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Readers of our website or listeners to our podcast will already know that Gary D. Schmidt is a modern author we genuinely love. His middle-grade novels are complex, unexpected, relatable, and always beautifully written. Diane first picked up First Boy on a whim, but her enthusiastic recommendation was enough to convince me to read it too. My kids and I were not disappointed.
I think of Schmidt as a modern fairy-tale writer—not in the fantasy sense, but in the tradition of the Grimm brothers’ morality tales. He takes ordinary children living ordinary lives and throws in an extraordinary curveball that changes everything. The magic he finds is in everyday life: meeting baseball player Joe Pepitone may not seem extraordinary, but having him attend your school play certainly is. A father who chooses not to come home from deployment because he has built a new family abroad is plausible, yet inheriting an English butler who fills that absence is unexpected and whimsical. Schmidt takes the everyday and twists it into something both unpredictable and compelling.
In First Boy, an ordinary farm boy in Maine lives with his grandparents, having been told that his parents died in a car accident when he was a newborn. When his grandparents die at the start of the story, he is left to manage a dairy farm, go to school, and run cross country—all on his own. But, as in every Schmidt novel, he is not truly alone. Neighbors who have watched him grow are committed to his success, and the story is rich with adults who mentor, challenge, support, and ultimately, love him.
Every Schmidt novel includes a creative curveball: a kid discovers a hidden talent for theater, or another cannot read but can draw like Audubon, or someone barely surviving finds that he has the courage and capacity to organize adults for a storm rescue. In First Boy, the twist is an origin story: a child’s past is not what it seems, and he is suddenly thrown into the midst of a presidential scandal. The story is gripping, the characters are a wonderful blend of lively, funny, and loyal, and the storytelling is both clever and heartfelt.
This book is exciting and well-told, appealing to middle school readers and beyond. We especially loved the audio version, listening while working in the library. It is another winner from Gary D. Schmidt.
Parents may wish to know that the story includes the realization that a child was born out of wedlock and given up for adoption.