Pay attention, Carter Jones

Review by New York Times Review

ADOLESCENCE IS HARD ENOUGH, but how are you supposed to handle trauma in the family when your parents are overwhelmed, absent, overbearing or just plain oblivious? Anger and grief have a way of hijacking your mind and heart, so when you can't get through to parents, you do what the tweens in these middle-grade novels do: Find a distinctive way of dealing with it, and learn that grown-up thing of putting on a good face even if you're crumbling inside. IN LINDSEY STODDARD'S RIGHT AS RAIN (Harper, 304 pp.,$16.99; ages 8 to 12), the traumatic event is the sudden death of Rain's teenage brother, Guthrie. At their relentlessly optimistic mother's behest, they move from Vermont to New York City, while their father slips into depression. They arrive in Washington Heights dazed, a non-Spanish-speaking white family in a Latino neighborhood, and over the next two weeks - the time of the novel - a lot happens: Rain enrolls in a new middle school, joins the track team, qualifies for the city championship, enlists her stuporous father in building a community garden, and hopes that her parents will be the "one in four" couples that survives the death of a child. Stoddard has a knack for writing strong, feisty protagonists, like the heroine in her first book, "Just Like Jackie." Although Rain is wounded by her brother's death and anxious about her parents' arguments, she is a self-assured problem solver. She has a thing for numbers: She counts - bricks, miles, minutes, anything - to "empty her brain" and finds solace in running. Stoddard's exploration of grief's grip on a family rings true and tender; she does a remarkable job of conveying the emotional haze Rain's outward confidence hides. Lovely, dreamy chapters (each entitled "That Night") flicker through the novel, chronicling Guthrie's final hours and revealing the guilt Rain feels over his death. There, we see Rain at her vulnerable best: saving herself, if not her parents' marriage. carter JONES'S parents' marriage will not survive the death of a child - that we know early on. In Gary D. Schmidt's pay attention, CARTER JONES (Clarion, 224 pp., $16.99; ages io to 12), 12-year-old Carter's heartbroken family is propped up by an endearing visitor: an English butler who worked with their grandfather. The dapper, cultivated Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick attends to Carter, his three younger sisters and a vomiting dachshund, while their mother sorts out the death of 6-year-old Currier and the absence of her soldier husband. Carter is a good, compassionate kid, but he's torn up inside and steamed by his father's lack of communication. Schmidt seamlessly fuses humor and tragedy here, as he did in his Newbery Honor book "The Wednesday Wars." The butler can be a "pain in the glute" and a "blabber," Carter tells us, while Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick gently chides that you should never "begin your sentence with a subordinating conjunction," like "because." The repartee takes the edge off the loneliness Carter feels: "When you carry stuff like this around, you never know what kind of day it's going to be." It's striking that Schmidt chose cricket to put a spin on the boy-as-athlete motif. During a crucial match Carter's grief spills over. He has flashbacks of his most recent encounter with his father, on a camping trip after Currier died. The place had poisonous snakes, crocodiles and screeching birds, and Carter confronted his father for being absent when Currier was ill. Now, as the lengthy cricket match proceeds, he hears people in the crowd telling him to "pay attention," which is precisely what his father was unable to do. One suspects that Carter, as he grows, will be more attentive to those emotions. He already is. there's no overt trauma in Aida Salazar's debut novel, the moon within (Scholastic, 240 pp., $16.99; ages 8 to 12), but the circumstances leading up to a Mexican-Puerto Rican black girl's initiation into womanhood include anger and an overbearing mother. Celi is seething at her Mima for insisting on a "moon ceremony," an indigenous coming-of-age ritual to celebrate a first period. Lately, Cell's "flor" (as her mother calls it) tingles when she's around Iván, whom she knows from a cultural center in Oakland. So when Mima overshares by telling Iván what a moon ceremony is, Celi stands by feeling "like someone is stepping / on my chest / my breath stolen away." Meanwhile, Cell's best friend, Magda, is entering puberty a different way, taking the name Marco and identifying as male. The gender transition seems smooth enough - until Iván insults Marco and Celi laughs. Ashamed at putting her