If you’d told me that beforehand, I would have been wary, since I’m not particularly artistically inclined, but it worked marvelously. In the same way that the works of Shakespeare acted as a narrative guide in The Wednesday Wars, John James Audubon’s art is the continuous thread in this book. Powell have such appeal to Doug, even if he wants to pretend they don’t. You can imagine why the quiet of the library and the patient teaching of Mr. is none of your business.” And he has a job delivering groceries on Saturday mornings but his customers are extremely wary of him after a break-in that most of the town believes was done by his older brother. He’s keeping secrets about his family, which you discover quickly when he describes his older brother (who, like Holling’s sister in The Wednesday Wars, remains unnamed for a very long time) stealing his Joe Pepitone hat and “pummeled me in places where the bruises wouldn’t show. These informal art lessons are a bright spot in Doug’s fairly dark life. Powell, an older librarian, who takes it upon himself to break down Doug’s walls a little and teach him how to draw. The picture completely arrests Doug his interest is noted by Mr. The first day there, Doug finds himself in the library, where, in an empty upstairs room, is a book under glass, open to a picture of a bird drawn by John James Audubon.
The new house is a complete dump and Doug has to share a room with his older brother who has “quick hands” (both the stealing and hitting kind).Īnd thus begins life in “stupid Marysville.” As it opens, his family is moving away to Marysville where his dad has gotten a new job (no one dares to ask about why he’s lost the old job, but Doug’s descriptions of the family make it clear that Doug and his older brother didn’t inherit their trouble-making ways from nowhere). Now, Doug gets an entire book to himself. This truly is a stand-alone book.ĭoug Swietek appears in The Wednesday Wars, but he’s notable mostly for his list of “401 ways to make a teacher hate you” and his older brother, known only as “Doug Swietek’s brother” who is, himself, a notorious trouble maker and always out to get someone (often Holling). If you haven’t read The Wednesday Wars, you won’t have that unpleasant sensation of missing a lot of things as you read Okay for Now (oh, how I loathe that feeling). Okay for Now is a companion book to The Wednesday Wars, but most definitely not a sequel. Gary Schmidt books have everything – brains, wit, humor, heart. I really think Gary Schmidt might be the best middle-grade author alive today. I worried that there was no way it could live up to The Wednesday Wars, which is perhaps my favorite book of all time, but it was just as wonderful.
I don’t have words to praise Okay for Now highly enough – I have had to curb myself considerably to keep from quoting nearly the entire book in this review.
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