Customer Reviews

Okay for Now

5 star:		(55)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

In a companion to his acclaimed novel, The Wednesday Wars, award-winning writer Gary D. Schmidt revisits the Vietnam era in Okay for Now. Doug Swietech, a secondary character in the Wednesday Wars, becomes the focus of this story; it's close to the end of the summer, and Doug and his very dysfunctional family have just moved to a "dump" of a town in upstate New York when the book opens. Doug idolizes Joe Pepitone of the Yankees, and his most treasured possession is a jacket signed given by his idol. His home life is dominated by his abusive father and his bullying older brother, while another brother is off fighting in Vietnam.

The library and the town's kind librarian, Mr. Powell, play a key role in the story, as Doug discovers that although "maybe stupid Marysville was a dump,...this place wasn't." At the second floor of the library, he finds a special room, with a huge book--a book displayed under glass, with only one picture showing. It's a gigantic picture of a bird, and Doug can't take his eyes off it. "It was the most terrifying picture I had ever seen. The most beautiful." It's an original Audubon, and it haunts Doug's imagination. Although Doug doesn't draw (since, as he quips in the book, only girls with pink bicycle chains draw), the kind librarian is soon leaving drawing supplies near the Audubon display that Doug is drawn to by some powerful magnetic force. When he finally picks up a pencil to copy Audubon's drawing, it felt "spectacular, " and Mr. Powell is soon giving him drawing lessons (was that in Mr. Powell's librarian job description?)

As much as Doug hates "stupid Marysville", he is quickly befriended not only by Mr. Powell, but also by Lil, a girl whose family owns the town's deli, and gets Doug a job delivering groceries on Saturdays for some of the more eccentric citizens of Marysville. Things aren't going too bad for Doug, until his older brother is suspected of some local robberies, his father's physical abuse is revealed to all his classmates, his brother comes back from Vietnam maimed physically and emotionally, and to top it off, pages of the precious Audubon manuscript are being sold off to pay the town's bills. Can Doug stop the cycle of abuse in his family and perhaps even put the town's Audubon book back together?

Schmidt is a masterful writer, managing to incorporate pathos, humor, loss, the power of art, friendship and more into this memorable novel. Doug's voice and his journey is one that the reader will not soon forget. The novel is pulled together by the Audubon prints, which serve as titles for each chapter and are pictured in the novel as well, and often seem to mirror what is happening in Doug's own life. As Doug comes up with ways to reconstruct the precious book, he is also making sense of his own life and future.

Okay for Now is already getting some pre-Newbery buzz, and perhaps Schmidt will be adding a Newbery to his two Newbery honor awards (for The Wednesday Wars and Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. Schmidt, who is a professor of English at Calvin College with six children of his own, is working on the third volume of The Wednesday Wars trilogy. That's a book that will definitely be on my "to read" pile.

Wow.

Wow. (!) I am a father who has seven years teaching experience (two at the middle school level) and this book both broke my heart and made me laugh hysterically. Often at the same exact moment.

Schmidt tells the story of eighth-grader Doug Swieteck as he deals with difficulties and pain faciong him at every turn. Doug's voice is believable, endearing, strong, and hopeful, even as he complains abotu everything from the town his family moves to, to school teachers and grocery deliveries. Readers qill quickly (read: IMMEDIATELY) fall in love with Doug and root for him page after page. Doug's journey is vividly revealed, and the language makes readers feel as though Doug himself is sharing with them the story--as if they themselves are a customer on Doug's grocery delivery route, and he's decide to tell all.

I read the book in about two days, even though my wife and I were transitioning our 2-year old to a big boy bed and were already sleep deprived. However, once we got my son settled, I couldn't keep away from OKAY FOR NOW. The book literally squeezed and squeezed my heart and refused to let go. When I finished, tears in my eyes, laughter dancing on my lips, all I could say to my wife was, "You've got to read this book."

As a previous teacher, I would have done everything in my power to get this on our curriculum for my 7th graders. It's a book that is almost impossible not to enjoy. Additionally--and more importantly--it's a book that gets inside your soul and doesn't leave it in the same state once the final page closes.

It makes my list of All-Time Top Six Books (which is a hard feat to come by!). (The others, for the curiously inclined, are TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee, THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV by Fyodor Dostoevsky, A RAISIN IN THE SUN by Lorraine Hansberry--I know, I know, a play makes the list of "books", but I can't help it, it's that powerful--MOCKINGBIRD by Kathryn Erskine, and THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN by Mark Twain.) I kept my this old list at five pretty tight, but Gary Schmidt's stunning and transforming novel forces the list to six!

There are times I question why I read middle-grade and YA books. If I read too many of them I feel as if I'm not getting enough "serious" literature in, or that I'm not challenging my brain enough or.. you know, all the little excuses why reading fluffy, fun, imaginative stories are not good for a 34 year old woman to read - especially if she's not involved in any official way with the lives of reading youth.

But then I pick up a book like Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt. And I'm reminded that great books don't always have to be over 500 pages long with tiny font sizes and filled with heavy, ponderous thought-matter. Instead they can be unassuming, with a slightly tacky cover and filled with the every-day life of a boy, Doug, who deals with an abusive father (although you wouldn't hear him admit it), a bully of a brother, a mother with a beautiful smile and a whole cast of characters making up the stupid town life of a stupid small town in New York.

With such a cast of characters, and a setting that relies heavily on a series of bird pictures out of a famous book (added to illustrate the story), Gary Schmidt works his magic. I loved The Wednesday Wars for teaching me what it would be like to be a youthful boy, with all its awkwardness and trials, and Schmidt shows me again what it is like - but this time with different challenges, with heart-breaking life happening around and with the guts given to a character you can't help but fall in love with, allowing him to raise his chin and push forward and find that bit of good in everyone, everything and every place around him.

I cannot recommend this book enough and, like it's predecessor, The Wednesday Wars, if this book isn't sporting a medal on it soon there is simply no justice in the world.

Terrific!

I'm not lying.

And I'm no chump in saying so.

Perhaps I should just leave it at that and hope you have the good sense to buy and read the book, if you haven't already.

Everyone should.

OKAY FOR NOW deserves the Newbery Award --- not a Newbery Honor, but the award, in my humble opinion.

And my opinion is humble, but it better be accurate in this case. I have to warn you, I have Christopher Swieteck waiting in the wings to do some arm-twisting.

This is a book about family --- mostly, the Swieteck family --- and community --- mostly Marysville ---, and the institutions --- like the library and Audubon's collection in it, the local deli, the dream of Broadway, the military, the nearest professional sports team, the schools, the police department --- that flesh the people who occupy them out and make them better or, in some cases, worse.

It is about the dynamics of art and sensitivity over against rationality's often heavy hand and stifling effect in ordinary life.

It is about the way things of the heart affect things of the mind and vice versa; it is about people, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, sensitive and not.

It is a love story about Doug and Lil and lost art and so so much more.

It is well fleshed out, nicely sketched, colored almost to perfection. But not overdone.

It has wings as light as feathers and it takes flight. And soars into the heavens.

Hasn't almost everyone as a child or youth been cast into a new environment, whether in a move to a new town, going off to a new school, or finding oneself with different people in a new family configuration? Then there is the resulting disorientation, the inherent fear and anxiety. This is what happens to Doug Swieteck, Gary D. Schmidt's protagonist in his latest novel. How will Doug fare? How will he be affected by the new people and institutions in his life? How will they? The narrative of the story provides the answers to these questions.

Although, perhaps I shouldn't have read this book just when I did --- while my wife is suffering chronic cancer --- or the way I did --- reading it out loud, I'm so glad I did. But, I must say, it's very hard to read aloud in an emotional storm, seeing words blur on the page through a stream of fluid flowing from your eyes.

I was born a few years before the protagonist of this adventure. I loved reminiscing, visiting the past's sights and sounds and events portrayed in the story, wallowing in it, reminiscing in my own private way. After all, I have my own Lil with whom I share a love for great art and literature. And life.

I wrote Time For All Eternity.

I've read every Newbery Medal book. Sometimes I grumble and complain about the choices made. Okay for Now should win this year. I wouldn't grumble a bit.

This book tells us what's going on from inside the mind of a young kid who's got a wretch of a dad and a useless mother who can't stand up for herself or her children. The young kid is admirable, I'll grant you that: he overcomes obstacles and faces the challenges of life with more gusto than most adults would.

It's a page-turner. There are some really neat plot twists that really wowed me. But the writing is not for everyone. Here's where I have to insert my own prejudices and biases. I didn't like the "voice" of the main character. I liked his character, I liked many things about him, but reading his adolescent voice was not a great delight to me, because I find that kind of adolescent chatter very tiring, cliched and obnoxious. Perhaps it's because when I was that age, I didn't speak that way and neither did my friends. So I couldn't get past what I perceived to be the artificiality and staginess of it all.

So because of the narrator's voice being so grating for me, this was a less than perfect book in my opinion, and I can't recommend it, but on the strength of the plotting I give it three stars.

Consider the following: an author proposes writing a middle grade novel involving John James Audubon's Birds of America, an emotionally abusive father, a Vietnam veteran brother, the classic novel Jane Eyre, the New York Yankees, an eccentric playwright, a business executive who is both an expert at horseshoes as his is at cultivating orchids - you would probably consider him crazy and usher him out the door. But only author Gary Schmidt could weave all the above in a story so full of heartache and hope that the obvious response would be, "why didn't I think of that story line?"

Doug Swieteck, a minor character from Mr. Schmidt's Newbery Honor winner The Wednesday Wars, has moved from Long Island with Holling Hoodhood's beloved Joe Pepitone's New York Yankees jacket, to upstate New York to face the uncertainty of his father's hostility and being the new kid on the block. With the help of multiple friends and teachers, Doug is able to navigate the natural difficulties associated with 8th grade, the increased tension at home, with his newly developed artistic talent studying Audubon prints and the burgeoning relationship with Lil Spicer, daughter of the local grocery merchant.

This was an extraordinary book. Mr. Schmidt was a master in the layering of story lines of Doug's life. With the introduction of each bird (you'll notice them immediately at the beginning of each chapter), and at each obstacle that Doug encounters, it was a natural instinct to reach through the pages to give this kid a hug. Additionally, Mr. Schmidt expertly shows how important teachers are to the lives of our children and that no child is out of reach of being nurtured and taught. And without much effort, he TEACHES the reader as well - about classic literature and art and science - it was seamless.

Finally, this was a story about the rebuilding of a family, the strength of a young man, and the beauty of a friendship. Oh, and birds. Lots and lots of birds.