The world is not fair. People don’t (or hardly ever) get their just desserts. Where are the angels that are supposed to watch over us?
Orbiting Jupiter, Gary D. Schmidt’s latest young adult novel, is a slim book that packs a powerful punch. In the opening scene, sixth grader Jack, a good boy in a quiet rural Maine town, meets his foster brother Joseph, an eighth grader just released from a juvenile detention facility who almost killed his teacher. A lot of kids, upon learning that about a foster sibling, 
might keep their distance, but not Jack. He sees the way Rosie the cow acts around Joseph, and figures there’s got to be more to Joseph than that story. Jack sticks up for Joseph like a brother when other kids at the school hassle him and when teachers expect little from him. He’s ready to listen, and when Joseph finally shares his story–what’s behind the words and phrases he shouts out in his sleep at night–Jack learns how heartbreaking it is. His fourteen-year-old foster brother is a father to a baby girl named Jupiter, whose mother is deceased. He can’t see her because the mother’s family doesn’t want him to meet them, his father’s tangling up the situation trying to get money out of it (all for himself), and the machinations of the system aren’t geared toward giving Jason (a minor) any rights.
It’s not fair. But though no one’s looking out for Jason above, there are people looking out for him, down on earth. His foster brother, whom he calls “Jackie”, for one. And Jack’s parents, Joseph’s foster parents, who are doing everything they can in his interest to help him see his daughter.
But it’s hard. And like I said, the world is not fair.
There’s little else I can say about the plot without giving too much away. And that’s the last thing I want to do. But I will say that I wept — truly wept — at the end of this book. Gary D. Schmidt has complete control over this story, and especially over Jack’s voice. The telling is spare, but it serves the story so well. This is the kind of story that can be shared with all ages of readers (middle school and high school alike). It’s completely accessible for reluctant readers up through high school, and it’s the kind of book I would’ve shared with all of my teens in urban communities, who know, first-hand, how sometimes you just get dealt a raw deal.
What does it mean to be a family? A brother? This story asks, again and again.
Love.
Love.
Orbiting Jupiter comes out on November 3, 2015 from Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
