It's a Good Game Plan

(Detail from "One Good Book")

(...The title of this drawing being kind of ironic because I'd forgotten it's name, but wanted to put this guy in because he illustrates an idea I have about a really good book I am reading right now.)

A friend, Megan Sugiyama, has a wonderful perception about all layers of life. She gave a young adult book, "Okay For Now," to my husband as a gift, saying it was one of the best books she'd recently read. It has taken me a while, but I am finally reading it and before one chapter was over I was in tears and knew I didn't want to let these characters out of my life. I fell in love that quickly.

It's not easy to be a complex person in this complex world. The author, Gary D. Schmidt, gets a handle on this mess, simplifies it into an understandable game board of life, and shows us how every step of our game (no matter how sh***y or twisted up it might be) has room for positive interpretation.

There are birds in this book (which my husband loves) and there is art (as you know there must be because everything I put in this blog is filtered through art-brain). The protagonist is in the 8th grade and is forced to move to a small town where everyone thinks they know everyone else's business.

I'm on page 218 and the last page is 360.
I will get there way too soon.

~

You can find "Okay For Now" on the best sellers list wherever vibrant, new, young books are found.

You can find more characters who I am imagining might live in Schmidt's book in the drawing below.

"One Good Book"

And you can find possibilities for dialogue that go with the above characters here.