Most Popular Books by Gary D. Schmidt

Herc Beal knows he's named after a mythical hero but he's no superhero. He's the smallest kid in his class. His homeroom teacher at his new middle school gives him the assignment of duplicating the mythical Hercules's amazing feats in real life.

The two-time Newbery Honor winner Gary D. Schmidt delivers the shattering story of Joseph, a father at thirteen, who has never seen his daughter, Jupiter. After spending time in a juvenile facility, he's placed with a foster family on a farm in rural Maine. Here Joseph, damaged and withdrawn, meets twelve-year-old Jack, who narrates the account of the troubled, passionate teen who wants to find his baby at any cost. In this riveting novel, two boys discover the true meaning of family and the sacrifices it requires.

In this Newbery Honor-winning novel, Gary D. Schmidt tells the witty and compelling story of a teenage boy who feels that fate has it in for him, during the school year 1968-68. Seventh grader Holling Hoodhood isn't happy. He is sure his new teacher, Mrs. Baker, hates his guts. Holling's domineering father is obsessed with his business image and disregards his family. Throughout the school year, Holling strives to get a handle on the Shakespeare plays Mrs. Baker assigns him to read on his own time, and to figure out the enigmatic Mrs. Baker. As the Vietnam War turns lives upside down, Holling comes to admire and respect both Shakespeare and Mrs. Baker, who have more to offer him than he imagined. And when his family is on the verge of coming apart, he also discovers his loyalty to his sister, and his ability to stand up to his father when it matters most.

“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.

Shows how the hardships of slavery, particularly the loss of her family, caused Isabella Baumfree to walk towards freedom, to re-invent herself as Sojourner Truth, and to continue walking to abolish slavery and for other reforms.

On a short winter day, Samuel and his father enter into a series of trades with neighbors and strangers until they come home with a brown-eyed milk cow for Mama.

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.

Leaving behind a prosperous life in England, William Bradford and the other Pilgrims traveled on the Mayflower to a strange land in search of religious freedom. There Bradford established a stable colony, trying to be fair to both the colonists and the local Native Americans.

Making Americans is a study of a time when the authors and illustrators of children's books consciously set their eyes on national and international sights, with the hope of bringing the next generation into a full sense of citizenship. Schmidt examines the literature for young people published during a momentous period in our nation's past, and documents in detail its role as an instrument of nation-building and social reform. A thought-provoking contribution to our understanding of children's books as cultural transmitters and transformers.

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.

Sixth-grader Carter must adjust to the unwelcome presence of a know-it-all butler who is determined to help him become a gentleman, and also to deal with burdens from the past.

As they are 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.

Turner Buckminster is purely miserable. Not only is he the son of the new minister in a small Maine town, but he is shunned for playing baseball differently from the local boys.

Ethan eagerly anticipates making maple syrup with his father, but it will not be time until the days are warmer, the nights shorter, and Ethan's loose tooth falls out.

2013 Pura Belpre Award for Illustration As the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a former slave, Martin de Porres was born into extreme poverty. Even so, his mother begged the church fathers to allow him into the priesthood. Instead, Martin was accepted as a servant boy. But soon, the young man was performing miracles. Rumors began to fly around the city of a strange mulatto boy with healing hands, who gave first to the people of the barrios. Martin continued to serve in the church, until he was finally received by the Dominican Order, no longer called the worthless son of a slave, but rather a saint and the rose in the desert.

Look Both Ways meets Seedfolks in this masterful novel from two titans of kid lit that follows a diverse cast of young people whose lives intersect in surprising and hilarious ways over the course of a summer day. Here’s what’s so cool about the beach. Kids are everywhere! Kids you know, kids you want to know. Wandering from one blanket to another, from one family to another. Somebody’s mom reads a fat summer novel. Somebody’s dad snores with an iPad on his chest. Babies cry. Girls laugh. Frisbee players whoop! Kites in the perfect blue sky. Some kids bodysurf. Some don’t even like the water. They build sand cities for their friends and sand jails for the grown-ups, and when the tide comes in everything gets washed away. There’s the other world, where all kids hear is tomorrow, next week, next year. And then there’s the beach, where everything is right now! Why can’t every day be a day at the beach? From two-time Newbery honoree Gary D. Schmidt and two-time PEN Award winner Ron Koertge comes a moving and often laugh-out-loud funny middle grade novel about family, friendship, and belonging, told by a group of kids spending a day at the beach. Thoughtful vignettes brilliantly weave together an irresistible tale of tween conflict and connections.

While serving as a British Fencible to maintain the peace in eighteenth-century Ireland, Anson finds that his sympathy for a hedge master places him in conflict with the law of King George II.

In a literary environment dominated by men, the first American to earn a living as a writer and to establish a reputation on both sides of the Atlantic was, miraculously, a woman. Hannah Adams dared to enter--and in some ways was forced to enter--a sphere of literature that had, in eighteenth-century America, been solely a male province. Driven by poverty and necessity, and aided by an extraordinarily adept mind and keen sense of business, Adams authored works on New England history, sectarian history, and Jewish history, using and citing the most recent scholarly works being published in Great Britain and America. As a female writer, she would always remain something of an outsider, but her accomplishments did not by any means go unrecognized: embraced by the Boston intelligentsia and highly regarded throughout New England, Adams came to epitomize the possibility in a democratic society that anyone could rise to a circle of intellectual elites. In A Passionate Usefulness, the first book-length biography of this remarkable figure, Gary Schmidt focuses primarily on the intimate connection between Adams's reading and her own literary work. Hers is the story of incipient scholarship in the new nation, the story of a dependence that evolved into intellectual independence. Schmidt sets Adams's works in the context of her early poverty and desperate family situation, her decade-long feud with one of New England's most powerful Calvinist ministers, her alliance with the budding Unitarian movement in Boston, and her work establishing the first evangelical mission to Palestine (a task she accomplished virtually single-handedly). Today Adams still holds a place not only as a female writer who made her way economically in the book business before any other woman--or male writer--could do so, but also as a key figure in the transitional generation between the American Revolution and the Renaissance upon whose groundwork much of the country's later literature would build.

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.

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 Tommy Pepper, sixth grader, of Plymouth, Massachusetts.