FIRST BOY — Review

Thought for the Day:

“It is no sign of weakness or defeat that your manuscript ends up
in need of major surgery. This is common in all writing and among
the best of writers.”
~ E.B. White ~

Gifts for My Writer Friends:

I know some of my readers write picture books. I do. HERE is a great post about story beats by Vicky Fang on Kidlit Survival Guide. Even if you don’t write picture books, there is much to be gleaned here.

Everything you ever wanted to know about perspective (point of view) can be found in the very comprehensive post from Nathan Bransford HERE.

Erin Entrada Kelly has a nice, succinct post HERE called “What’s your point?” that will help you zero in on whether your scenes are doing their jobs.

I had a great trip to Seattle last week. It’s always nice to travel with my daughter Maggie, because she becomes my chauffeur and takes over almost all the driving. We took a bit of a detour to visit my nephew, Karl, and his wife in Hood River, Oregon, and then went the back way to Seattle, staying in Yakima. I had never been there. It’s a really nice place and they have at least one fabulous restaurant — Waterfire — and at least one great wine producer — Gilbert Cellers. It was a beautiful drive with great scenery. While in Seattle, I met up with a dear friend from high school. She is also a writer and a teacher of writing. One short visit wasn’t enough, but now with my daughter there, I have a great reason to visit Seattle often. The drive home wasn’t as much fun without my chauffeur, and I was really tired. But with the playoffs starting, I got to sit and rest up while I watched about 12 hours of good baseball. Well, good except that the dasterdly Dodgers won. There’s not much more fun for me than playoff baseball.

The next book on my list of Gary D. Schmidt books is FIRST BOY. I didn’t really know what to expect when I saw the cover. A boy, a cow, stars and stripes, and what looks like a rifle scope site. The first name in the book (actually the first two words) was Peter Hurd. You might remember the impetus for me taking this chronological journey through Schmidt’s books was because I kept running across names that were the same in his books. The first book I reviewed was THE SIN EATER that had a character named Will Hurd who was the son of a minister. When I read LIZZIE BRIGHT AND THE BUCKMINSTER BOY, I found a character named Willis Hurd, also the son of a minister. Now we have Peter Hurd. Guess what? He’s the son of a minister. I think I’m seeing a pattern here. But Hurd wasn’t the name that got me started on this journey. It was the name Hupfer that I noticed in THE LABORS OF HERCULES BEAL. In that book it was Lieutenant Colonel Hupfer who was a teacher who had a great impact on the main character. In FIRST BOY, Mr. Hupfer is a social studies teacher. He doesn’t have a huge role in this book, but he is a tough but fair teacher.

Cooper Jewett lives with his grandfather on a dairy farm in the small town of Lincoln, New Hampshire. Cooper never knew his parents. They were killed in a car accident when he was a baby. At least that is what he’s been told. He was raised by his grandparents, and his grandmother died a couple years ago. It is just Cooper and Grandpa now. One night, after watching the news about a presidential campaign, Grandpa says to Cooper, “You’re my first boy, Cooper, my first boy.” They were the last words he ever spoke. In the morning, he was dead. Cooper was really on his own. Neighbors rallied around, and Cooper insisted that all he had in the world was the farm, and he was going to run it. Mrs. Perley, a retired teacher and a neighbor, shows up to make sure Cooper has meals morning and evening. Another neighbor, Mr. Searle, helps with milking. At school, Senator Wickham, who is running for president, asks the principal for a meeting with Cooper. Wickham wants Cooper to join his campaign and travel around with him for ne next year. Cooper is not interested. He has a farm to run, but Wickham isn’t taking no for an answer. Bad things start to happen at the farm. Fences are cut, electricity goes out, there is a break in, and the small barn burns down. Then a stranger shows up and insists on taking Cooper to meet someone very important. It seems Cooper’s life is going to change, even if he doesn’t want it to.

I felt like I was watching a Frank Capra film while I was reading this book. Even though it is a contemporary setting, it felt very old fashioned. I kept expecting Jean Arthur and Jimmy Stewart to show up and help Cooper fight the good fight. You do have to suspend your belief in reality a bit, but I really love this book. It is a true coming-of-age story, and one of the best I’ve read. And of course I have to give you a taste of the incredible writing. “That night, Cooper watched the moon tussle with the branches of his grandmother’s russet apple tree until it floated away free and threw its silver gleaming all across the Near Pasure, and he wept — even if a dairyman wasn’t supposed to.” (page 84) Go find a copy. I guarantee you will enjoy it.

Please don’t forget to check for other Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday posts at Greg Pattridge’s blog HERE.