 | |
| Author | Gary D. Schmidt |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Published | April 5, 2011 (Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) |
| Pages | 368 |
| ISBN | 978-0-547-15260-8 |
| Preceded by | The Wednesday Wars |
| Followed by | Just Like That |
| Website | Official website |
Okay for Now is a children's novel by Gary D. Schmidt, published in 2011. It is a companion to Schmidt's 2007 novel The Wednesday Wars and features one of its supporting characters, Doug Swieteck.
 | This article needs an improved plot summary.(September 2016) |
Following the events of The Wednesday Wars , Doug Swieteck is fourteen years old and living on Long Island in 1968 during the Vietnam War. After Doug's father is fired for mouthing off to his boss, the Swietecks move to the small town of Marysville, New York, where Doug feels out of place and unwelcome.
Underneath the glass was this book, a huge book, a huge, huge book. Its pages were longer than a good-sized baseball bat. I'm not lying. And on the whole page there was only one picture. Of a bird.
I couldn't take my eyes off it.
He was all alone, and he looked like he was falling out of the sky and into this cold, green sea. His wings were back, his tail feathers were back, and his neck was pulled around as if he was trying to turn but couldn't. His eyes were round and bright and afraid. And his beak was opened a little bit, probably because he was trying to suck in some air before he crashed into the water. The sky around him was dark, like the air was too heavy to fly in.
This bird was falling, and there wasn't a single thing in the world that cared at all.
It was the most terrifying picture I'd ever seen.
The most beautiful.
— Gary D. Schmidt,Okay for Now (2011)
In Marysville, Doug is fascinated by The Birds of America , a book illustrated by John James Audubon, on display under glass at the local library. Doug starts to learn how to draw, starting with a copy of Audubon's Arctic Tern under the tutelage of Mr. Powell, a librarian. Doug also meets a girl named Lillian "Lil" Spicer, on whom he eventually has a crush. Lil's father owns a deli, and hires Doug as a delivery boy, which lets him get to know other residents of Marysville. Upon starting eighth grade, Doug reveals himself to be unable to read. His English teacher is able to help him learn with an abridged version of Jane Eyre . Doug also deals with the assumption that he is a petty criminal, because his brother Christopher is also assumed to be one. His physical science teacher assures Doug that he sees him as his own person. Also at school, Doug and his gym coach, a struggling veteran, get off to a contentious start. Around Christmastime, Doug's oldest brother Lucas returns home from Vietnam with permanent injuries, and Doug helps him adjust. Doug improves his relationship with his gym coach by helping him in class and introducing him to Lucas, who suffers similarly with memories of the war. Over time, Doug gains the support and trust of people in Marysville, which allow him to face problems with confidence and hope.
Each chapter is named for a different plate from The Birds of America. In order, they are:
Schmidt stated "I have always made fun of authors who say they had to write a sequel because there were characters they couldn’t get out of their heads, but now I have to take back all those truly horrible things I said." The novel was initially drafted from a third-person perspective, and Schmidt struggled with telling the story, but after switching to a first-person narration, Schmidt wrote on "my third start on this stupid novel, it was Doug telling the story and it was right." [1] Like Doug, Schmidt was underestimated by his teachers until one taught him to read. [2] [3]
Writing for The New York Times , author Richard Peck said the novel "is crowded with more incident and empowerment than any eighth-grade year or novel can quite contain" but praised its emotional weight. [4] Augusta Scattergood, reviewing for the Christian Science Monitor , called the novel "often heartbreaking but always funny" and the audience "will also have discovered something important about the capacity for love and the power of resiliency" by the end of the novel. [5]
Okay for Now was on The New York Times Best Seller list [4] and an Amazon Book of the Year. [6] The book also was a Children's Choice award winner. [7] The novel was named a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature in October 2011. [8]
John James Audubon was a French-American self-trained artist, naturalist, and ornithologist. His combined interests in art and ornithology turned into a plan to make a complete pictorial record of all the bird species of North America. He was notable for his extensive studies documenting all types of American birds and for his detailed illustrations, which depicted the birds in their natural habitats. His major work, a color-plate book titled The Birds of America (1827–1839), is considered one of the finest ornithological works ever completed. Audubon is also known for identifying 25 new species. He is the eponym of the National Audubon Society, and his name adorns a large number of towns, neighborhoods, and streets across the United States. Dozens of scientific names first published by Audubon are still in use by the scientific community.
The royal tern is a tern in the family Laridae. The species is endemic to the Americas, though strays have been identified in Europe.
Richard Lee Rhodes is an American historian, journalist, and author of both fiction and non-fiction, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), and most recently, Energy: A Human History (2018).
