Books like Okay for Now
The Book of Everything crosses an ocean and adopts a touch of magical strangeness, yet it understands Gary D. Schmidt’s essential gift: letting a wounded child’s wit, imagination, and encounters with decent adults become instruments of survival. The other two likewise offer hope that is earned rather than conveniently bestowed.
If you liked Okay for Now, you’ll love these
Not lookalikes — kindred books. Each one shares something essential with Okay for Now, and we tell you exactly what.
Nine-year-old Thomas sees tropical fish swimming through the streets of Amsterdam, but he also sees clearly the violence and fear governing his home. Like Doug, he narrates hardship with disarming comedy, and his resistance begins through books, imagination, and friendships with adults who take him seriously.
Kuijer, later awarded the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, writes with astonishing lightness about cruelty and courage. This very short novel contains more emotional truth than many books five times its length; its final effect is not bleakness but the exhilarating discovery that fear need not have the last word.
Ada has been taught by her abusive mother that her clubfoot makes her worthless. When wartime evacuation gives her a chance to leave London with her younger brother, she enters a world in which competence, affection, and freedom are imaginable—but not automatically easy to accept.
Readers who loved Doug’s gradual realization that other people may see value in him will recognize Ada’s fierce, suspicious hunger for dignity. Bradley never turns recovery into a sentimental makeover: progress comes through practical accomplishments, setbacks, anger, and trust painstakingly earned. A Newbery Honor book with a passionately loved sequel, it has the emotional force of a classic because it makes every small gain in Ada’s life feel enormous.
After thirteen-year-old Arthur hurls a brick at the neighborhood “Junk Man,” a judge gives him an unusual sentence: he must work for his victim, gathering seven apparently worthless materials. Arthur cannot understand the task—or the man—but the work slowly challenges what he thinks punishment, value, and art can mean.
This is the closest match to Okay for Now’s belief that art can reach a furious child before ordinary conversation can. Pearsall gives discarded objects the revelatory power Schmidt gives Audubon’s birds, while allowing Arthur’s anger and shame to remain complicated. The story draws inspiration from James Hampton’s extraordinary assemblage now held by the Smithsonian, lending its mystery a remarkable real-world resonance. Missing it would mean missing one of middle-grade fiction’s most moving accounts of how making and truly seeing can repair a life.