crush before her best friend, she stows it in her "heart locket" - the imaginary place she puts her deepest feelings. Salazar tells the story in free verse, which works well to convey Cell's emotions, giving them a powerful, beautiful charge ("Mimaleavesmetocry / sittingin a soup / of hummingbird herbs and rage"), and less well for dialogue ("What you doing next week, Celi? / Iván asks suddenly. / You wanna go to the skate park?"). Although the novel has been compared to Judy Blume's "Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret," an instant classic in 1970 for its frank expression of how girls feel about their changing bodies, Salazar's book, half a century on, is less saucy: Where Blume's girls exuberantly chanted "We must! We must! We must increase our bust!," Celi wilts with embarrassment when Mima calls her father to celebrate that "our girl is growing breasts!" Salazar's take on menstruation is contemporary and important, however: It presents families of mixed-race heritage embracing ancestral traditions (Celi eventually does), accepting gender fluidity and acting generally body-positive. Marco, raised Magdalena, has a ceremony as well: one to celebrate his "Ometeotl energy / a person who inhabits two beings / the female and the male at once." For all that, Marco is still biologically female. Had he also gotten his first period, Salazar might have truly explored uncharted emotional terrain. SAM ABERNATHY FIRST APPEARED as a high school freshman in "Stand-Off," the second novel in Andrew Smith's Y.A. series "Winger." So THE SIZE OF THE TRUTH (Simon & Schuster, 272 pp., $17.99; ages 8 to 12) IS a prequel of sorts. As a 4-year-old in Blue Creek, Tex., Sam spent three days trapped at the bottom of a well, and the murky memory now shows up in his claustrophobia and his fear of the "murderer" James Jenkins, an eighth-grade boy he thinks pushed him into the well all those years ago. Now 11, Sam skips from sixth to eighth grade, where he struggles with being smaller than his classmates. He harbors a secret desire to be a chef, while his father wants him to go to M.I.T. and become a scientist. Smith's narration alternates between sections called "Eighth Grade" and hallucinatory sections rendering Sam's three days in the well, spent with a snarky armadillo (this is Texas) named Bartleby. Bartleby is a Yoda figure ("Don't go living your life only trying to avoid holes"), and there's a fantastical cantina-style scene, too: a choir of bats singing gospel music, a coyote waitress, Spanish-speaking otters and the coffin of a bank robber from 1888. The zany, philosophical conversation between Sam and Bartleby is sophisticated for a tween (yes, the armadillo utters his namesake's famous line), but it's thoroughly enjoyable: I happily would have read a book just about the two of them. Smith's delightful evocation of the weird and his ongoing exploration of masculinity show up in this novel, too. Sam's father, a kilt-wearing proprietor of a miniature golf course, takes him on survivalist camping trips. James Jenkins turns out to have a surprising passion other than football. He and Sam both have to face their fathers, and stand up for their less traditional choices. The truth, here as in all these engaging middle-grade novels, turns out to be large and complicated, made more so by growing up with loss and the heightened reality it brings. With ample reasons to succumb to grief or unhappiness, these undaunted tweens prefer not to. LENOR A todaro, an editor at Off Assignment, writes a column about New York City wildlife for Catapult Magazine.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 11, 2019]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Pandemonium reigns in the Jones household (mother, son, three younger daughters, and one excitable dog) on the first day of school at 7:15 a.m., when 12-year-old Carter answers the doorbell and meets the Butler. This portly Englishman immediately begins to put things right, offering his services to Mrs. Jones and explaining that he was willed to the family by his late employer, the children's grandfather. Their father is an army captain deployed in Germany. Initially wary of the Butler, Carter resists his quiet authority, but slowly begins to trust the man, who teaches him to drive the Bentley, organizes a wildly popular cricket match at his middle school, and offers him implicit guidance when he needs it most. The Butler is a distinctive character with dry wit and an unshakable sense of purpose. While comparisons with Mary Poppins may be inevitable, the only magic here is the everyday kind brought about by broad understanding, sensible actions, and uncommon courtesy applied over a period of time. Not so much an unreliable narrator as an evasive one, Carter has things on his mind that initially he's not ready to deal with, much less communicate to others. Yet his engaging narrative leads readers through a broad range of emotions in this beautifully written, often amusing, and ultimately moving novel.