Two Books

Two books, one review. I read them back-to-back and was surprised at both their symmetry and similarities. Both have 14 year-old male protagonists who have talents they haven't begun to explore. Both boys begin their summers by travelling away from the city to pastoral climes. Both books succeed at discovering very real voices in the first person narratives of these young men, and the subtle humor in their observations of the world. Both are bildungsroman, my favorite $1 word, describing a coming of age novel. Both have a unique concept that ties the story together in a strong, literary way. And both are written by award-winning writers whose work I had read before. "Okay for Now" comes from Gary D. Schmidt, who has a stack of notable awards for "Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy" and "The Wednesday Wars." Kathryn Erskine had won the National Book Award with "Mockingbird" last year before she penned "The Absolute Value of Mike."

"The Absolute Value of Mike" uses Mathematical concepts to tell the tale of Mike, a boy with a distant father (possibly with Aspergers) who has to spend the summer with a kooky bunch of friends and relatives in rural Pennsylvania as a town comes together to do the impossible. The Mathematical phrases, and their descriptions, plot Mike's progress as he moves from parallel relationships to intersecting ones. Told with a light, gentle touch, this book is a fast read that makes for a good middle school text. Students who liked "Surviving the Applewhites" and "Operation Yes" will find similarities in the upbeat journey of improbable events. There is even a little of the weirdness you find in "Going Bovine" although this story is pretty much on the wholesome side. At the very least, it will have you looking at homeless people an entirely different way.

"Okay for Now" is much more complex, and more appropriate for high school. Denser with even more layers, the theme here is the work of James Audubon, and the art lessons Doug receives, which show him that balance, tension and depth are life lessons as well as art concepts. The book was hard for me to get into, not because it was bad, but because the cover set me up with different expectations. As a librarian, I should know better than to judge a book by its cover. I thought it was a contemporary humor novel and found a historical book with as much pathos as quiet grins. It took me a couple chapters to adjust. Once I did, however, I could hardly put the book down. Set in 1968, this story picks up the character of Doug from "The Wednesday Wars" and makes him the protagonist (Holling Hoodhood, the lead character in "The Wednesday Wars" makes a brief appearance near the beginning of the book). Doug's family makes a sudden move to upstate NY and, like a fish out of water, the young man tries to navigate a completely different world than the Long Island home he is accustomed to. There is a slow, lyrical quality to the work of Gary Schmidt, but I liked this far more than "Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy." While that historical novel had a compelling tale and was written as if it were a series of artistic frescoes, the characters weren't overly compelling. Here, they jump off the page. I felt as if Doug was sitting next to me telling me his story rather than just reading it. Also, unlike "Lizzie Bright" a tale that was moving towards darkness, this is a journey of a teenager moving into the light. Upbeat despite some overwhelmingly sad layers, it shows how even then, it took a village to raise a child and that the human spirit can succeed where human beings fail. The characters here are not simple. Bad guys surprise you at times, with the one exception I took being a change in a major character near the end. Despite the book's theme of redemption, I felt that the reform of this particular character was too sudden and it felt unrealistic. The rest of the book, however, felt more like autobiography than fiction. Looking at Mr. Schmidt's biography, it is clear that he may have drawn on his own life experiences, which made this book, IMHO, the best that he has written.

Bravo to Mike and Doug, two guys who made sitting down to read a deeply cool experience. Enjoy.