illustration from the cover of Gary Schmidt's Pay Attention, Carter Jones

Review: Pay Attention, Carter Jones

August 24, 2023

by Missy Andrews

When young Carter Jones opens his door at 7:15 one morning, he never expects to find an English butler. Enter Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick, a gentleman’s gentleman from England, whose master, Carter’s grandfather, willed him to the family upon his death. When Carter’s mother, stating the obvious, suggests a dearth of gentlemen upon the premises, the butler merely eyes Carter, retorting, “Perhaps not yet…” Thus, Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick enters a household on the verge of collapse just in time to help young Carter develop the spine and the fortitude to “keep the bails up” in the cricket game of his life.

Using cricket and wickets as an organizing device and pervasive metaphor, Gary Schmidt delivers another – if I may mix my metaphors – home run in the field of Juvenile Fiction. He offers not only young Carter Jones, but every boy who finds himself in similar circumstances, a traditional British education on the meaning of manhood in this heartwarming, coming of age, sure-to-be-a-classic. Schmidt contrasts honor and barbarianism, gentlemen and the ungentlemanly, in this story about those who leave their posts and those who are left to hew to the British mantra, Keep Calm and Carry On. Carter Jones is faced with his own choice about which path to take, but he is not left to make it alone.

Though his father has turned coat, young Carter learns from Mr. Bowles-Fitzpatrick that he (and his bails) will stand or fall by the measure of his own character and choices. “The living of your life is hard work, young Master Carter…you must actively choose what to do. You may act the gentleman or the barbarian” (211). Certainly, a message of this sort might leave kids with the wrong idea, placing them in the pretentious position of “keeping a stiff upper lip” amidst the tragedies of their life – but not when Gary Schmidt delivers it. Schmidt sidesteps this misunderstanding by writing a Christ-figure into his story, a better father who will endure any difficulty and travel any distance to make Carter’s house His home. With a love like that, anything is possible – for Master Jones and for Schmidt’s readers, too.

Gary Schmidt’s considerable talents are on full display in this story of a boy disappointed by his father and faced with the need to grow up quickly and become the gentleman his family desperately needs. Be prepared to laugh and to cry along the way. Here is no repression of emotion, no chest-beating paeon to impassive, imitation manhood. Schmidt’s masculinity is fully human; he bleeds. This 2019 Newbery Honor Winner and National Book Award Finalist, published by Clarion Books, is sure to inspire empathy, heroism, and gentlemanly choices in readers of all ages.

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