Heavy Medal Mock Newbery Finalist: SIMON SORT OF SAYS by Erin Bow
Introduction by Heavy Medal Award Committee Member Jenny Arch
The boy who lived.
The boy who vanished.

Simon was the only member of his fifth-grade class to survive a school shooting. Two years later, he moves with his parents to Grin And Bear It, Nebraska, where he hopes to fly under the radar – literally. GNB is a National Quiet Zone, which means no Internet, which means maybe Simon can just blend in:
“I want absolutely nothing more than to be overlooked.”
pg. 13
It doesn’t sound like the setup for a laugh-out-loud story, but I’ve been booktalking this since March as one of the funniest books I have ever read. Erin Bow handles Simon’s trauma with great respect and care, but she respects his desire to be a regular kid, too – even if what passes for normal in GNB includes a Jesus Squirrel, a violent peacock, escaped emus, a tornado, a beer-drinking service dog named Todd, and a new friend named Agate who has a plan to fake a message from aliens with a secret microwave.
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Secondary characters – including Agate (Team Farm), Simon’s other friend Kevin (Team Science), and Simon’s parents (Dad is a Catholic deacon and sackbut player; Mom is a funeral director) – are developed with real depth and specificity. And – I think people will want to know this – nothing bad happens to the dog.
SIMON shines in all applicable Newbery criteria: “development of a plot,” “delineation of characters,” “delineation of setting,” “appropriateness of style,” and “interpretation of theme or concept.” The school shooting is in the past, and while it colors Simon’s present in many ways, it’s not the central plot point; bits of it are woven in throughout so it’s not too overwhelming. GNB is an utterly unique setting, a small town full of radio astronomers (Team Science) and farmers (Team Farm). And the humor carries the book so powerfully, from Simon’s mom’s “Got formaldehyde?” t-shirt to the name of the funeral home (“Slaughter and Sons”) to Pretty Stabby the peacock; even the chapter names are amusing (“in which there are emus”). School shootings have been a tragic and undeniable part of life in the United States for the past 20+ years; they won’t go away if we stop thinking (or reading or writing) about them. SIMON asks: are we going to hide, or take action?
Filed under: Book Discussion, Heavy Medal Mock
About Emily Mroczek-Bayci
Emily Mroczek (Bayci) is a freelance children’s librarian in the Chicago suburbs. She served on the 2019 Newbery committee. You can reach her at emilyrmroczek@gmail.com.
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I put this off all year because I knew I’d have to get to it eventually, and when I finally did, I was really wowed. I can see why so many people were engaged by it and thought it worthy of consideration. The setting is unique but still very relatable to middle grade readers. It deals with a really tough issue in a way that is accessible and written for kids, but still packs a punch and a twist–I think even as a reader knowing what Simon had experienced, actually having him recount it on the page was gut-wrenching, especially because it came later in the novel, after we were already so entangled in his life. I’d be interested to hear other people’s thoughts on the writing style–I found it good, but sentence by sentence not necessarily a standout.
Aryssa, I have to agree with you on the writing style. I think the book’s subject was handled in such a unique and surprising way (certainly wasn’t expecting to laugh out loud multiple times reading about a school shooting) that it jumped up my list as an early contender. But I haven’t found myself going back and thinking about any specific lines or portions of the text the way I’ve done with THE MONA LISA VANISHES or THE EYES AND THE IMPOSSIBLE.
SIMON is such a tricky one for me, because I really liked it, but I didn’t love it. And I can’t put my finger on exactly why I feel the book is missing that *je ne sais quoi* of Newbery winners. The characters are well-developed. I think that the rollout of information about Simon’s history is well-handled. The aliens and squirrels provide enough, but not too much, levity to avoid making the underlying tragedy unbearable to read about. But something about it didn’t 100% work for me.
I think where it faltered for me was the ending. I’d be curious to know other readers’ thoughts on the ending–maybe someone else can better articulate why it didn’t hit.
