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Summary
Summary
Bestselling author Gary D. Schmidt tells a coming-of-age story with the light touch of The Wednesday Wars, the heart of Okay for Now, and the unique presence of a wise and witty butler.
Carter Jones is astonished early one morning when he finds a real English butler, bowler hat and all, on the doorstep--one who stays to help the Jones family, which is a little bit broken.
In addition to figuring out middle school, Carter has to adjust to the unwelcome presence of this new know-it-all adult in his life and navigate the butler's notions of decorum. And ultimately, when his burden of grief and anger from the past can no longer be ignored, Carter learns that a burden becomes lighter when it is shared.
Sparkling with humor, this insightful and compassionate story will resonate with readers who have confronted secrets of their own.
Author Notes
Gary D. Schmidt is the best-selling author of Orbiting Jupiter, the Newbery Honor and Printz Honor Book Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, and the Newbery Honor Book The Wednesday Wars, and Okay for Now . He lives in Alto, Michigan, and is a professor of English at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. hmhbooks.com/schmidt
Reviews (6)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-8-Young Carter Jones opens the front door one morning to find an English butler on his doorstep. Sent to the Jones family by his late grandfather, Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick reforms the household with his wit, precision, and commitment to decorum. As Carter deals with his father's deployment, Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick also takes on the role of emotional caretaker and support for Carter. Together, they play cricket and learn that the rules of the game are also the rules for a healthy and happy life. Schmidt, author of the celebrated Wednesday Wars, strikes gold again with this emotionally complex character who learns to navigate change and disappointment, and, more important, how to receive help. Schmidt writes with a clear and compelling voice, and masterfully crafts Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick as an endearing family helper and friend with a Mary Poppins-like disposition. The use of cricket as a narrative tool to embolden Carter is clever and will surely peak young readers' interest in the sport. VERDICT A rich and nuanced middle grade novel that will appeal to readers who feel a little on the outskirts.-Katherine Hickey, Metropolitan Library System, Oklahoma City © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Schmidt (Orbiting Jupiter) fuses pathos and humor in this adroitly layered novel that opens as Carter answers the doorbell to find a dapper British "gentleman's gentleman," a former employee of the boy's grandfather, whose will bequeathed his service to Carter's family. And they do need some sorting out: the sixth grader's father has been deployed to Germany, and his emotionally fraught mother is struggling to parent her four children alone in New York State. Endearingly devoted to his younger sisters, Carter is reeling from his beloved brother's sudden death, his alienation from his uncommunicative father (hauntingly underscored in flashbacks to an angst-riddled camping trip), and the sickening realization that his father isn't coming home. The butler's strict adherence to decorum and the Queen's English triggers amusing repartee with slang-loving Carter; he also recognizes and assuages the boy's pain by introducing him-and his schoolmates-to cricket, which gives them all a sense of purpose and pride. Opening each chapter with a definition of a cricket term, Schmidt weaves the sport's jargon into the narrative, further enriching the verbal badinage and reinforcing the affecting bond between a hurting boy and a compassionate man. Ages 10-12. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Having been bequeathed to sixth-grader Carters household by his deceased grandfather, English butler and gentlemans gentleman Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick appears at the door on the first day of school. He brings order to a chaotic home and introduces Carter to the game of cricket, which becomes a metaphor for how to come to terms with death and loss. The audiobook performance amplifies characterization and pacing: the butler is voiced in a posh, heightened English accent that brings his penchant for proper grammar and manners to life; narrator Carter is portrayed with enough adolescent snark to balance the slow-?simmering realizations about his family that boil over in an emotional climax. julie hakim azzam July/Aug p.152(c) Copyright 2019. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Carter Jones' family inherits the services of a "gentleman's gentleman" with a passion for cricket just when they most need him.Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick arrives in a purple Bentley at their New York state home during a downpour on the morning of Carter's first day of sixth grade. The Butler, as Carter thinks of him, helps with Mary Poppins-like efficiency and perceptiveness to organize and transform the chaos of a household with little money, four children, a father deployed overseas, and a gaping hole. Six-year-old Currier died three years ago, and Carter carries his brother's green shooter marble like a talisman. Carter's memories of a more recent wilderness trip with his father are filled with deep sadness and foreboding. Meanwhile, Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick (amusingly snobby about pizza, television, and American slang) encourages Carter to step up, to play a bigger role in his sisters' livesand to learn to play cricket. Schmidt convincingly conveys the zany elegance and appeal of the game without excessive explanation. Though the newly formed middle school cricket team includes boys surnamed Yang and Singh, none of the characters are described by race, and the primary cast is assumed white. Schmidt gracefully weaves together the humor of school, siblings, and a dachshund with a delicate digestive system with deeper themes of family connection, disappointment, anger, and grief. The result is wonderfully impressive and layered. (Fiction. 10-13) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Pandemonium reigns in the Jones household (mother, son, three younger daughters, and one excitable dog) on the first day of school at 7:15 a.m., when 12-year-old Carter answers the doorbell and meets the Butler. This portly Englishman immediately begins to put things right, offering his services to Mrs. Jones and explaining that he was willed to the family by his late employer, the children's grandfather. Their father is an army captain deployed in Germany. Initially wary of the Butler, Carter resists his quiet authority, but slowly begins to trust the man, who teaches him to drive the Bentley, organizes a wildly popular cricket match at his middle school, and offers him implicit guidance when he needs it most. The Butler is a distinctive character with dry wit and an unshakable sense of purpose. While comparisons with Mary Poppins may be inevitable, the only magic here is the everyday kind brought about by broad understanding, sensible actions, and uncommon courtesy applied over a period of time. Not so much an unreliable narrator as an evasive one, Carter has things on his mind that initially he's not ready to deal with, much less communicate to others. Yet his engaging narrative leads readers through a broad range of emotions in this beautifully written, often amusing, and ultimately moving novel.--Carolyn Phelan Copyright 2018 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
ADOLESCENCE IS HARD ENOUGH, but how are you supposed to handle trauma in the family when your parents are overwhelmed, absent, overbearing or just plain oblivious? Anger and grief have a way of hijacking your mind and heart, so when you can't get through to parents, you do what the tweens in these middle-grade novels do: Find a distinctive way of dealing with it, and learn that grown-up thing of putting on a good face even if you're crumbling inside. IN LINDSEY STODDARD'S RIGHT AS RAIN (Harper, 304 pp.,$16.99; ages 8 to 12), the traumatic event is the sudden death of Rain's teenage brother, Guthrie. At their relentlessly optimistic mother's behest, they move from Vermont to New York City, while their father slips into depression. They arrive in Washington Heights dazed, a non-Spanish-speaking white family in a Latino neighborhood, and over the next two weeks - the time of the novel - a lot happens: Rain enrolls in a new middle school, joins the track team, qualifies for the city championship, enlists her stuporous father in building a community garden, and hopes that her parents will be the "one in four" couples that survives the death of a child. Stoddard has a knack for writing strong, feisty protagonists, like the heroine in her first book, "Just Like Jackie." Although Rain is wounded by her brother's death and anxious about her parents' arguments, she is a self-assured problem solver. She has a thing for numbers: She counts - bricks, miles, minutes, anything - to "empty her brain" and finds solace in running. Stoddard's exploration of grief's grip on a family rings true and tender; she does a remarkable job of conveying the emotional haze Rain's outward confidence hides. Lovely, dreamy chapters (each entitled "That Night") flicker through the novel, chronicling Guthrie's final hours and revealing the guilt Rain feels over his death. There, we see Rain at her vulnerable best: saving herself, if not her parents' marriage. carter JONES'S parents' marriage will not survive the death of a child - that we know early on. In Gary D. Schmidt's pay attention, CARTER JONES (Clarion, 224 pp., $16.99; ages io to 12), 12-year-old Carter's heartbroken family is propped up by an endearing visitor: an English butler who worked with their grandfather. The dapper, cultivated Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick attends to Carter, his three younger sisters and a vomiting dachshund, while their mother sorts out the death of 6-year-old Currier and the absence of her soldier husband. Carter is a good, compassionate kid, but he's torn up inside and steamed by his father's lack of communication. Schmidt seamlessly fuses humor and tragedy here, as he did in his Newbery Honor book "The Wednesday Wars." The butler can be a "pain in the glute" and a "blabber," Carter tells us, while Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick gently chides that you should