--Carolyn Phelan Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Schmidt (Orbiting Jupiter) fuses pathos and humor in this adroitly layered novel that opens as Carter answers the doorbell to find a dapper British "gentleman's gentleman," a former employee of the boy's grandfather, whose will bequeathed his service to Carter's family. And they do need some sorting out: the sixth grader's father has been deployed to Germany, and his emotionally fraught mother is struggling to parent her four children alone in New York State. Endearingly devoted to his younger sisters, Carter is reeling from his beloved brother's sudden death, his alienation from his uncommunicative father (hauntingly underscored in flashbacks to an angst-riddled camping trip), and the sickening realization that his father isn't coming home. The butler's strict adherence to decorum and the Queen's English triggers amusing repartee with slang-loving Carter; he also recognizes and assuages the boy's pain by introducing him-and his schoolmates-to cricket, which gives them all a sense of purpose and pride. Opening each chapter with a definition of a cricket term, Schmidt weaves the sport's jargon into the narrative, further enriching the verbal badinage and reinforcing the affecting bond between a hurting boy and a compassionate man. Ages 10-12. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by School Library Journal Review

Gr 4-8-Young Carter Jones opens the front door one morning to find an English butler on his doorstep. Sent to the Jones family by his late grandfather, Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick reforms the household with his wit, precision, and commitment to decorum. As Carter deals with his father's deployment, Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick also takes on the role of emotional caretaker and support for Carter. Together, they play cricket and learn that the rules of the game are also the rules for a healthy and happy life. Schmidt, author of the celebrated Wednesday Wars, strikes gold again with this emotionally complex character who learns to navigate change and disappointment, and, more important, how to receive help. Schmidt writes with a clear and compelling voice, and masterfully crafts Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick as an endearing family helper and friend with a Mary Poppins-like disposition. The use of cricket as a narrative tool to embolden Carter is clever and will surely peak young readers' interest in the sport. VERDICT A rich and nuanced middle grade novel that will appeal to readers who feel a little on the outskirts.-Katherine Hickey, Metropolitan Library System, Oklahoma City © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Horn Book Review

Having been bequeathed to sixth-grader Carters household by his deceased grandfather, English butler and gentlemans gentleman Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick appears at the door on the first day of school. He brings order to a chaotic home and introduces Carter to the game of cricket, which becomes a metaphor for how to come to terms with death and loss. The audiobook performance amplifies characterization and pacing: the butler is voiced in a posh, heightened English accent that brings his penchant for proper grammar and manners to life; narrator Carter is portrayed with enough adolescent snark to balance the slow-?simmering realizations about his family that boil over in an emotional climax. julie hakim azzam July/Aug p.152(c) Copyright 2019. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Carter Jones' family inherits the services of a "gentleman's gentleman" with a passion for cricket just when they most need him.Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick arrives in a purple Bentley at their New York state home during a downpour on the morning of Carter's first day of sixth grade. The Butler, as Carter thinks of him, helps with Mary Poppins-like efficiency and perceptiveness to organize and transform the chaos of a household with little money, four children, a father deployed overseas, and a gaping hole. Six-year-old Currier died three years ago, and Carter carries his brother's green shooter marble like a talisman. Carter's memories of a more recent wilderness trip with his father are filled with deep sadness and foreboding. Meanwhile, Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick (amusingly snobby about pizza, television, and American slang) encourages Carter to step up, to play a bigger role in his sisters' livesand to learn to play cricket. Schmidt convincingly conveys the zany elegance and appeal of the game without excessive explanation. Though the newly formed middle school cricket team includes boys surnamed Yang and Singh, none of the characters are described by race, and the primary cast is assumed white. Schmidt gracefully weaves together the humor of school, siblings, and a dachshund with a delicate digestive system with deeper themes of family connection, disappointment, anger, and grief. The result is wonderfully impressive and layered. (Fiction. 10-13) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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· 1 · THE PLAYERS Cricket teams, both batting and fielding, may have up to eleven players each. The captain of the batting team determines the order of the batsmen; the captain of the fielding team sets players in positions determined by the style and pace of the bowler. If it hadn't been the first day of school, and if my mother hadn't been crying her eyes out the night before, and if the fuel pump on the Jeep had been doing what a fuel pump on a Jeep is supposed to be doing, and if it hadn't been raining like an Australian tropical thunderstorm--​and I've been in one, so I know what it's like--​and if the very last quart of one percent milk hadn't gone sour and clumped up, then probably my mother would never have let the Butler into our house.      But that's what the day had been like so far, and it was only 7:15 in the morning.      7:15 in the morning on the first day of school, when the Butler rang our doorbell.      I answered it.      I looked at the guy standing on our front stoop.      "Are you kidding?" I said.      That's what you would have said too. He was tall and big around the belly and wearing the kind of suit you'd wear to a funeral--​I've been to one of those too, so I know what a funeral suit looks like--​and he had a bowler on his head. A bowler! Which nobody has worn since, like, horses and carriages went out of business. And everything--​the big belly, the funeral suit, the bowler--​everything was completely dry even though it was an Australian tropical thunderstorm outside because he stood underneath an umbrella as big as a satellite disk.      The guy looked down at me. "I assure you, young man, I am never kidding."      I closed the door.      I went to the kitchen. Mom was tying back Emily's hair, which explains why the dry Ace Robotroid Sugar Stars Emily was eating were dribbling out both sides of her mouth. Charlie was still looking for her other yellow sock because she couldn't start fourth grade without it--​she couldn't she couldn't she couldn't--​and Annie was telling her what a baby she was, and Charlie was saying she was not she was not she was not, and just because Annie was going into fifth grade that didn't make Annie the boss of her. Then Charlie looked at me and said, "Does it?" and I said, "You think I care?"      "Carter," my mom said, "your oatmeal is on the stove and you'll have to mix in your own raisins and there's some walnuts too but no more brown sugar. And, Carter, before you do that, I need you to run down to the deli and--"      "There's a guy out on our front stoop," I said.      "What?"      "There's a guy out on our front stoop."      My mother stopped tying back Emily's hair.      "Is he from the army?" she said.      I shrugged.      "Is he or isn't he?"      "He's not wearing a uniform."      "Are you sure?"      "Pretty sure."      My mother started tying back Emily's hair again. "Tell him it's the first day of school and he should go find someone else to buy whatever he's selling at seven fifteen in the morning."      "Annie can do it."      My mother gave me That Look, so I went back to the front door and opened it. "My mom says it's the first day of school and you should go find someone else to buy whatever you're selling at seven fifteen in the morning."      He shook his umbrella.      "Young Master Jones," he said, "please inform your mother that I would very much like to speak with her."      I closed the door.      I went back to the kitchen.      "Did you tell him to go away?" said my mother. I think this is what she said. She had a bunch of bobby pins in her mouth and she was sticking them around Emily's head and Emily was hollering and spitting out Ace Robotroid Sugar Stars at every poke, so it was hard to understand what my mother was saying.      "He wants to talk to you," I said.      "He's not going to--"      A sudden wail from Charlie, who held up her other yellow sock, which Ned had thrown up on. Ned is our dachshund and dachshunds throw up a lot.      "Carter, go get some milk," said my mother. "Charlie, stop crying. Annie, it doesn't help to make faces at Charlie. Emily, if you move your head again I'm going to bobby-pin your bangs to your eyebrows."      I went back to the front and opened the door.      The guy was still standing on the stoop, but the Australian tropical thunderstorm was starting to get in under the umbrella.      "Listen," I said, "my mom's going crazy in there. I have to go to the deli and get milk so we can eat breakfast. And Charlie's crying because Ned threw up on her other yellow sock, and Annie's being a pain in the glutes, and Emily's bangs are about to get pinned to her eyebrows, and I haven't even packed my backpack yet--​and that takes a while, you know--​and we have to leave soon since we have to walk to school because the fuel pump on the Jeep isn't working, and we only have one umbrella. So just go away."      The guy leaned down.      "Young Master Jones," he said, "if you were able to sprint between wickets with the speed of your run-on sentences, you would be welcome in any test match in the world. For now, though, go back inside. In your room, gather what is needed for your backpack. When you have completed that task, find your mother and do whatever is necessary to insure that she is no longer"--​he paused--​"going crazy." He angled the umbrella a little to keep off the Australian tropical thunderstorm. "While you are doing whatever is necessary, I will purchase the milk."      I looked at the guy. He was wet up to his knees now.      "Do you always talk like that?" I said.      "If you are inquiring whether I always speak the Queen's English, the answer is, of course, yes."      "I mean the way you say everything like you want it to smell good."      The guy shook the rain off his umbrella. I sort of think he meant to shake it all over me.      "Young Master Jones--"      "And that: 'Young Master Jones.' No one talks like that."      "Obviously, some do."      "And that: 'Ob--​vi--​ous--​ly.' It takes you a whole minute to say it. 'Ob--​vi--​ous--​ly.'"      The guy leaned down. "I am going to purchase the milk now," he said. "You shall pack your backpack. Do it properly, then attend to your mother."      He turned to go.      "Are you trying to convert me or something?" I said.      "Yes," he said, without turning back. "Now, to your appointed tasks."      So I went upstairs and packed the new notebooks and old pens and old pencils and my father's old science calculator in my backpack, and I put the green marble in my front pocket--​all this did take a while, you know--​and then I went down to the kitchen where my mother was braiding Annie's hair and Charlie was sniffing with her arms crossed and Emily was finishing her dry Ace Robotroid Sugar Stars. My mother said, "Where's the milk?" and then the doorbell rang again.      "I'll get it," I said.      Guess who it was.      His pants were wet most of the way up when he handed me a bag.      "I have procured the milk," he said.      "Obviously," I said. "Is it one percent?"      "Certainly not--​and mockery is the lowest form of discourse."      He handed me another bag.      "What's this?" I said.      "The package is for Miss Charlotte," he said. "Tell her we are most fortunate that American delicatessens are, though parsimonious in their selection of food items that have seen the light of the sun, at least eclectic."      "She won't know what eclectic means."      "Copious."      "That either."      The guy sighed. "The contents are self-explanatory."      I took the bags and closed the door. I carried the milk to the kitchen and set it on the table. Then I gave Charlie the other bag.      "What's this?" she said.      "How should I know?"      "Because you're handing it to me. That's how you should know."      "It's something electric," I said.      "Something electric?"      "I don't know. It's from the guy standing on our front stoop."      My mother looked up from Annie's braids. "The guy standing on our front stoop? He's still there?"      Charlie opened her bag and took out--​I know this is hard to believe--​brand-new bright yellow socks. She screamed her happy scream. That's the scream she makes that could stop a planet from spinning.      My mother looked at the bright yellow socks, then at the milk.      "It's not one percent," she said.      "Certainly not," I said.      My mother dropped Annie's braids and headed out of the kitchen. Excerpted from Pay Attention, Carter Jones by Gary D. Schmidt All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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