Orbiting Jupiter

This week I finished The Year I Got Polio, and have been reading Orbiting Jupiter by Gary Schmidt. After starting this book and researching this author, I realized that he was the author of Wednesday Wars, a 2008 Newbery Honor book (which I read and many of my students read when I was a 5th-grade teacher).

So, this is a book that I yearn to read nightly. I’m filled with curiosity and riveted with the author’s writing style. The main character in this text, Jack, is working to find his way with Joseph, a troubled boy who has been taken in by Jack’s family. I want to share one excerpt from this text that I have gone back to and reflected on many times since reading it earlier this week.

In this scene, Joseph walks out on frozen ice, dark ice on a nearby river. Jack is concerned as he knows this river, and its dangers well.

If you don’t know the river, it’s easy to miss where the bank ends and the river begins… it doesn’t wear safe ice until the winter has hung around for a while. And it gets deeper quicker than any river has a right to. I didn’t think Joseph knew the river. 

Joseph ventures out. The tension builds. Joseph steps farther and farther towards the black ice. Jack reminisces back to when he was six and saw a dog drown in the river (Spoiler alert! This is quite sad!).

The yellow dog was farther out on the ice than Joseph, but not much, it had fallen through and its eyes were huge and it was grabbing on with its front paws, scratching, looking for something to hold on to. It wasn’t making a sound. I told my mother we had to go get it, but she held my arm so I wouldn’t go down the river. Her other hand she held over her mouth. Once the dog almost got out, but the ice broke under it again and it was scratching like anything—until suddenly it stopped, put its head down on the ice, slid into the water, and it was gone. Gone. I live on a farm. I see animals die all the time. Never like that.

Even typing this passage from the text is heart wrenching—(its eyes were huge, scratching like anything). Jack goes on to tell about his trauma from this experience. I’ve personally always thought drowning is probably the worst way to die. Viewing this experience through Jack’s eyes was hard for me as a dog lover and a mother.   I see this experience from Jack’s point of view, but also from his mother’s—how do you protect a child from that experience? And, in this moment, Jack is faced fighting to convince Joseph to come back to safety.

I won’t tell you what happens next, you’ll have to read the book yourself! I fully expect to finish this book and hopefully more over fall break. I’ve also downloaded The Boy of on the Porch by one of my favorite authors, Sharon Creech, as an audio book from the Overdrive app. I’m about 1/3 of the way through this book.

Happy reading,

Dr. K.