never "begin your sentence with a subordinating conjunction," like "because." The repartee takes the edge off the loneliness Carter feels: "When you carry stuff like this around, you never know what kind of day it's going to be." It's striking that Schmidt chose cricket to put a spin on the boy-as-athlete motif. During a crucial match Carter's grief spills over. He has flashbacks of his most recent encounter with his father, on a camping trip after Currier died. The place had poisonous snakes, crocodiles and screeching birds, and Carter confronted his father for being absent when Currier was ill. Now, as the lengthy cricket match proceeds, he hears people in the crowd telling him to "pay attention," which is precisely what his father was unable to do. One suspects that Carter, as he grows, will be more attentive to those emotions. He already is. there's no overt trauma in Aida Salazar's debut novel, the moon within (Scholastic, 240 pp., $16.99; ages 8 to 12), but the circumstances leading up to a Mexican-Puerto Rican black girl's initiation into womanhood include anger and an overbearing mother. Celi is seething at her Mima for insisting on a "moon ceremony," an indigenous coming-of-age ritual to celebrate a first period. Lately, Cell's "flor" (as her mother calls it) tingles when she's around Iván, whom she knows from a cultural center in Oakland. So when Mima overshares by telling Iván what a moon ceremony is, Celi stands by feeling "like someone is stepping / on my chest / my breath stolen away." Meanwhile, Cell's best friend, Magda, is entering puberty a different way, taking the name Marco and identifying as male. The gender transition seems smooth enough - until Iván insults Marco and Celi laughs. Ashamed at putting her crush before her best friend, she stows it in her "heart locket" - the imaginary place she puts her deepest feelings. Salazar tells the story in free verse, which works well to convey Cell's emotions, giving them a powerful, beautiful charge ("Mimaleavesmetocry / sittingin a soup / of hummingbird herbs and rage"), and less well for dialogue ("What you doing next week, Celi? / Iván asks suddenly. / You wanna go to the skate park?"). Although the novel has been compared to Judy Blume's "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret," an instant classic in 1970 for its frank expression of how girls feel about their changing bodies, Salazar's book, half a century on, is less saucy: Where Blume's girls exuberantly chanted "We must! We must! We must increase our bust!," Celi wilts with embarrassment when Mima calls her father to celebrate that "our girl is growing breasts!" Salazar's take on menstruation is contemporary and important, however: It presents families of mixed-race heritage embracing ancestral traditions (Celi eventually does), accepting gender fluidity and acting generally body-positive. Marco, raised Magdalena, has a ceremony as well: one to celebrate his "Ometeotl energy / a person who inhabits two beings / the female and the male at once." For all that, Marco is still biologically female. Had he also gotten his first period, Salazar might have truly explored uncharted emotional terrain. SAM ABERNATHY FIRST APPEARED as a high school freshman in "Stand-Off," the second novel in Andrew Smith's Y.A. series "Winger." So THE SIZE OF THE TRUTH (Simon & Schuster, 272 pp., $17.99; ages 8 to 12) IS a prequel of sorts. As a 4-year-old in Blue Creek, Tex., Sam spent three days trapped at the bottom of a well, and the murky memory now shows up in his claustrophobia and his fear of the "murderer" James Jenkins, an eighth-grade boy he thinks pushed him into the well all those years ago. Now 11, Sam skips from sixth to eighth grade, where he struggles with being smaller than his classmates. He harbors a secret desire to be a chef, while his father wants him to go to M.I.T. and become a scientist. Smith's narration alternates between sections called "Eighth Grade" and hallucinatory sections rendering Sam's three days in the well, spent with a snarky armadillo (this is Texas) named Bartleby. Bartleby is a Yoda figure ("Don't go living your life only trying to avoid holes"), and there's a fantastical cantina-style scene, too: a choir of bats singing gospel music, a coyote waitress, Spanish-speaking otters and the coffin of a bank robber from 1888. The zany, philosophical conversation between Sam and Bartleby is sophisticated for a tween (yes, the armadillo utters his namesake's famous line), but it's thoroughly enjoyable: I happily would have read a book just about the two of them. Smith's delightful evocation of the weird and his ongoing exploration of masculinity show up in this novel, too. Sam's father, a kilt-wearing proprietor of a miniature golf course, takes him on survivalist camping trips. James Jenkins turns out to have a surprising passion other than football. He and Sam both have to face their fathers, and stand up for their less traditional choices. The truth, here as in all these engaging middle-grade novels, turns out to be large and complicated, made more so by growing up with loss and the heightened reality it brings. With ample reasons to succumb to grief or unhappiness, these undaunted tweens prefer not to. LENOR A todaro, an editor at Off Assignment, writes a column about New York City wildlife for Catapult Magazine.