Gary D. Schmidt

"Jack, 12, tells the gripping story of Joseph, 14, who joins his family as a foster child. Damaged in prison, Joseph wants nothing more than to find his baby daughter, Jupiter, whom he has never seen. When Joseph has begun to believe he'll have a future, he is confronted by demons from his past that force a tragic sacrifice"--

Orbiting Jupiter

In this poignant, perceptive, witty novel, Gary D. Schmidt brings authenticity and emotion to multiple plot strands, weaving in themes of grief, loss, redemption, achievement, and love. 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.

Just Like That

Labors of Hercules Beal

Turner Buckminster hates his new home of Phippsburg, Maine, but things improve when he meets Lizzie Bright Griffin, a girl from a poor island community founded by slaves that the town fathers want to change into a tourist spot.

Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy

In a desperate attempt for survival, a peaceful civilization on a faraway planet besieged by a dark lord sends its most precious gift across the cosmos into the lunchbox of sixth-grader Tommy Pepper of Plymouth, Massachusetts. 75,000 first printing.

What Came from the Stars

Carter Jones is astonished early one morning when he finds a real English butler, bowler hat and all, on the doorstep. He announces he is here to stay 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 love of cricket. 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. Sparkling with humour, this insightful and compassionate story is the latest from the award-winning author of Orbiting Jupiter.

Pay Attention, Carter Jones

From celebrated author Gary D. Schmidt comes a picture book biography of a giant in the struggle for civil rights, perfectly pitched for readers today. 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 painful childhood through her remarkable emancipation to her incredible leadership in the movement for rights for both women and African Americans. Her story is told with lyricism and pathos by Gary D. Schmidt, one of the most celebrated writers for children in the twenty-first century, and brought to life by award winning and fine artist Daniel Minter. This combination of talent is just right for introducing this legendary figure to a new generation of children.

Sojourner Truth's Long Walk Toward Freedom

So Tall Within

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.

Straw Into Gold

During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker's classroom where they read the plays of William Shakespeare and Holling learns muchof value about the world he lives in.

The Wednesday Wars

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.

The Labors of Hercules Beal

Trouble

During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker's classroom where they read the plays of William Shakespeare and Holling learns much of value about the world he lives in.

The Wednesday wars

Dominique Kugler

"- 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.

Autour de Jupiter

2011 National Book Award Finalist As a fourteen-year-old who just moved to a new town, with no friends and a louse for an older brother, Doug Swieteck has all the stats stacked against him. So begins a coming-of-age masterwork full of equal parts comedy and tragedy from Newbery Honor winner Gary D. Schmidt. As Doug struggles to be more than the “skinny thug” that his teachers and the police think him to be, he finds an unlikely ally in Lil Spicer—a fiery young lady who “smelled like daisies would smell if they were growing in a big field under a clearing sky after a rain.” In Lil, Doug finds the strength to endure an abusive father, the suspicions of a whole town, and the return of his oldest brother, forever scarred, from Vietnam. Together, they find a safe haven in the local library, inspiration in learning about the plates of John James Audubon’s birds, and a hilarious adventure on a Broadway stage. In this stunning novel, Schmidt expertly weaves multiple themes of loss and recovery in a story teeming with distinctive, unusual characters and invaluable lessons about love, creativity, and survival.

Okay for Now

“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 of: 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.

Susan M. Felch

Contributors include: Basho, Will Campbell, Rachel Carson, Annie Dillard, Donald Hall, Ron Hansen, Jane Kenyon, Jamaica Kincaid, Barry Lopez, Kathleen Norris, Henry David Thoreau, John Updike, E.B. White and many others.

A Spiritual Biography of the Season

Winter

National Book Award finalist and two-time Newbery Honor-winning author Gary D. Schmidt recaptures the classic tale of one man's spiritual journey in this contemporary retelling of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, masterfully illustrated with watercolors by artist Barry Moser. Here again is the tale of Christian's epic trek from the City of Destruction to the Heavenly Palaces - of the pitfalls that threaten to waylay him and the graces that strengthen him along the way. Matching Bunyan's flare for storytelling and vivid imagery, Gary Schmidt's new narrative also echoes the style of writers like J.R.R. Tolkien, Dante, Sir Thomas Browne, E.M. Forster, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Even after three centuries, this odyssey of faith and human perseverance continues to inspire readers today - and now Schmidt's engaging retelling will delight and stir the imaginations of a new generation of pilgrims.

Pilgrim's Progress

When the Benedictine Reform movement reached Britain in the ninth century, it brought with it not only monastic reform, but also an enthusiasm for the arts as a way of broadening the appeal of the Christian message. While one aspect of this emphasis was the decoration of the church in order to create a place whose beauty suited the beauty of God, another was the creation of images that were readily accessible to a populace that depended upon oral and visual texts. The mouth of hell, which medievalist Gary D. Schmidt describes in this volume, was one such image, created in order to express vividly and dramatically the abstract concept of spiritual damnation. The mouth of hell combined several different images, drawn from several different traditions that were still active in Anglo-Saxon culture. The leonine features of the mouth were drawn from Scriptural imagery, while the dragon-like aspects were combined from both the Scriptures and Anglo-Saxon visions of the draco. The notion of being swallowed into hell, ultimately drawn from the imagery of the Psalms, was linked to the activities of the dragon, which swallowed souls into torment. The hell mouth was an almost perfect coalescence of these very diverse images. Painted on church walls, crafted into manuscript illuminations, and sculpted on friezes, the mouth of hell was a lively, dramatic form, occurring in many different guises and with remarkably different emphases. The mouth could function as a leveller of society as monks, bishops, kings, and peasants alike marched into it. It could function as a torment itself, holding within its jaws a red-hot cauldron in which the damned simmer. It could become decorative, as artists began to multiply the mouth so that mouths appeared inside each other, suggesting torment upon torment. When these functions came together in medieval drama, they combined to form a lively, ribald, and rowdy seat for dramatic action.

Gary D. Schmidt

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