![\"\"](\"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Okay-for-Now.jpg\" "\\"Okay")
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What\u2019s even better than a companion book for\u00a0 The Wednesday Wars<\/em>?\u00a0 A companion book that works just fine as a stand alone book!\u00a0 (Some people call this book a sequel, but I am calling it a \u201ccompanion\u201d book because it has a different main character and doesn\u2019t require you to read the first book in order to understand what\u2019s going on.)\u00a0 There IS a bit of a shout-out to Holling Hoodhood, which is nice, but this book focuses on Doug Swieteck \u2014 one of Holling\u2019s friends whose family has to move upstate, to a small town called Marysville, when his dad\u2019s bad attitude causes him his job.<\/p>\n We learn\u00a0early on that Doug\u2019s father is a jerk; he treats his family like trash and doesn\u2019t grasp the simple notion that the world doesn\u2019t owe him\u00a0 anything that he didn\u2019t work to earn.\u00a0 Doug\u2019s mom is really passive and pretty much ignores her husband\u2019s faults while trying her best not to anger him.\u00a0 And then there are Doug\u2019s brothers \u2014 one who is serving in Vietnam, and one who moves with the family and then falls in with the local herd of jerks.\u00a0\u00a0Luckily, Doug meets Lil Spicer and gets a job delivering groceries for her dad\u2019s deli.\u00a0 Through this job, he gets out of the house, forms relationships with some of the townspeople, and makes a\u00a0little bit of money to boot.\u00a0 There are several points where things get really rough for Doug, but he always manages to find solace in the local library where he is intrigued by, and learns to draw, the birds found in the John James Audubon book kept on display.\u00a0 With its complex characters, rich setting, and the message of hope and perseverance, I think this book would appeal to nearly anyone who likes a good story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What\u2019s even better than a companion book for\u00a0 The Wednesday Wars?\u00a0 A companion book that works just fine as a stand alone book!\u00a0 (Some people call this book a sequel, but I am calling it a \u201ccompanion\u201d book because it has a different main character and doesn\u2019t require you to read the first book in … Continue reading Okay for Now by Gary D. Schmidt<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,8,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-books-for-young-adults","category-fiction","category-reviewed-by-chrissie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}