Okay For Now

On April 26, 1795, John James Audubon, naturalist and painter, was born on his father’s sugar plantation in Haiti. He would become famous in his adopted country, the newly formed United States, for setting out to paint, catalogue, and gain an encyclopedic understanding of its winged creatures. A copy of Audubon’s Birds of America recently made auction history, selling for more than 11.5 million dollars to become the most expensive book in the world.

Many books for children have featured Audubon. But I think a book published in 2011 by Gary D. Schmidt, Okay For Now, may do more to explain the enduring appeal of Audubon’s work to fifth through eighth graders than anything else ever written about him. In this historical novel set in 1968, Doug Swieteck (who made an appearance in Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars) leaves for a new home, a small town in upstate New York. With a brother in Vietnam, an incredibly abusive father, and an older brother who torments him and seems intent on a life of crime, Doug faces more problems than your average child.

But he also possesses an incredible spirit. He is basically a good kid caught in a very bad situation. In the course of the novel he convinces everyone in the town—including himself—that he, not his father or brothers, will determine his own fate. Schmidt is a master at describing absolutely believable young boys who readers grow to care for and to cheer on. For my money, Doug is his greatest creation to date. As the novel evolves, readers slowly understand some of the demons in Doug’s life and why he acts the way he does. Even more important, they watch him change and become stronger, more true to himself.

Right after Doug arrives in town, he discovers a copy of Audubon’s Birds of America in the library. With the help of a staff member he starts to copy the illustrations in the book. Doug becomes obsessed with these birds. Each chapter presents a black-and-white reproduction of one of Audubon’s masterpieces—along with Doug’s understanding of it. Because Schmidt is a master craftsman, weaving plot threads together with consummate grace, the bird in each chapter also signifies some of the events in Doug’s life. Gary deftly works in the historical issues of the era—the Vietnam War and the Apollo 11 moon shot—in a way that makes them understandable for young readers.

If you love baseball, you’ll learn a lot about the Yankees in the 1960s. If you are interested in art, you’ll find some brilliant composition analysis. If you are a literature nut, you will be able to see Jane Eyre through Doug’s eyes. If you enjoy watching a writer weave story, plot, and language together, you can savor this brilliant book by a master at the top of his craft—one of the finest pieces of writing for young readers of the last decade. And if you simply enjoy a heartwarming, compelling story, you will have a fabulous time reading Okay for Now. Wise and witty and savvy about life, the book has a lot to teach all its readers. And best of all, we get to hang out with Doug Swieteck for a couple of hundred pages.

Here’s a passage from Okay For Now: