Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt (Clarion/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $16.99, 9780547152608, 368 pp., ages 10-14, April 5, 2011)
Gary D. Schmidt knows how to create a complex character. He
received a Newbery Honor for The
Wednesday Wars, in which we learned there was a lot more to seventh-grade
teacher Mrs. Baker than Holling Hoodhood first thought. In this companion book
(which may be thoroughly enjoyed entirely independent of The Wednesday Wars), we learn a great deal more about Doug Swieteck
and his middle brother, who constantly bullied Holling. It begins in the summer of
1968, just before eighth grade. Doug's father has lost his job and the family
is moving from Long Island upstate to Marysville, N.Y., where Mr. Swieteck's
buddy Ernie Eco has found him a job at the Ballard Paper Mill. Lucas, Doug's oldest brother, is fighting in Vietnam.
"Joe Pepitone once gave me his New York Yankees baseball cap. I'm not lying," Doug begins. Joe Pepitone gave Holling Hoodhood his jacket, and Holling was thrilled, but for Doug, the youngest of three boys, Joe Pepitone's cap had even greater meaning: "It was the only thing I ever owned that hadn't belonged to some other Swieteck before me," Doug admits. Then Doug's older brother swipes the cap. Trades it for cigarettes. It's long gone. But on moving day, Holling, in his sole cameo appearance, comes by with a farewell present for Doug: a New York Yankees jacket. "You know whose jacket this was, right?" asks Doug. This jacket, a gift from Joe Pepitone to Holling, from Holling to Doug, grows in significance as the novel progresses.
One could argue that the novel relies on a number of
coincidences. But for a teen like Doug, who has often been the target of an
abusive father and two bullying older brothers, it feels like circumstances
have been stacked against him. Maybe, though, things are turning around for him.
Because Doug gets into a fight with his father, defending his mother in their
new home, he's left behind while the rest of the family 
heads to the local diner.
That leaves Doug alone to explore the town. He meets a girl locking up her bike
in front of a building that "was trying to look a whole lot more important
than it should"; it turns out to be the library. He wants to avoid the
girl with the bike, so he goes upstairs in the library. And this is what he
sees: a huge book with only one picture: The
Arctic Tern by John James Audubon. "I couldn't take my eyes off it. He
was all alone, and he looked like he was falling out of the sky and into this
cold green sea.... This bird was falling and there wasn't a single thing in the
world that cared at all." Doug, who never lets his feelings show,
expresses emotion through his description of what he sees in the painting. As
he falls asleep that night, he thinks about the bird's "terrified eye."
Each chapter opens with an Audubon plate (reproduced in
b&w), and each is fully integrated into Doug's daily life. The next
morning, a Sunday, Doug sees his mother's smile and wishes he could draw it. "I
felt my fingers moving again, trying to get that smile right," he thinks.
He heads to the library, but it's closed. Again he meets the girl with the
bike. She wins him over--not with the Coke she buys him but with the belch she
lets loose after she's gulped down her soda. And then Lil gets him a job
working for her father as delivery boy for Spicer's Deli. That's how Doug meets
Mrs. Windermere. Lil says everyone's afraid of Mrs. Windermere, but thugs have
no fear. And in her home, he sees another John James Audubon painting: The Red-throated Diver. He tells Mrs.
Windermere what he sees: "No one's paying 
attention to the mother. Who
could blame her if she took off?" She answers, "Skinny delivery boy,
you have it all wrong. Look how she's standing closer to her little one. She's
looking around to watch for the next spectacular thing that's going to come
into his life."
Gradually, these serendipitous moments add up and Doug begins to let others in. Mr. Powell, one of the librarians, invites Doug to draw the Arctic Tern, and offers him guidance. Doug observes, "It looks like I'm showing what isn't the bird." Mr. Powell responds, "That's exactly what you're doing. Most young artists take a long time to understand that." Doug begins to think of himself differently ("Did you catch what Mr. Powell called me? 'Young artist.' I bet you missed that"). Schmidt uses Doug's direct addresses to the audience judiciously, in times of joy and betrayal, and they take on a stunning cumulative effect.
Just when things are going well for Doug, everything begins to fall apart. Someone breaks into Spicer's Deli right before school starts; Doug's older brother gets the blame. The principal of Washington Irving Junior High School aligns Doug with his allegedly corrupt brother. So does everyone on Doug's delivery route--"You could see it in [their] eyes."--except Mr. Powell, who continues the art lessons, and Mr. Ferris, the science teacher. "Doug Swieteck," Mr. Ferris says, "do you know the basic principle of physical science?" He has a toy rocking horse named Clarence. He sets it rocking, then continues, "The basic principle of physical science is this: two bodies cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Do you understand that?" Mr. Ferris explains, "In this class you are not your brother."
Doug is not his brother. The
Red-throated Diver will not take off. But then Doug learns that the Audubon
plates are being sold off one by one. His Joe Pepitone jacket disappears. He
goes to the Ballard Paper Mill picnic and his two-man team beats his father and
Ernie Eco in the baseball quiz. When Doug shows up at Mr. Ballard's office the
following week to collect his prize money and a baseball signed by Roger Maris,
Mickey Mantle and Joe Pepitone, Mr. Ballard says Mr. Swieteck has already collected
it on his behalf. When Doug asks his father 
about it, Mr. Swieteck calls Mr.
Ballard "a liar." In perhaps the novel's finest moment, Doug figures
out what to do. He figures out the right thing to do because of Audubon's The Yellow Shank. Doug "step[s]
into the middle of the picture, where he should be, with the light behind him
and the dark ahead."
Doug's mother, father, brother and Ernie Eco are there to see Doug do it. This first action sets off others--other actions of Doug's own, and the actions of others. Doug begins a quest to reunite all of the Audubon plates within the book at the Maryville Public Library. "When you find something that's whole, you do what you can to keep it that way," he says. But his statement comes to mean much more than the Audubon book. When Doug's brother Lucas comes home from Vietnam, he is missing his legs, above the knees. The Swietecks begin their own journey to become whole--not without its dead ends. In Schmidt's skillful hands, both the young people and the adults come through as living, breathing, complicated characters. An adolescent male can create beautiful art and ace his baseball stats. He can love his mother's smile and stand up to his father. Doug may not know what lies ahead, but he is okay for now.--J.M.B