Orbiting Jupiter by Gary D. Schmidt
Book of the Week: 27 November 2016
This remarkable book won the Warwickshire Year 9 Book Award last Thursday. Student judges from schools all over Warwickshire voted for a book that left a lasting impression on them from a shortlist of four titles.
Although the cover suggests that the book might be science fiction, the opening chapter gets the reader straight to the heart of a story that is rooted firmly in real life. Joseph is coming to live with Jack and his parents on their farm in rural Maine. He has been in a juvenile detention centre where he tried to kill a teacher. ‘He won’t let anyone stand behind him. He won’t let anyone touch him. He won’t go into rooms that are too small. And he won’t eat canned peaches.’ He also has a baby daughter whom he has never seen. Joseph is fourteen years old.
Mr and Mrs Hurd and Jack are determined to help, but the rest of the local community are not so accepting. When the boys get the bus on Joseph’s first day at the school Mr Haskell, the sour school bus driver, tactlessly brings up the subject of Joseph’s child, so Jack and Joseph get off the bus and walk the two miles to school in freezing temperatures. This is the start of Jack and Joseph’s relationship and of Jack and the reader slowly learning about what has happened in Joseph’s past. Whilst dealing with everyday things such as school, bullies, Christmas and looking after the farm; this simply-told and understated story packs a powerful punch. Several of the twelve boys from our Year 9 who read it said the ending shook them up.
At Warwick School’s Bridge House Theatre award ceremony, organised by Warwickshire Schools Library Service, as well as our hearing a very engaging talk from shortlisted author Richard Kurti, a message was read out from Orbiting Jupiter‘s author Gary D. Schmidt. He started the book after visiting a maximum security juvenile home and talking to boys there who were twelve and thirteen years old. They had not seen their parents in over a year and were locked in cells for more than twelve hours a day. Some of them liked writing but thought no-one would ever read what they had written. He went on to say:
“In voting for this book, the readers of the Warwickshire Schools have expressed a kind of solidarity with those kids who live in cells, in facilities far in the north, who rarely have visitors, and who feel as if no one even knows they exist. Now you do. And now they know that you know something about their stories. You cannot believe how important that kind of knowing is.”