Feature Book of the Week Okay for Now by Gary Schmidt

FEATURE BOOK OF THE WEEK

Midwesterner Gary D. Schmidt won Newbery Honor awards for Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boys and The Wednesday Wars, two coming-of-age novels about unlikely friends finding a bond. Okay For Now, his latest novel, explores another seemingly improbable alliance, this one between new outsider in town Doug Swieteck and Lil Spicer, the savvy spitfire daughter of his deli owner boss. With her challenging assistance, Doug discovers new sides of himself. Along the way, he also readjusts his relationship with his abusive father, his school peers, and his older brother, a newly returned war victim of Vietnam.

Author Post by Gary Schmidt

Dear Folks,

Thanks for reading Okay for Now.  This book began in the public library of Flint, Michigan--Flint being America's most violent--because there are no jobs there, and where there are no jobs there is despair, and where there is despair there can be violence.  But in the middle of that is this noble and wonderful library, where writers come to meet kids.  And I was there one day and stumbled upon a glass case.  In that glass case was a huge book:  John James Audubon's Birds of America.  It is the world's most beautiful book--you can look it up online and see why.  The book in this glass case was not a first edition--which would have been worth about, oh, fourteen million dollars.  But it was a later edition that was beautiful, and very valuable.  And I asked them why they didn't sell it to raise money for an underfunded library.  They said that they knew that things would someday get better in Flint, and they wanted this book to be there for the next generation.

These librarians should be in Congress.  That's nobility.

So, that got me thinking.  Audubons are regularly destroyed when people take each page out and sell it independently.  (There are only 118 copies of the first edition left in the world because of this.)  Suppose there was a kid who came upon this book in his library, and several pages had been removed to sell.  Suppose he wanted to get them back, because he's a sort of beat up kid and he wants just one thing in his life that is perfect.  Then suppose he decides, really decides to go after the pages--but he has no resources to do this.  And that's how the book began--a kid trying to make one thing in his life perfect, because nothing else is.

Doug is created after a real kid I knew in middle school, who was sort of lost and always in trouble--the kind of kiddo you do not want to be around because he's always getting in trouble, and dragging anyone near him into trouble too.  I've wondered about him since--where he is, what he's doing, how he remembers middle school.  This book is one story about him--made up, of course--and maybe one story about a whole lot of kids who are sort of beat up and hoping to find one thing in their lives that is whole. 

This is a companion book to The Wednesday Wars--so if you've read that novel, you'll have met Doug already.  Holling makes a brief cameo as well, but then Doug moves away to Marysville, and away from the world of Camillo Junior High.  Here's hoping that you'll enjoy this new venture into the eighth-grade year of Doug Swieteck, as he tries to find nine pages of an original Audubon, as the country tries to set a man on the moon, and as we gt another play!

Yours,

Gary Schmidt

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gary Schmidt is a professor of English at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He received both a Newbery Honor and a Printz Honor for Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy and a Newbery Honor for The Wednesday Wars. He lives with his family on a 150-year-old farm in Alto, Michigan, where he splits wood, plants gardens, writes, and feeds the wild cats that drop by. You can learn more about Gary from his website.

Feature Book of the Week Belly Up by Stuart Gibbs

FEATURE BOOK OF THE WEEK

12 year old Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt Fitzroy has got a murder on his hands and trouble on his tail. Henry, the hippopatamus at the brand-new nationally known FunJungle, has gone belly up. Even though it's claimed he died of natural causes, Teddy smells something fishy and it sure ain't the polar bear's lunch. Dealing with the zoo's top brass proves to be nothing but a waste of time. They want to see any trace of Henry's death disappear like yesterday's paper. So Teddy sets out to find the truth. With the help of Summer McCraken, a fiesty girl with secrets of her own, the two narrow down their prime suspects. Is it Martin Del Gato, FunJungle's head of operations who hates kids and hates animals even more? Or J.J McCraken, the owner of FunJungle and and hates animals even more? Or J.J McCraken, the owner of FunJungle and Summer's father, who has more concern for the dough he's raking in than the animals in the zoo? As their investigation goes on, Teddy gets squeezed on all sides to quit asking questions or Henry won't be the only animal in the zoo to turn up dead. The deeper Teddy and Summer get, they had better make sure they want to know what they want to know because when it comes to hippo homicide, the truth can't be kept in a cage!

AUTHOR POST BY STUART GIBBS

I worked at a zoo when I was in college, and I had a wonderful time there.  Afterward, I became a screenwriter.  The while time I was writing movies, I always thought that the behind-the-scenes world at a zoo would make for a great story.  So I eventually wrote and sold a movie script set at a zoo.  But it never got made.  So then I sold a TV show set at a zoo.  But that didn't get made either.  (This kind of thing happens a lot in Hollywood.  You can actually make a good living writing things that never get made.)  Then, one day, an agent asked me if I had any interest writing a middle grade novel.  I leapt at the chance -- because I realized that I had finally found the perfect place to tell my zoo story.

Now the question was, what story should I tell?  It occurred to me that the murder of an animal was a great crime for a kid to solve -- in part because the police really wouldn't investigate it themselves.  (After all, the police generally solve the murders of humans, not animals.)  So I created Teddy Fitzroy, a kid lucky enough to live at an incredible zoo and knowledgable enough about animals to suspect foul play when one dies.  Now, I only needed victim.

I read a lot of mysteries while figuring out how to write this one, and I realized something in the process: The more suspects you have, the better the mystery.  So then I had to figure out, why would a lot of people want a specific animal dead?  After all, animals are generally quite nice.  They usually don't make enemies.