I felt the same way, Tally. I really liked this book. I liked the characters, especially Agate, and I really thought the balance between present and backstory as well as levity and depth were well done. However, a few things just didn’t click for me. I felt like Agate’s mom, Pearl, seemed unnecessarily hostile towards Simon, and Kevin’s mom really seemed suspicious of him, and I kept waiting for some sort of reason to appear. I suppose both were vindicated in same way over the course of the story, but I still felt like it didn’t make sense at the beginning. The main characters, Simon, his mom and dad, Agate, and Kevin were well done. Each had a very distinct personality with clear motivations, interests, and quirks and their interactions felt authentic.
I think the ending shows growth. Simon showed he was willing to take action, and now he’s prepared to speak up as well, instead of hiding from the media (although I can understand why being smuggled out of a hospital in a hearse would not appeal). He has the support, not just of his parents, but of Agate and her family as well.
I agree that the language is not elegant or poetic, but it’s certainly lively and full of creative similes, metaphors, and turns of phrase (e.g. “The principal’s name is Ms. Snodgrass, and she looks like she’s spent her whole life trying to overcome being called Ms. Snodgrass,” 10; “death schmear” for Ash Wednesday, 78). I think the humor is what makes the more serious content bearable (“Is this about your trauma and anxiety?” “Of course it’s about my trauma and anxiety!” 183).
I wasn’t a fan of Simon Sort of Says. The writing is much weaker and looking at characters, setting, and theme, other books are stronger. I also hated the ending because it felt so rushed. There was no reason why Simon was all of sudden more comfortable talking to the reporters. We didn’t see him work through his trauma and grief, he avoided it for most of the book. I would compare Hercules from The Labors of Hercules Beales. Hercules acknowledges his pain and copes with it and the change we see in his character is gradual throughout the book.
I have been planning this post for weeks. Here it is.
The plot and setting of SIMON are timely. The author has created a dialogue between characters that is funny. This humor breaks the tension of serious topics relevant for middle school readers- Gun violence, cyber-bullying, and school safety.
The setting of a phone-free, technology-limited town was set up by creating a scientific research project that required clear airspace. I liked the idea and wanted to know more, but it only played into the plot slightly. It felt forced to me because it was set up but not thoroughly intertwined into the entire story compared to books like ALBRIJES, SAMIR, or THE EYES AND THE IMPOSSIBLE. Can it be credited as a distinguished setting if it is introduced and set up but never resolved? I think kids on the upper end (11-14) of the Newbery range may going to be skeptical of the technology free-setting and can spot a disguised lecture. This, combined with the rushed ending, were the things that left me asking questions. Where does SIMON stand, or is he still floating like the cover of this book?
Characterization was interesting. Simon was so well written. His dialogue was full of edgy humor, making his mental health growth story engaging to read. However, the characterization of Simon’s friend Agate was frustrating. The decision to make her Autistic was great, but I felt the author’s depiction was stereotypical. In comparison, THE LABOR OF HERCULES BEAL supporting character Lieutenant Colonel Hupfer was brilliant, a multi-dimensional character that tested assumptions and brought equal parts of humor and weight to the book.
Was Simon good? For sure, it was. Will it be on the Newbery podium? It was a great book of the year, but I believe there are stronger contenders when you apply the award criteria. I looked at the main characters in the top 16 HMAC list. Ultimately, I kept weighing a fictional SIMON, not so much against HERCULES but the genuine Dan in A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING. They both examine the theme of resilience – just making it through middle school while working through peer and life challenges. That’s hard for everyone, no matter what your story is, but in this comparison, A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING did a more original and thorough job of capturing the shifting perspective on that journey with distinction.
Quade, I totally agree about the setting. Over the past few years, I’ve encountered multiple books set in the 80s and 90s, seemingly for no other reason that having access to the present-day internet and cell phones would render the characters’ problems pretty much moot. And then basically never allude, in any other way, to the time period. That’s similar to how SIMON handled GNB and the clear airspace.
