pyle’s The Adventures of Robin Hood and His Merry Men, Bambi (which is a lot better than most people think it is), anything by Jack London or Jules Verne or H. G. Wells, the Horatio Hornblower books, Treasure Island, and of course the Hardy Boys series and the Tom Swift series, which I collected whenever I could.
Q: How often do you write?
A: Every day I am not teaching—so two or three days a week, and sometimes at night—unless it’s really cold out and the woodstove needs a lot of tending.
Q: How much do you write each day?
A: I work on three projects at a time, and they are all at different stages. One may be a first draft, one may be almost finished, and one might be in proofs—or perhaps just being conceived. I try to write about five hundred words a day on each project. Most American writers—Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Jack London—all wrote about five hundred words a day. It seems the right pace for me. It keeps me from going too fast at a project.
There are some children’s book writers—like Enid Blyton—who supposedly wrote ten thousand words a day. This seems impossible to me, but even if it is true, one should not judge oneself by the absurd outlier.
Q:Where do you write?
A: I have a study in a small outbuilding away from the house. It has a desk, a lamp, more books than should be in any one room, and a woodstove. I work at a typewriter, and keep lots of scrap paper around me. This means, by the way, that if anything comes out pretty awful, I can just open the woodstove and burn it all. The feeling of relief is remarkable.
On my desk are a dictionary and a thesaurus, books by Emerson and Whittier and Longfellow and Darwin, Henry David Thoreau’s journals, a collection of Churchill’s war speeches, two volumes of Shaker hymns, some Tolkien, some Avi, some Katherine Paterson, some Elie Wiesel, The Giver, and a statue of a greyhound that has been in my family for four generations.
Q:You work at a typewriter?
A: You can’t believe how hard it is to find typewriter ribbons for a 1953 Royal.
Q: Your books often are very serious. Shouldn’t you lighten up?
A: You think life in middle school isn’t serious? Are you kidding?
Living is a serious business. Funny is good, of course. We all like to laugh. But I want more than that. Much more. Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his first great book, called life "a veil of gloom and brightness." We all wish it could be brightness all the time. And maybe for some people it is. I doubt it, but maybe. But there is gloom for us all, too. And maybe books even for kids shouldn’t ignore that. Geez, read Where the Wild Things Are, or Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, or just about any Grimm folktale, or Crow Boy, or Bridge to Terabithia, or Nothing but the Truth, or No, David, or Octavian Nothing, or The Tale of Despereaux, or Stitches, or The Storm in the Barn, and then try to tell me that writers for kids should try not to be too serious.
Q: What is your favorite book that you have written?
A: Hmmm... If I give one title, then all the other books get sort of cranky and jealous, and they start to rearrange themselves loudly at night to push each other off the shelves. Then I have to pick them all up in the morning instead of walking the dogs and then the dogs get irritated and they take their sweet time on the walk so I get back home late and miss most of breakfast and the kids get to school after the bell has rung and the day just goes downhill from there.
Let’s just say they’re all my favorites.
Q:What is your favorite book that you have not written?
A: An easy question. It is The Little World of Don Camillo. There is no other book like it, so sweet, so funny, so moving, sometimes suspenseful. I wish I had written it.
Q:What book are you working on now?
A: Sorry. Writers should never talk about what they’re working on next. It will be done when it’s done, and then I’ll be glad to talk about it. But not now.
Review
"This is Schmidt's best novel yet—darker than The Wednesday Wars and written with more restraint, but with the same expert attention to voice, character and big ideas."—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
"Reproductions of Audubon plates introduce each chapter in this stealthily powerful, unexpectedly affirming story of discovering and rescuing one’s best self, despite family pressure to do otherwise."—Booklist, starred review
"Readers will miss Doug and his world when they’re done, and will feel richer for having experienced his engaging, tough, and endearing story."—School Library Journal, starred review
"The book is exceptionally well written. Schmidt creates characters that will remain with the reader long after the book is done. Doug’s voice is unforgettable as he tries to help and protect his mom. . . .While there is much stacked against him, he is a character filled with hope that the reader cannot help but root for. Push this one on readers; they will not be sorry. . . .Schmidt writes a journal-type story with a sharp attention to detail, patterns in the story line, and an unexpected twist at the end."–VOYA
A National Book Award Nominee
About the Author
Gary D. Schmidt is the author of the Newbery Honor and Printz Honor book Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. His most recent novel is The Wednesday Wars. He is a professor of English at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Most helpful customer reviews
92 of 95 people found the following review helpful.
A HOME RUN BOOK FOR YOUNG AND OLD ALIKE!!
By Librarian
As a school librarian, I'm a tough critic when it comes to Middle Grade and Young Adult books. A good chunk of what I read is perfectly readable, certainly entertaining, and strongly written, if not stellar.
OKAY FOR NOW is stellar.
I mean it. If I could give Gary Schmidt's companion to THE WEDNESDAY WARS six stars instead of five, I would.
