Simon Sort of Says

When Simon and his parents move to Grin And Bear It, Nebraska, he claims it was because of the alpacas. While it is, in fact, true that Simon's father lost his job as a liturgical director when a couple of alpacas caused “holy chaos” at his church's annual blessing of the animals, that is not the main reason for their move. The O'Keefe family all need a fresh start, and they choose GNB as their new home because it is a National Quiet Zone – which means that the people who live there aren't able to use radios, televisions, cell phones or even microwaves, nothing that might possibly interfere with the radio telescopes that surround the town. And this sounds just about perfect to Simon and his mom and dad, who relish the idea of living in a town where no one knows about the school shooting in Omaha that happened two years ago; the shooting that took place in Simon's fifth grade classroom; the one where Simon was the only one in the room who lived. After being homeschooled for the last year, Simon is anxious to try to go back to school and make friends and to be a normal preteen in this place where no one knows about what happened.

And it doesn't take long for him to make friends at his new school. Agate matter-of-factly injects herself into his life by greeting him with the question, “What is the most disgusting thing you know?” (and is suitably impressed when it turns out that he knows many disgusting things!) She then promptly asks him, “Do you want to help me fake a message from space aliens?” For reasons of his own, Simon decides that he does indeed want to help with this. Meanwhile Kevin, whose mother is one of the town's chief scientists, becomes another new friend, someone Simon can hang around and talk about Minecraft with. Both boys eventually get caught up in Agate's scheme, and a plan takes shape. But meanwhile, even as Simon and his parents settle into their new lives, they still grapple with what happened in countless different ways. And ultimately, even in Grin And Bear It, Nebraska, the events of Simon's recent past catch up with him.

While Erin Bow has already accumulated an impressive list of accolades for her existing books for children and young adults, this newest addition to her oeuvre may be her most noteworthy achievement to date! In this powerful and poignant book, she tackles a heartrending topic with incredible sensitivity and candor...and manages to simultaneously create a story that is utterly hilarious! While the book is about a family dealing with the aftermath of a school shooting, it is set two years after the fact. This time setting allows the author to explore the long term effects of this event on Simon and his parents without going into tremendous detail about the shooting itself. Readers eventually learn precisely what happened that day, but that isn't the focus. Rather, this is the story of how the one boy who survived is learning to live with what happened while trying to create a new – and ordinary – life for himself. It explores how one family carries on after living through the most devastating of tragedies; how they go to work and to school and they get frustrated with co-workers and they have good days and bad days, just like everyone else. But unlike everyone else, there are also deep-rooted fears and anxieties for all three of them to contend with, and triggers that bring Simon right back to the events of that day. Life for them two years later is much like it was before...and yet will never be the same again. Simon Sort of Says is a profoundly compassionate exploration of all of that and more.

Yet there is even more to this story! The friendships that Simon forms with Agate and Kevin are delightful and authentic, and filled with humour and heart. He recognizes when he may have hurt Kevin by not telling him the truth about why he has come to Grin And Bear It, and he wants to tell Agate himself before she hears about it from someone else. And the fact that he draws comfort from Agate's ease with her autism provides an insightful glimpse into his own feelings: “Agate being cool about her brain stuff makes me feel a little safer about my brain stuff.” The way in which Agate so matter-of-factly accepts that he wrestles with trauma and anxiety, without questioning why, enables him to see himself and his relationship to others differently and in a more positive light.
In addition to the skillful depiction of Simon's burgeoning friendships, the book is filled with impressively nuanced relationships, especially those between the children and their parents. Kevin has a complex relationship with his mother who expects a lot from her children and who disappoints him in a fairly significant way, and yet who is there to hold him when he most needs a mother's love. Agate and her entire boisterous family are an absolute delight as they bicker and banter and yet love one another so wholeheartedly. And Simon's relationship with his own parents is heartwarming and tender as they so clearly yearn for him to be ok and to have friends and to lead a typical preteen life, and yet they, too, are so scarred by what happened. When they both crawl under his bed to just lay there and hold him on the anniversary of the shooting, it is a deeply touching testament to their love for him and to the depth of their collective sorrow and suffering. Bow raises interesting and provocative questions about the nature of grief and the experience thereof, and what it is like to go on living after an event of such magnitude: “I think there's never going to be a now. I think there's always going to be a before, and an after.”

And meanwhile, as all of this plays out, the humour in their ordinary, everyday interactions is pure and delightful! Simon's description of meeting Agate's family for the first time (including Todd, the beer-drinking dog who flunked out of service school...but not because of the drinking!), his father the deacon's multiple mishaps involving animals in church, Pretty Stabby the peacock that comes with their new home (located behind the funeral home where his mother works)...all of these offer countless opportunities for Bow to display her tremendous wit. The humour in no way makes light of what happened in Omaha, and Bow deftly balances the comedic elements and the heartbreaking ones...a masterful achievement.

Simon Sort of Says simply has so much to recommend it that it is hard to know where to start. It is thought-provoking and insightful, tender and heartwarming, charming and true to life in its depictions of families and friendships, and it is laugh-out-loud funny. A book to recommend to readers of every age and interest!