Gary D. Schmidt

Look Both Ways meets Seedfolks in this masterful novel from two titans of kid lit that follows a diverse cast of young people whose lives intersect in surprising and hilarious ways over the course of a summer day. Here’s what’s so cool about the beach. Kids are everywhere! Kids you know, kids you want to know. Wandering from one blanket to another, from one family to another. Somebody’s mom reads a fat summer novel. Somebody’s dad snores with an iPad on his chest. Babies cry. Girls laugh. Frisbee players whoop! Kites in the perfect blue sky.   Some kids bodysurf. Some don’t even like the water. They build sand cities for their friends and sand jails for the grown-ups, and when the tide comes in everything gets washed away.  There’s the other world, where all kids hear is tomorrow, next week, next year. And then there’s the beach, where everything is right now!  Why can’t every day be a day at the beach? From two-time Newbery honoree Gary D. Schmidt and two-time PEN Award winner Ron Koertge comes a moving and often laugh-out-loud funny middle grade novel about family, friendship, and belonging, told by a group of kids spending a day at the beach. Thoughtful vignettes brilliantly weave together an irresistible tale of tween conflict and connections.

In these hilarious stories by some of the top authors of middle grade fiction today, each young character is coping with a minor superpower—while also discovering their power to change themselves and their community, find their voice, and celebrate what makes them unique. The kids in these humorous short stories each have a minor superpower they’re learning to live with. One can shape-shift—but only part of her body, and only on Mondays. Another can always tell whether an avocado is perfectly ripe. One can even hear the thoughts of the animals in the pet store! But what these stories are really about is their young protagonists “owning” a power that contributes to their individuality, that allows them to find their place in the world, that shows them a potential they might not have imagined. Because if you really think about it, we all have something special and unique about ourselves that makes us a little bit super. We all have the power to change as an individual, to change our communities for the better, to have a voice and to speak up. These playful, thought-provoking tales from some of today’s top middle grade authors prompt readers to consider what their own superpower might be, and how they can use it. Written by Pablo Cartaya, Nikki Grimes, Leah Henderson, Jarrett Krosoczka, Remy Lai, Kyle Lukoff, Meg Medina, Daniel Nayeri, Linda Sue Park, Mitali Perkins, Pam Muñoz Ryan, Gary D. Schmidt, Brian Young, and Ibi Zoboi; coedited by Leah Henderson and Gary D. Schmidt.

While serving as a British Fencible to maintain the peace in eighteenth-century Ireland, Anson finds that his sympathy for a hedge master, a teacher devoted to teaching Irish children their forbidden language and culture, places him in conflict with the law of King George II. Reprint.

"- Je n'arrive pas à voir Jupiter. La lune brille trop. Je ne sais pas où elle est.- Elle est à sa place, ai-je répondu.- Non.Il s'est enveloppé de ses bras pour se réchauffer. Quand il s'est enfin retourné, j'ai vu un panache de buée s'échapper de ses lèvres dans le clair de lune.- Je la trouverai, a-t-il dit. Je ne veux pas rester seul.- Tu n'es pas seul.Il a hoché la tête de haut en bas.- Non, tu n'es pas seul.- Si.- Tu m'as, moi.Il a eu un petit rire triste, avant de répondre :- Jackie, j'ai toute une vie d'avance sur toi."Quand Jack rencontre Joseph, son nouveau frère adoptif, il sait déjà trois choses sur lui :Joseph a presque tué un professeur.Il a été enfermé en rééducation à Stone Mountain.Il a une fille. Son prénom est Jupiter. Et il ne l'a jamais vue.Ce que Jack ne sait pas, c'est à quel point Joseph est désespéré de retrouver sa petite fille.Et jusqu'où lui, Jack, sera prêt à aller pour l'aider.Mais quand de nouveaux liens se tissent, d'anciennes blessures se rouvrent, et le passé rattrape toujours ceux qui tentent de l'oublier.