Seriously, this is the kind of book that makes you stop and pause, just so you can read a passage to your spouse, your kid, your friend. The voice is so wonderfully pitch-perfect, the plot points so perfectly interlocked, the characters so uniquely drawn, you can't help yourself. You get downright evangelistic about the book. If you're like me, you give your copy to your kid and then buy a copy for your dad and one for your Grandma, too. (I'm not even kidding about this.)
Doug, 8th grade protagonist, is the younger brother, the bullied son, the undercover artist, the misunderstood student you can't help but root for. As he negotiates a place in his family and in his new hometown during the Vietnam War era, he becomes someone real, someone you know, someone whose story you have to keep on your top shelf, the one reserved for your most favorite novels.
Because OKAY FOR NOW is the realization of something great. It's exactly what a book is supposed to be.
80 of 86 people found the following review helpful.
Extremely Well Written
By Matthew Coenen
Okay For Now is Doug Swieteck's story. Doug is an 8th grader who, due to his father losing his job, moves to a small town with his family. Amidst multiple family issues -- a passive mother, abusive father, bitter and beaten-down Vietnam-vet brother, and a second brother who is merely scared -- Doug manages to discover much about not only his neighbors, but himself as well.
In the safety of the town's open-one-day-a-week library, Doug discovers a new talent, love, friendship, and selflessness. Outside of the library, his life is not an easy one. His familiy has multiple issues. He is unfairly judged by both students and teachers at school. And townsfolk are wary.
Doug's optimism, given all of his issues, is catching and he manages to bounce back from the many not-so-great things that happen throughout the book. He manages to keep a good attitude (most of the time, anyway) because he has a mission... To replace the missing plates in the town library's original John James Audubon book. Not only fascinated with learning to draw the birds, Doug learns that various plates have been sold to raise money for the town and he firmly believes all things belong in their proper place. The plates belong in the book as originally intended, not hanging on somebody's wall.
Each chapter of the novel opens with the images of one of Audubon's bird paintings, and the bird is effortlessly tied into the content of the chapter. Dough's insights regarding each plate are not only useful as he learns to draw the birds, they help him to better understand the dynamics of the world around him -- particular those of his immediate family. A passive yet loving mother. An abusive and angry father. A brother who is frightened at how he may turn out. And an older brother who is bitter and scarred due to his experience in Vietnam.
Okay for Now is an excellent read. It will draw you in and not let you go until you have finished the last page. Doug's character is extremely well-written, and I immediately felt like I knew him. I was happy when he was happy, and I even felt his pain when the not-so-great things happened.
62 of 68 people found the following review helpful.
Do you know how that feels?
By E. R. Bird
There are three kinds of literary sequels for kids out there. First, you have the sequel that is so intricately tied into the plot of the first book that not a page goes by that you don't feel you're missing something if you skipped Book #1. The second kind of sequel nods to the first book and brings up continual facts from it, but is a coherant story in its own right. The third kind of sequel makes mention of facts and/or people in the first book but if you read the story on your own you might not even be aware that there was previous book in the first place. Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt would be the third type of sequel, I think. Ostensibly a sequel to his Newbery Honor winning title The Wednesday Wars, the hero of Okay for Now, Doug Swieteck, was a bit part character in the first book, and now has come entirely into his own in the second. For fans of the first, you will enjoy the second. And for people who begin with the second, you won't miss a thing really if you haven't read the first. All you'll know is that you have a great book on your hands. A great great book.
"You're not always going to get everything you want, you know. That's not what life is like." It's not like the librarian Mrs. Merriam needs to tell Doug that. If any kid is aware that life is not a bed of roses, it's Doug. Stuck in a family with a dad that prefers talking with his fists to his mouth, a sweet but put upon mom, a brother in Vietnam, and another one at home making his little brother's life a misery, it's not like Doug's ever had all that much that's good in his life. When he and his family move to Marysville, New York (herein usually referred to as "stupid Marysville") things start to change a little. Doug notices the amazing paintings of birds in an Audubon book on display in the public library. The boy is captivated by the birds, but soon it becomes clear that to raise money, the town has been selling off different pages in the book to collectors. Between wanting to preserve the book, learning to draw, solving some problems at school, the return of his brother from Vietnam, and maybe even falling in love, Doug's life in "stupid" Marysville takes a turn. Whether it's a turn for the better or a turn for the worse is up to him.
It's such a relief sometimes to read a great writer for kids. Not a merely good writer, but a great writer. Mr. Schmidt is one of the few. You haven't gotten even two pages into the story of this book before Doug tells you about his brother hitting him. He writes that he, "Pummeled me in places where the bruises wouldn't show. A strategy that my . . . is none of your business." Beautiful. Right there we know that not only is our narrator telling us his story, but he's also hiding secrets along the way. In fact, throughout the book Doug will repeat ideas or thoughts or phrases that he's been ruminating over, seemingly unaware that he's working those same thoughts into the narrative. Doug isn't so much an unreliable narrator to us as he is an unreliable narrator to himself.
Schmidt's dialogue is also always on point and interesting, but of particular interest are his descriptions. When Doug and his mother enter a bus to greet someone there, Doug says of his mother that "Her blue coat was spread out, and it covered them both like wide wings..." Doug spends a great deal of time comparing the people he knows to the birds in Audubon's paintings. This is one of those instances where he's doing it entirely unconsciously. He wants his mother to be a bird. Just not necessarily to fly away.
There's a bit of wordplay at work regarding Doug's brothers that I think is clever but actually had me quite confused for a portion of the book. We learn pretty early on that Doug has a brother in Vietnam who was a jerk before he left and we know he has a different older brother at home. There is one moment when we learn that the Vietnam brother's name is Lucas, but for the most part it's easy to get confused and assume that the brother at home is Lucas instead. After all, whenever Doug feels himself acting like a jerk he says he's acting just like Lucas. When we finally meet Lucas, Doug's constant references to "my brother" (which is to say, Christopher) disappear. The two brothers now have names and are becoming increasingly better people. Christopher, for the record, is the only person in the family strong enough to carry Lucas. One can't help drawing some comparisons to St. Christopher and the burden that he carried as well. Knowing Mr. Schmidt, I suspect this is no coincidence.
One of the most remarkable things about Gary Schmidt's writing for kids is that he allows his villains some complexity. It takes a certain kind of author to create an unlikable individual (not hard), display them in an honest way through a child's perceptions (harder), and then somehow manage to, if not redeem that person, at least show that there's another side to them in a way that a kid can believe (unbelievably difficult). Stock two-dimensional have their place in the world but a novel like Okay for Now works because each bad person has something about them that humanizes them (with the exception of one, and that's only because we never really get to meet him). The crusty old librarian has a son in Vietnam who's missing. Doug's brothers have been dealing with their father far longer than Doug, and you can see the effect. The coach at school is still suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. Doug's father even is lent a bit of redemption near the end, though whether or not the reader is willing to forgive him is up in the air (I, for one, don't).
There is also an art to taking a subject that is primarily of interest to adult, and making that subject palatable to a child audience. Louis Sachar did a fairly good job of it in the bridge-centric The Cardturner. John Grisham failed on every level when he penned the self-explanatory Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer. And Gary Schmidt set himself up for disaster when he brought up not only the subject of James Audubon's paintings but info on how to play horseshoes as well. I say he set himself up for disaster, but disaster was not forthcoming. He failed to fail disastrously. Instead, he manages to pull both subjects off. The horseshoes because they are a game and all games, even those played by folks who look like they may have served their country during the Civil War, are still essentially fun (caveat: If someone writes a shuffleboard book for 10-year-olds I may be proven wrong about this). The Audubon factor is tricky partly because it requires kids to care about dead, drawn birds. They have a little help in that Henry Cole penned the very Audubon-centric younger chapter book title A Nest for Celeste not long ago and some young readers may pick up on the name. Still and all, Schmidt and his publisher made the ultimately clever decision to begin each chapter with a painting of a bird that will play a role in Doug's life.
Generally speaking, motivations and characters are consistent here. Some moments made me question Doug's sanity, though. Here you have a kid who almost has a psychotic for a father. He knows this and he also knows that his father has his heart set on winning a trivia contest at the company picnic that year. So what does Doug do? He joins up with a nice old man throwing horseshoes and decides to give all the right answers himself. Now if you live with a psychotic then you have to live by the psychotic's rules. Doug doesn't, which works in the context of the story (A) because Doug is contrary by nature and (B) because in the end it turns out that the old man Doug befriended was probably the one person at the picnic who could deflect his father's attention. Still, for a moment there I wanted to shake that kid and remind him of the danger he was placing himself into. On a related note, I found myself haunted for quite some time after reading about what Doug's dad did to his own son years ago. It's one of the darkest things I've ever read in a children's novel, but not so much that it's inappropriate for younger readers. I suspect primarily older folks like myself will find it as disturbing as I do. Still . . . . *shudder*
I've heard some note that the notion in the book that an unknown, untried girl getting a Broadway part without any prior acting experience is, at best, laughable. They are probably correct about this. I admit that the Broadway show portion of the book is far less interesting than some of the rest of it. It brings some nice closure for the characters but sometimes feels a bit odd when you consider things like the fact that the kids in the show can live in Marysville and just travel to New York City to perform on weekends. Still, while I as an adult didn't quite buy it, it didn't hurt the book for me.
To my mind Gary Schmidt presents worlds that are full of decent people and not so decent people who have reasons for their weirdnesses. Worlds that you either wish you lived in or believe you already live in. There's nothing easy about this particular Schmidt story. At the same time, it's incredibly readable and fun. I credit Doug's voice. There's much to be said about a hero who can be a complete and total "Lucas" at times and yet still appeal to you. This is historical fiction that surpasses the usual trappings of the genre to become universal. Definitely one of the best books of the year. Catch it and catch it quick.
For ages 10 and up.
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