“Doug Swieteck once made up a list of 410 ways to get a teacher to hate you. It began with ‘Spray deodorant in all her desk drawers’ and got worse as it went along. A whole lot worse. . . . They were the kinds of things that sent kids to juvenile detention homes in upstate New York, so far away that you never saw them again.”
In The Wednesday Wars, Doug Sweiteck is a friend of the narrator, Holling Hoodhood, but his character is relatively undeveloped. We gather information about his homelife from the behavior of his older brother who figures more prominently as an antagonist in Holling’s story.
“There was Doug Swieteck’s brother, for one, who was already shaving and had been to three police stations in two states and who once spent the night in jail. . . . Doug Swieteck said that if his father hadn’t bribed the judge, his brother would have been on Death Row.“We all believed him.”
Okay for Now is Doug’s story.
Doug begins by telling us about the time, in The Wednesday Wars, when he and Holling and their friend Danny got to throw and bat with two New York Yankee baseball players, Joe Pepitone and Horace Clarke. Afterward, Joe Pepitone signed his cap and gave it to Doug. Doug says, “It was the only thing I ever owned that hadn’t belonged to some other Swieteck before me.” But then his “stupid brother found out about it.” He sneaked up on Doug while he was sleeping, twisted his arm behind his back and threatened to break it if Doug didn’t give him the cap.
Doug’s father loses his job, and the family has to move from Long Island to “stupid Marysville” in upstate New York. Doug hates everything about “stupid Marysville.” Almost.
When Doug is walking around “stupid Marysville,” he finds the library, which is not a dump like the rest of the town. In the library, he wanders into a room upstairs that has a table in the center that holds a huge book in a glass case. The book is open to a full-page picture of a bird, an arctic tern.
“The bird was falling and there wasn’t a single thing in the world that cared at all. “It was the most terrifying picture I had ever seen. “The most beautiful.”
The book is a nearly complete The Birds of America by John James Audubon. Schmidt has chosen a picture of one of Audubon’s birds for the beginning of each of the ten chapters of Doug’s story. Doug’s interpretation of the picture becomes the theme of the chapter and often those themes carry over through the rest of the book.
The next time Doug goes into the library, he meets Mr. Powell who turns a page in Audubon’s book every week. As Doug contemplates a new picture each week, he begins to learn something about himself and to think about people around him in light of his reflections on the birds. He learns even more when Mr. Powell starts teaching him how to see the pictures well enough to draw the birds. Audubon’s birds are a running theme in the story in the way of Shakespeare’s works in The Wednesday Wars.
When Doug first gets to Marysville, he believes he is alone like the arctic tern falling out of the sky. His father is abusive, one brother is a juvenile delinquent, and the other is in Vietnam. His mother is as much of an ally as she can be while trying not to bring her husband’s wrath down on herself or the boys.
Doug’s brother’s reputation has followed him to Marysville. When there are some robberies in town, Doug’s brother is the prime suspect. There are people who assume that because Doug’s brother is a delinquent, Doug probably is too.
However, it isn’t long before Doug gets a job as a delivery boy for a small store. As he meets the customers, he starts getting to know them and doing little favors for them. They become his allies almost while he isn’t looking. Some of his teachers also see his potential and do what they can to show him that his life doesn’t have to continue on the trajectory his family and homelife seem to be setting for him. Doug comes to realize that he is far from alone.
Of Schmidt’s three companion books, The Wednesday Wars, Okay for Now, and Just Like That, I think Okay for Now is the richest. The characters are full and believable and Doug’s growth over the school year is substantial. Doug finds himself surrounded by caring adults who see the best in him and mentor him through hard times.
I recommend reading these three books in order, but if it’s already too late for that, they are still excellent stories by themselves. Read out of order, some of the references won’t be as meaningful, but you won’t miss any significant plot elements.
Parents will want to know that there are some very difficult situations in this book. Though the abuse in Doug’s household isn’t explicit, a sense of fear pervades. About halfway through the book, Doug’s brother Lucas comes home from Vietnam. He has lost both legs and is in a wheelchair. He is understandably angry and sullen.
I don’t understand Schmidt’s repeating theme of 13 and 14-year-old characters dating and kissing. Again, there is nothing explicit, but many parents would object to relationships of that sort with the opposite sex, and I don’t believe it was pervasive in the late 60s.
This would be an excellent book club selection or for parents and teens to read together.
You may find out about books by Gary D. Schmidt at biblioguides.com.