Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow

 

Yesterday, I finished reading Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow. This realistic fiction book is about Simon O'Keeffe, a twelve-year-old boy who is the only kid in his class to survive a school shooting two years ago. When he moves with his parents to the National Quiet Zone of Grin and Bear It, Nebraska, the only place in America where the internet and cell phones are banned, he befriends Agate, a girl who wants to give astronomers who are listening to signs of life in space what they're looking for. Over the next few months, he adjusts to life in GNB and having Hercules, a service puppy in training from Agate. After his other new friend, Kevin, finds out his secret, Simon has to decide when to tell Agate about what happened to him and cope with his PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder.

I thought this book was absolutely riveting. Although it deals with the heavy topic of surviving a school shooting, there was plenty of humor throughout the story that made me smile and laugh. I loved the quirkiness of Grin and Bear It and how Simon befriended two other kids in his grade who just seemed to get him. I really appreciated that they never pushed him to tell more about his past than he was ready to share. They just let him be who he was in the now until Kevin accidentally found out about Simon's secret when he had an opportunity to use the internet and was looking for a YouTube video that was recorded when Simon's dad, a Catholic deacon, caused chaos during the Feast of Saint Francis by forgetting to list the pets that can't be brought into church for the animal blessing event. I knew that things would never be the same afterwards and it made me so mad that Kevin's mom couldn't keep the secret, so the whole town found out before Simon was ready for them to know. I definitely felt for him when things started happening that triggered his PTSD. On the other hand, as someone who majored in astronomy in undergrad, I really enjoyed the role that astrophysics played in this story. Both Agate and Kevin are super smart and it was so cool how they, along with Simon, were able to come up with a plan to fake a signal from outer space that the radio telescope in GNB would be able to detect. I also thought Simon's new puppy, Hercules, was the cutest, especially how he always just seemed to know when and how to comfort Simon. Simon Sort of Says is a difficult book to read at times, but I'd recommend it to any kid who is curious about how surviving a mass shooting might affect someone around their age.