Joseph, padre a tredici anni, non ha mai visto la figlia Juno, data in adozione alla nascita. Joseph non ha avuto una vita semplice: di sua madre sa pochissimo, il padre è alcolista e violento. Dopo un periodo in riformatorio, viene assegnato a una famiglia affidataria nel Maine: qui scopre per la prima volta cosa significa essere accolti senza pregiudizi e cosa si prova ad avere qualcuno che stia dalla tua parte. Grazie ai suoi nuovi genitori e al fratellino dodicenne ritrova se stesso e un nuovo rapporto di fiducia verso gli altri. E questo gli rende ancora più difficile stare lontano dalla piccola Juno. Questa è la storia di un ragazzo ferito, di un padre ritrovato e del suo grande amore.

When Jack's P.E. coach pairs him up with Jay Perkins for the cross-country team, neither of them is happy about it. Jack is grieving the loss of Joseph, his foster brother, and adjusting to his role as big brother to Jupiter, Joseph’s orphaned daughter. Dealing with Jay Perkins—who'd once ganged up with his buddies to jump Joseph in the locker room—is the last thing he wants to do. But then Jack realizes that Jay is grieving too—the loss of his cousin Maddie, Jupiter’s mom. As Jack's relationships with both Jay and Jupiter grow and his running improves, he starts to feel more like himself than he has since Joseph died. He's finding his stride . . . until Maddie’s parents, who have never shown interest in their granddaughter before, decide to claim Jupiter as their own, blocking Jack’s family from adopting her. And suddenly Jack’s past and present smash together, threatening to dissolve both his newfound confidence and his friendships. This poignant, powerful companion to Orbiting Jupiter is Gary D. Schmidt at his best. He is the author of the Printz Honor and Newbery Honor Book  Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy ;  Okay for Now , a National Book Award finalist; and  The Wednesday Wars , a Newbery Honor Book, among many acclaimed novels for young readers.

Following the death of her closest friend in summer 1968, Meryl Lee Kowalski goes off to St. Elene's Preparatory Academy for Girls, where she struggles to navigate the venerable boarding school's traditions and a social structure heavily weighted toward students from wealthy backgrounds. In a parallel story, Matt Coffin has wound up on the Maine coast near St. Elene's with a pillowcase full of money lifted from the leader of a criminal gang, fearing the gang's relentless, destructive pursuit. Both young people gradually dispel their loneliness, finding a way to be hopeful and also finding each other.

Not only is Turner Buckminster the son of the new minister in a small Maine town, he is shunned for playing baseball differently than the local boys. Then he befriends smart and lively Lizzie Bright Griffin, a girl from Malaga Island, a poor community founded by former slaves. Lizzie shows Turner a new world along the Maine coast from digging clams to rowing a boat next to a whale. When the powerful town elders, including Turner’s father, decide to drive the people off the island to set up a tourist business, Turner stands alone against them. He and Lizzie try to save her community, but there’s a terrible price to pay for going against the tide.

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.

When Jack meets his new foster brother, he already knows three things about him: Joseph almost killed a teacher. He was incarcerated at a place called Stone Mountain. He has a daughter. Her name is Jupiter. And he has never seen her. What Jack doesn’t know, at first, is how desperate Joseph is to find his baby girl. Or how urgently he, Jack, will want to help. But the past can’t be shaken off. Even as new bonds form, old wounds reopen. The search for Jupiter demands more from Jack than he can imagine. This tender, heartbreaking novel is Gary D. Schmidt at his best.

Carter Jones is astonished early one morning when he finds a real English butler, bowler hat and all, on the doorstep—one who stays to help the Jones family, which is a little bit broken. In addition to figuring out middle school, Carter has to adjust to the unwelcome presence of this new know-it-all adult in his life and navigate the butler's notions of decorum. And ultimately, when his burden of grief and anger from the past can no longer be ignored, Carter learns that a burden becomes lighter when it is shared.

From author Gary D. Schmidt comes a picture book biography of a giant in the struggle for civil rights. Sojourner Truth was born into slavery but possessed a mind and a vision that knew no bounds. So Tall Within traces her life from her childhood through her emancipation to her leadership in the movement for rights for both women and African Americans.

