Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow
Simon moves to the middle of nowhere. Like, there is nothing for about a thirty-mile radius around the town of Grin and Bear It. This is because radio telescopes are used to detect faint radio signals from space. If you live here, you cannot use anything that will emit radio signals. That includes television, cell phones, microwaves, and the internet. This is the National Quiet Zone. Simon is fine with this because he doesn’t want anyone to be able to look him up and find out his history.
While this town is made up, I took a little bit of time to see that there are National Radio Silent areas in the USA. I don’t know how I would feel about this. Part of me thinks that would be nice and relaxing, but I’m sure I would need to escape that lifestyle every once in a while.
Simon, of course, has to go to school. He makes friends pretty easily. One is a girl named Agate; she is interesting. Her family has a farm, and they raise dogs that will hopefully become service animals. She is also super interested in messages from space; in fact, she wants to send fake messages…so the scientists don’t give up hope. Another kid, named Kevin, whose mom is one of the scientists who listens to the radio signals. Life is going pretty well for Simon in the National Quiet Zone.
There is a lot of humor in this book. There are just a few little things throughout that are honestly laugh-out-loud funny. There are runaway emus, a squirrel that might have committed blasphemy, and a dog that flunked out of service dog training. I loved all the random little side stories that would pop up throughout this book!
Soon, someone discovers what Simon has been trying to hide. He was the only survivor of gun violence at his school. There is no talk of actual violence, but you do learn that when the police came into his classroom, yelling for everyone to put their hands up, Simon was the only one to put his hands up. Oh, that hurt to read. I can’t imagine living through that.
People are now talking about him. That is not what he wants. I can see how this could be hard to handle. I wouldn’t know what to do for a student like this. I would be like, “You tell me what you need!” Other than that, I think I would try to avoid the subject. But Simon does his best to keep moving forward and concentrate on other things. Like creating fake messages from space-type things. That should get the focus off of him, right? What could possibly go wrong? It really is a cute story.
Four out of Five Magical Coffee Cups
Literary Coffee 