Dale Peck is an American novelist, literary critic, and columnist. His 2009 novel, Sprout, won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Children's/Young Adult literature, and was a finalist for the Stonewall Book Award in the Children's and Young Adult Literature category.
Peter Craig is an American novelist, screenwriter and actor. He is best known for co-writing the screenplays to The Town (2010), The Batman, and Top Gun: Maverick, earning an Academy Award nomination for the lattermost.
Derrick Zane Jackson is a nature photographer and journalist for The Boston Globe.
The least tern is a species of tern that breeds in North America and locally in northern South America. It is closely related to, and was formerly often considered conspecific with, the little tern of the Old World. Other close relatives include the yellow-billed tern and Peruvian tern, both from South America.
Gary David Schmidt is an American author of children's and young adults' fiction books. He currently resides in Alto, Michigan, where he is a professor of English at Calvin University.
The Birds of America is a book by naturalist and painter John James Audubon, containing illustrations of a wide variety of birds of the United States. It was first published as a series in sections between 1827 and 1838, in Edinburgh and London. Not all of the specimens illustrated in the work were collected by Audubon himself; some were sent to him by John Kirk Townsend, who had collected them on Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth's 1834 expedition with Thomas Nuttall.
The snowy-crowned tern, also known as Trudeau's tern, is a species of bird in subfamily Sterninae of the family Laridae, the gulls, terns, and skimmers. It is found in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and possibly Paraguay, and also as a vagrant to Peru and the Falkland Islands,.
The Wednesday Wars is a 2007 young adult historical fiction novel written by Gary D. Schmidt, the author of Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. The novel is set in suburban Long Island during the 1967–68 school year. The Vietnam War is an important backdrop for the novel. It was given a Newbery Honor medal in 2008, and was also nominated for the Rebecca Caudill Young Reader's Book Award in 2010.
The AML Awards are given annually by the Association for Mormon Letters (AML) to the best work "by, for, and about Mormons." They are juried awards, chosen by a panel of judges. Citations for many of the awards can be found on the AML website.
Fever Dream is a novel by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. It was released on May 11, 2010 by Grand Central Publishing. This is the tenth book in the Special Agent Pendergast series and also the first in the Helen trilogy. The preceding novel is Cemetery Dance, and it is followed by Cold Vengeance.
Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots is an 1832 book containing 42 hand-coloured lithographs by Edward Lear. He produced 175 copies for sale to subscribers as a part-publication, which were later bound as a book. Lear started painting parrots in 1830 when he was 18 years old, and to get material for his book he studied live birds at the London Zoo and in private collections. The latter included those of Edward Smith Stanley, later 13th Earl of Derby, who had a large menagerie at Knowsley Hall, and Benjamin Leadbeater, a taxidermist and trader in specimens. Lear drew onto lithographic plates for printing by Charles Joseph Hullmandel, who was known for the quality of his reproductions of fine art.
Basil Ede was an English wildlife artist specialising in avian portraiture, noted for the ornithological precision of his paintings.
Eastern Egg Rock Island is an island in the Town of St. George in Knox County in the U.S. state of Maine. It is owned by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW), and it is located off the southern Atlantic Coast of the state. Project Puffin, a restoration effort by the Audubon Society, is implemented on Eastern Egg Rock through a contract with the MDIFW.
Steven L. Peck is an evolutionary biologist, poet, and novelist. His literary work is influential in Mormon literature circles. He is a professor of biology at Brigham Young University (BYU). He grew up in Moab, Utah and lives in Pleasant Grove, Utah.
Rock Dog is a 2016 computer-animated comedy film produced by Mandoo Pictures and Huayi Brothers. The film is directed by Ash Brannon in his solo directorial debut, from a script by Brannon and Kurt Voelker. The film based on the Chinese graphic novel Tibetan Rock Dog by Zheng Jun, albeit its basic premise has been significantly altered. It features the voices of Luke Wilson, J. K. Simmons, Eddie Izzard, Lewis Black, Kenan Thompson, Mae Whitman, Jorge Garcia, Matt Dillon, and Sam Elliott. The film follows a young Tibetan Mastiff who leaves his mountain home village to become a rock musician in the big city after a radio falls from the sky.
All the Birds in the Sky is a 2016 science fantasy novel by American writer and editor Charlie Jane Anders. It is her debut speculative fiction novel and was first published in January 2016 in the United States by Tor Books. The book is about a witch and a techno-geek, their troubled relationship, and their attempts to save the world from disaster. The publisher described the work as "blending literary fantasy and science fiction".
Orbiting Jupiter is a 2015 young adult fiction novel written by Gary D. Schmidt, the author of Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy and Okay for Now. The novel focuses on a Maine family as they begin fostering a teenage father.