Orbiting Jupiter

Literary fiction

Print length: 183 pagesHoughton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2015

Description

Twelve-year-old Jack Hurd narrates the arrival of Joseph Brook, a guarded fourteen-year-old foster child carrying an adult-sized burden: he is already a father. Joseph comes to the Hurds’ organic farm in Maine after incarceration for attacking a teacher while under the influence of pills, and he initially resists the family’s attempts to reach him. Harassment at school deepens his isolation, but frigid daily walks with Jack gradually create space for trust. Joseph’s overriding concern is Jupiter, the daughter he has never been permitted to meet. As the Hurds try to help him find her amid a dispute over parental rights, Jack witnesses how loyalty and tenderness collide with institutions that have already judged Joseph.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Direct · Lyrical · Spare

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Bleak · Earnest · Intimate · Melancholic

Structure

Linear

Focus

Character · Relationships

Emotional intensity

5 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 2 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

BelongingFamilyFriendshipIsolationJusticeParenthood

About Gary D. Schmidt

Gary D. Schmidt is an American writer of fiction for children and young adults and a professor emeritus of English at Calvin University. His novels are strongly character-centered, placing young people under social and moral pressure while attending closely to the families, teachers, and friends who misjudge or sustain them. Historical settings recur, yet Schmidt approaches public conflict on an intimate scale, as in the friendship at the center of Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy. He also treats literature and art as practical forms of attention: Shakespeare in The Wednesday Wars and reading and drawing in Okay for Now help young characters recognize possibilities obscured by shame, anger, or other people’s assumptions. Orbiting Jupiter brings the same concern with isolation, trust, and care to a foster child in contemporary Maine. Schmidt’s prose can be witty and conversational or spare and lyrical, but it remains direct. His overlapping characters and companion novels create a shared world whose connections deepen the individual stories without making them inaccessible on their own.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company
Language: English
ISBN: 9780544462229

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