I have been getting a lot of book suggestions from the blog (http://hooray4books.wordpress.com/) at Hooray for Books in Alexandria, VA (http://www.hooray4books.com/). If you are lucky enough to live in the area – be sure to visit them, the staff is very knowledgeable and they have GREAT stuff! Whenever we visit the DC area – we always stop in for some recommendations. They introduced us to The Penderwicks and my daughter and I will be forever grateful!
Okay – back to Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt. I read about this on their blog. It was in the teen section in our library. I got it anyway, even though I knew it would be too old for my daughter. I loved it. It is 1968, Doug and his family have to move to Marysville, NY because his father got a job. Nobody is particularly happy about the move. Doug has one brother who is “a thug” and can’t figure out how not to be one, another brother who is in Vietnam, and his father is a drunk. Doug figures out his path in Marysville, he finds people who care about him, and encourage him. He realizes that after some time, you have to make the life that you want to live. Doug is a wonderful character who you want to root for, even though at times, you’re not sure if its the right thing to do. This is definitely too old for my daughter, but I kept thinking of my nephews for this book.
I also thought of a professor I had in Graduate School, Lorraine Monroe. She started and ran the Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem. In class one night, she told us that she would tell her kids (the students) that no matter what goes on at home – and believe me, there was a lot of stuff going on at home for most of those children – when you come to school, you are you, and you have to do what is right for you. For many of these children, like Doug, coming to school was their escape, and usually, the teachers and staff at the school were the only ones who cared.
One of my favorite quotations from the book, “I’m not lying when I say that Hollywood actresses would kill for my mother’s smile. You think Elizabeth Taylor can smile? If you saw my mother’s smile, you wouldn’t even let Elizabeth Taylor in the same room. If Joe Pepitone saw my mother’s smile, he would give up baseball for her. That’s how beautiful her smile is. . . . and we sat there in quiet in the heat, me looking up to watch her smile and wondering how I could ever draw it, it was that beautiful.”
How can you not smile when you read that?
Happy Reading!
