Okay for Now

The town of Marysville, in upstate New York, where Doug and his family have moved , has six blocks of houses as tiny and beat up as theirs, eighteen houses with flags outside, and one library that, as Doug discovers, is open only on Saturday. On the cool, marbled second floor of the library, he finds a table with a glass case under which there is a huge book opened to a painting of a bird. It is the most terrifying and beautiful picture he has ever seen. It is Audubon's Arctic Tern. He imagines drawing it in the air with his fingers. Also at the library Doug meets smart Lil Spicer, whose father owns a deli and who offers Doug a job as a delivery boy. And so begins Doug's Saturday routine: He learns from the librarian, Mr. Powell, about the principles of Audubon's art, but some of the plates are mysteriously missing, and Doug vows to make the book whole again. At school, Doug runs into trouble with his teachers, especially the So-Called Gym teacher, which earns him a number of after school detentions. At home, his father, a stern man with quick hands, often brings the unsavory Ernie Eco to dinner, his older brother, Christopher, is accused of stealing, and his oldest brother, Lucas, returns from Vietnam with a bandage covering his burned eyes and in a wheelchair because he has lost his legs. Gary Schmidt interweaves multiple themes of loss and recovery, art and inventiveness, truth and lies in a story teaming with distinctive, unusual characters and invaluable lessons about love, creativity, and survival.