Pursued by greedy villains, two boys on a quest to save innocent lives meet the banished queen whose son was stolen by Rumpelstiltskin eleven years earlier, and she provides much more than the answer they seek.

From award-winning author Gary D. Schmidt, a warm and witty novel in the tradition of The Wednesday Wars, in which a seventh grader has to figure out how to fulfill an assignment to perform the Twelve Labors of Hercules in real life—and makes discoveries about friendship, community, and himself along the way. Herc Beal knows who he's named after—a mythical hero—but he's no superhero. He's the smallest kid in his class. So when his homeroom teacher at his new middle school gives him the assignment of duplicating the mythical Hercules's amazing feats in real life, he's skeptical. After all, there are no Nemean Lions on Cape Cod—and not a single Hydra in sight. Missing his parents terribly and wishing his older brother wasn't working all the time, Herc figures out how to take his first steps along the road that the great Hercules himself once walked. Soon, new friends, human and animal, are helping him. And though his mythical role model performed his twelve labors by himself, Herc begins to see that he may not have to go it alone.

In this Newbery Honor–winning novel, Gary D. Schmidt tells the witty and compelling story of a teenage boy who feels that fate has it in for him, during the school year 1968-69. Seventh grader Holling Hoodhood isn't happy. He is sure his new teacher, Mrs. Baker, hates his guts. Holling's domineering father is obsessed with his business image and disregards his family. Throughout the school year, Holling strives to get a handle on the Shakespeare plays Mrs. Baker assigns him to read on his own time, and to figure out the enigmatic Mrs. Baker. As the Vietnam War turns lives upside down, Holling comes to admire and respect both Shakespeare and Mrs. Baker, who have more to offer him than he imagined. And when his family is on the verge of coming apart, he also discovers his loyalty to his sister, and his ability to stand up to his father when it matters most.

“Henry Smith’s father told him that if you build your house far enough away from Trouble, then Trouble will never find you.” But Trouble comes careening down the road one night in the form of a pickup truck that strikes Henry’s older brother, Franklin. In the truck is Chay Chouan, a young Cambodian from Franklin’s preparatory school, and the accident sparks racial tensions in the school—and in the well-established town where Henry’s family has lived for generations. Caught between anger and grief, Henry sets out to do the only thing he can think climb Mt. Katahdin, the highest mountain in Maine, which he and Franklin were going to climb together. Along with Black Dog, whom Henry has rescued from drowning, and a friend, Henry leaves without his parents’ knowledge. The journey, both exhilarating and dangerous, turns into an odyssey of discovery about himself, his older sister, Louisa, his ancestry, and why one can never escape from Trouble.

The Valorim are about to fall to a dark lord when they send a necklace containing their planet across the cosmos, hurtling past a trillion starsall the way into the lunchbox of Tommy Pepper, sixth grader, of Plymouth, Mass. Mourning his late mother, Tommy doesn't notice much about the chain he found, but soon he is drawing the twin suns and humming the music of a hanorah. As Tommy absorbs the art and language of the Valorim, their enemies target him. When a creature begins ransacking Plymouth in search of the chain, Tommy learns he must protect his family from villains far worse than he's ever imagined.

傑克是個12歲的男孩，他的家在緬因州一個農場裡。最近，這個家庭來了一位新成員――13歲的少年約瑟夫。約瑟夫經歷了太多，他不想跟任何人說話、也不願意別人碰他，他心裡還有一個放不下的重大秘密。隨著瞭解加深，傑克看到了真實的約瑟夫，他選擇無條件地支持約瑟夫。在這個寄養家庭和學校老師的接納、信任與愛的影響下，約瑟夫漸漸有了變化。兩個男孩體會到家庭的真正意義以及需要為此做出的犧牲。 兩屆紐伯瑞兒童文學獎得主、《星期三的戰爭》《週末圖書館》作者加里·施密特，以簡潔克制的筆調，為我們帶來這部溫柔而令人心碎的作品。