I’m sure I would never have picked up Gary D. Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars if Sara Masarik hadn’t asked me to read it. And normally, if I’m two thirds of the way through a book and still not into it, I’m not going to finish. But I said I would, so I did. And then I started to get it. When I did start to get it, I realized this was a story worth starting again so I could pick up all the threads Schmidt had been weaving in from the beginning.  

Because I’m not impressed with many modern authors, especially with those who write for young adults, I wanted to try another Schmidt title to see if Wednesday Wars was an anomaly or a pattern for him. The description of Pay Attention, Carter Jones sounded interesting and my library actually had it on the shelf. 

Schmidt (or Carter Jones, the narrator) had me laughing within the first couple of pages. At 7:15 a.m. on the first day of Carter’s sixth grade year, nothing is going right in the Jones household. The doorbell rings. It is raining “like an Australian tropical thunderstorm,” but the man on the doorstep is completely dry because he’s standing “underneath an umbrella as big as a satellite disk.” When Carter finally lets the man in the house, the man tells Carter’s mother that her father-in-law, whom she never met, has died and left an endowment to enable his butler to continue in the service of the family. 

The man at the door, the Butler, steps into the house and immediately begins directing the running of the household, which includes Carter’s three younger sisters. Carter’s father, a captain in the army, is deployed overseas. His mother is present and she’s been doing her best, but for several reasons is something of a peripheral character.    

The Butler’s main goal is to make sure Carter Jones becomes a gentleman. One of the first things the Butler does is start teaching Carter to play cricket, “the most lovely and sportsmanly game that mankind has yet conceived–or ever will conceive.”

The epigraph of each chapter is a definition of an element of the game and, as is typically the case with epigraphs, the definition is a subtle hint at the tone or direction of events in the chapter.

The Boundary

The perimeter of the field is generally lined in white chalk, setting the limits of play within this boundary. 

Sledging

Sledging is the act of a fielder–sometimes with good nature, sometimes with aggression–who seeks to distract the batsman through taunts and heckles as the batsman tries to concentrate.

There is plenty of witty banter between the Butler and Carter. The Butler, of course, deplores Carter’s sloppy use of English, and Carter tries, at first, to resist the Butler’s firm insistence that he become a gentleman. The Butler believes being a gentleman includes taking certain tasks from his mother and sisters such as walking the dog and cleaning up after the dog vomits. Which, as the dog vomits on practically every exciting or disturbing occasion, is frequent. But if the power struggle between the two had been the main theme, this would have been a trite, tedious story.

The narrative moves between the present and descriptions of past events that Carter is still trying to work through. One event is Carter’s trip to the Blue Mountains of Australia with his father, which is how he knows what an Australian tropical thunderstorm is like. Carter also gradually reveals that he is brokenhearted over the recent death of his younger brother and angry that his father wasn’t around when it happened.   

**Spoiler**

For the sake of parents considering whether their children are ready for this story:
Carter’s mother finds out, via email, that her husband has found someone else and will not be coming home, ever. She tells Carter, and it is he who later has to tell his little sisters. The death of a loved one and desertion by a parent are weighty concerns for a twelve-year-old. However, we know that children of all ages carry burdens like these all the time. Reading about a child dealing with similar situations may be helpful to some children, but traumatic to others. I suggest that parents pre-read this book if there is any question.

The power of the story is not in the fact that bad things have happened to Carter. It is in the gradual revealing of those things as Carter deals with them day to day. It is in the grace with which the Butler comes into the family offering wisdom and stability when the foundation of their lives is cracking under the strain. It is in the way the Butler uses firm discipline, high expectations, and a game that builds camaraderie to develop that stability. He doesn’t coddle Carter and his sisters. Every day he tells them to “make good decisions and remember who you are.” Introducing cricket to Carter’s New York middle school forms a community around Carter that will help sustain him through the trials of adolescence. 

I appreciate that Schmidt doesn’t end the story happily ever after, since life doesn’t resolve like that, especially when you are twelve years old. But he does end it satisfactorily with a large helping of hope.