Ya know, I wasn’t a huge fan of SIMON either. It dragged for me because Bow’s focus seemed unclear. The schema of HERCULES could get repetitive, but I knew what Schmidt was working toward: Hercules’ maturity and ability to cope with his grief and anxieties. With SIMON, I was never sure what ending the author was working toward. Did Bow want Simon to continue to have a life of anonymity? Were we hoping that the fake message would succeed, or were we hoping that it wouldn’t so that Simon could learn to stand up to the journalists and cope with his trauma and anxiety? Were we also hoping he could keep the dog? And what about Agate? If we wanted Simon to face the source of his anxiety, that would mean letting Agate down.
By no means do I think SIMON fell flat. Thematically, this book packs a *very sensitive, timely, and important* punch. The setting is also unique and the secondary characters were SO well-developed. I was cheering for Agate and Kevin as much as I was for Simon! However…I think that’s the reason that the ending felt more overwhelming than like a resolution. There were just so many things to tie together.
I like Jenny’s word for the language of Simon – lively. Humor is hard to capture under the best of circumstances and Bow gave herself quite the challenge in SIMON SORT OF SAYS. I cried during a lot of scenes in this book but some were definitely tears from laughing so hard. I agree with Tally that the humor is vital for readers to be able to process the “underlying tragedy”- Simon telling Agate that he’s the “kid from the pile” in the middle of the ridiculous emu field scene is a great example of Bow threading the needle for her child characters and child readers.
I also think that the Catholicism and aliens/space sub themes added significant depth to the story – Simon has some pretty profound thoughts about saints only being “holy because awful stuff happened to them” (289) and both his parents clearly are wrestling with theological ramifications of their family’s experience (78, 195). Agate likewise uses Einstein’s theory of relativity to help Simon integrate his past, present, and future selves (305).
I disagree that we don’t see Simon dealing with his grief, although I agree that the nature of LABORS is especially well-suited for providing readers with access to Hercules’ inner thoughts in a natural way, through his written reflections for Lt. Col Hupfer. We see Simon actively practicing strategies from his therapist like box breathing (page 38), walking with his parents to process a panic attack on the anniversary (120), telling his parents that the news is about to be public knowledge in Grin and Bear It (132), going back to school after having a massive panic attack from the tornado sirens (170, 180), plus the more normal stresses for a kid moving schools mid-year – making new friends, meeting new teachers.
One final thought, I originally thought Simon’s parents’ professions as undertaker and liturgical directors were merely additional sources of humor. While I knew they were obviously dealing with their own trauma in the midst of parenting their traumatized son, it hit me much later in the novel that their professions were also heavily involved in the aftermath of the Eagle Crest shooting, preparing the bodies of his classmates for burial. Simon and his family are a microcosm into the concentric rings of Americans whose lives have been affected by gun violence. Surviving students and staff, first responders, medical staff, religious leaders, community members, neighbors, media members (even Kathy Catchpole from KNUB) – gun violence in all forms, not just school shootings, has had tremendous far-reaching effects on all of us.
SIMON SORT OF SAYS is an achievement as a needed and enlightening book about what it’s like to be a kid and a parent in this era of rampant school shootings. This was the first book of 2023 that truly wowed. As folks said about MY HEAD HAS A BELLYACHE, humor is not easy to pull off, and here the author masters humor in the midst of Simon and his family’s unimaginable trauma. Sentence-level and poetic writing is not to the level of MONA LISA VANISHES, I agree, but considering young readers’ interests and abilities, this one wins.
SIMON SORT OF SAYS is absolutely individually distinct. What other book do we have that so artfully addresses the horror of a school shooting and does so with warmth and humor? Each of the main characters feel like real people with their own thoughts and feelings.
I thought Bow did a fine job with Agate and she seemed like a believable autistic person to me. Of course, anything is better than AL CAPONE DOES MY SHIRTS, which says “autism is a disease” in the author’s note. Literature has come quite a ways in respecting neurodivergence.
I do have concerns that the plot may have overreached with the contacting aliens portion of the plot. It’s a fine line between funny tales, such as the peacock’s misadventures and the misplaced body, to so farfetched it takes one out of the story.
Bow’s creativity shines and it remains to be seen if the committee believes the execution of the creativity reached the highest level.