Hippos, however, aren't that nice at all.  Don't get me wrong.  I love hippos -- but I wouldn't want to be in the water with one.  Hippos are dangerous, unpredictable -- and tremendously unsanitary.  And yet, in lots of children's books and movies, they're depicted as surprisingly cute and cuddly.  (See: Fantasia, Madagascar, the George and Martha series -- or any book by Sandra Boynton.)  Thus, it seemed plausible that some adults who didn't really know what they were doing might think that real hippos were cute and cuddly -- and then make the mistake of making one the mascot of their theme park.  And once they realized their mascot was, in fact, dangerous, unpredictable and tremendously unsanitary, a lot of them might want it dead.

So that's why I bumped off a hippo.

I hope you enjoy my book.

Stuart Gibbs

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Vital statistics for Stuart Gibbs:

Birthdate: June 11  (Please do not feel obligated to send presents)

Birthplace: Philadelphia, PA

Place that he really spent most of his childhood: San Antonio, TX

Place that he lives now: Los Angeles, CA

Interesting thing he did before becoming a writer: Worked at a zoo

Large, semi-aquatic rodents he was at one point one of the world’s foremost experts on:Capybaras

Reason he was one of the world’s foremost experts on capybaras: No one else was studying them

Movies he has written that have actually been made: See Spot Run, Repli-Kate, Showdown

Animated movies he worked on: Anastasia, Open Season 3, Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers (yes, another Three Musketeers project)

TV networks that have hired him to develop TV shows for them: ABC, Fox, Disney, Nickelodeon

Did any of those TV shows get on the air? No

Hobbies: Hiking, cycling, skiing, canyoneering, traveling

Does he have any hobbies that don’t involve being outside? Not really

Wait, what’s canyoneering? It’s kind of like hiking, except you do it in a canyon and occasionally, you have to rappel down a waterfall.

Wow, sounds cool. It is.  It’s really cool.

Favorite place to travel to: Anywhere in Africa to go on safari

Wife: Suzanne

Children: Dashiell and Violet

Next books: “Spy School” will be in stores on March 6, 2012.  And “Traitor’s Chase,” the sequel to “The Last Musketeer,” will be available on June 26, 2012.

Author info retrieved from author website

I would like to thank Mr Gibbs for agreeing to participate in the Feature Book of the Week. Hope everyone is enjoying Belly Up.

Featured Book of the Week Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

FEATURED BOOK OF THE WEEK

Prince Aleksander, would-be heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, is on the run. His own people have turned on him. His title is worthless. All he has is a battletorn war machine and a loyal crew of men.

Deryn Sharp is a commoner, disguised as a boy in the British Air Service. She's a brilliant airman. But her secret is in constant danger of being discovered.

With World War I brewing, Alek and Deryn's paths cross in the most unexpected way…taking them on a fantastical, around-the-world adventure that will change both their lives forever.

GUEST POST 

BY 

SCOTT WESTERFELD

The Leviathan trilogy was inspired by the "Boy's Own Adventures" I discovered on library bookshelves as a kid, books from a century ago that had three main selling points: derring-do, airships, and beautiful illustrations. When I started work, I thought the first two would be enough to recapture the magic of those crumbling old books. But then I ran across Keith Thompson's amazing artwork, and realized that Leviathan could actually look like an adventure novel from 1914. The tale grew in the telling, and we would up with fifty(!) pieces of art in the first installment alone.

Keith has updated the opulence of those old illustrations, with a "Victorian manga" style that's both true to its roots and pure eye-candy to the modern teenager. He and I worked together to build a world in which Charles Darwin discovered how to combine the "life-threads" of species, leading to a World War I pitting fantastical creatures against steampunk machines. There are sword fights and talking lizards, pitched battles and narrow escapes, a prince in disguise as a commoner, and of course a girl posing as a boy to serve aboard a living, hydrogen-breathing airship.

It's my first time writing a historical (even an alternate-historical) and my first time working with an illustrator, both of which were a blast. I hope you enjoy entering the world of Leviathan. I sure did.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Scott Westerfeld is me. I’m the author of eighteen novels. Five are for adults, and the other thirteen for young adults.

I’ve also been an occasional ghost writer, which is like driving someone else’s car really, really fast for lots of money. (I could tell you what famous authors I ghost-wrote for, but then I’d have to kill you. My name can be found on three Powerpuff Girl choose your own adventures, however.) In my artsy days, I wrote music for artsy downtown New York dancers, some of which can be found at the bottom of my video page.
For my early adult books, check out the bottom of this page. Note that they aren’t particularly suitable for children.

I’m best known for my four sets of books for young adults. The most recent is the Leviathan trilogy. It’s a steampunk retelling of World War I, illustrated by the incomparable Keith Thompson. It features adventure, walking machines, and living airships! Read more about it here.

My most famous works are those of the Uglies series, set in a future where cosmetic surgery is compulsory when you turn 16, making everyone beautiful. Of course, there are some people who want to keep their own faces . . . and that’s not okay with the government. The series consists of a trilogy—Uglies, Pretties and Specials—as well as a companion novel, Extras.

I’ve written another YA trilogy called Midnighters, a tale of five teenagers born on the stroke of midnight, for whom time freezes every night, revealing a dark and terrible hidden world. My ancient, dorky website for the series is here.

I also have a set of books which is often called “The New York Trilogy,” three novels all set in contemporary New York, but not a real trilogy. The first is So Yesterday, about a cool hunter who runs afoul of a plot to end consumerism. The second is called Peeps, a “vampire” novel. The third isThe Last Days, set in the same world as Peeps.

I was born in Texas, and split my time between New York City and Sydney, Australia. (I have more frequent flyer miles than you do.) You can read many personal details of my life on my blog. (retrieved from author's website)


Many thanks to Scott for participating in this year's Book Battle blog. I hope everyone is enjoying his book as much as I did!