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Book Review: Simon Sort of Says
Jan. 13th, 2025 08:07 amThe thing about the Newbery project is that it forces you to read all sorts of books you never would have chosen on your own. Sometimes this works out well: who would have imagined that I would enjoy children’s biographies from the 1930s, for instance? How else would I have ever found Jennie Lindquist’s The Golden Name Day?
However, there are times when this backfires.
Case in point: Erin Bow’s Simon Sort of Says, one of the Newbery Honor books of 2024. So as you read this review, please bear in mind that this is the bitter carping of a reader who didn’t want to read a book about a school shooting in the first place, and is therefore extra-irritated by flaws that might not otherwise have registered.
***
Okay, first of all, a couple of things I liked about this book. It appears that we may finally have left behind the victim-blaming era of “I’m not saying that school shooters are justified, but just think how their classmates must have bullied them to push them to this point!” (Todd Strasser’s Give a Boy a Gun, Nancy Garden’s Endgame, that one Criminal Minds episode, countless internet comments.) (If you struggle to see the problem with this formulation, consider: “I’m not saying wife-beaters are justified, but just think what their wives must have done to force them to this point!”)
Admittedly Simon Sort of Says sort of side-steps the issue by making the shooter some adult off the street rather than a student, but still, kudos.
Also, Erin Bow is often quite funny.
Now, to the things I disliked about this book.
I’ve mentioned before that modern children’s book authors have a Cell Phone Problem; that is, that most children’s book authors (now and always) are in a sense writing about their own childhoods, and contemporary children’s book authors did not, for the most part, grow up with cell phone and internet, whereas these have a large impact on contemporary children’s lives. Different authors solve this problem different ways.
1. You just straight-up set the book in your own childhood. (Pedro Martin’s Mexikid.)
2. You set the book more generally in The Past. (Amina Luqman-Dawson’s Freewater.)
3. You set the book in a fantasy world. (Christine Soontornvat’s The Last Mapmaker.)
4. You make the book a sci-fi space adventure on a spaceship that seems curiously devoid of personal communication devices and/or surveillance despite being a dystopia. (Donna Barbra Higuera’s The Last Cuentista.)
5. The heroine breaks her cell phone two chapters in and the town is curiously devoid of other internet devices. (Lisa Yee’s Maizy Chen’s Last Chance.)
6. The family has only one computer and all three children have to share it to do their homework because it’s Covid, plus sometimes the adults need it, so the kids get lots of time to play outside and have fantasy adventures. (M. T. Anderson’s Elf Dog and Owl Head.)
7. The family lives in the back of beyond and has no cell phone reception or internet. (Kyle Lukoff’s Too Bright to See.)
8. The hero is the sole survivor of a school shooting, so he’s thrilled when his parents decide to move to the National Quiet Zone where no one is allowed to have internet or microwaves because these interfere with the local “listening for aliens” project. (Erin Bow’s Simon Sort of Says.)
The resulting media attention was nearly as traumatic as the shooting itself, but Simon is convinced that in the Land of No Internet, no one will recognize him. He is so confident that this will work that he doesn’t even bother to, for instance, change his name.
I understand why actual child Simon O’Keeffe would believe this, but his parents and Erin Bow who was born in 1972 have no excuse. Newspapers exist. (Bow mentions newspapers, but apparently has forgotten that their function is to spread news.) This extremely famous shooting happened in the very same state as Simon’s new town, and was such a big deal that Simon’s new school has a memorial event for it, inexplicably two days before the actual anniversary, because Bow wants Simon to have the trauma of attending a memorial event but also realizes he’s probably not going to go to school on the anniversary itself.
And, in fact, Simon’s very first teacher on the very first day of class recognizes him. In the book, apparently she locks this knowledge in her heart and never tells anyone, because Simon’s incognito remains intact until one of his classmates (on a trip to family outside the Quiet Zone) looks him up on Youtube.
But let’s be real. An actual human being would spill the beans the moment she made it to the teacher’s lounge, for the noble reason of “Is he getting the support he needs???” By the end of the day, all the teachers in the school will know. That evening, all their spouses will get an earful, and presumably at least one of them has a child who will overhear. The child will tell their friends (either over the landline phone or at school the next morning), and by lunchtime every single child in this combined junior high/high school with one hundred students will know.
However, in Simon Sort of Says, the cruel bean-spiller is Simon’s classmate’s mother, who happens to be the leader of the “listening for aliens” project, presumably because if the good doctor has Wronged Simon by telling people about his identity, which realistically all of them would already know, not only because of the gossip mill but also because everyone seems to be surprisingly well informed about every aspect of Simon’s school shooting except the fact that Simon was there—
If the good doctor is responsible for blowing Simon’s incognito, as I was saying, then it’s okay for Simon and a couple of classmates to carry through their plan to prank the “listening for aliens” project by faking a message from aliens with a microwave.
Unfortunately for Simon and company, this kind of plotline has always filled me with rage. I’m still mad at Curious George for the time that he destroyed a dinosaur skeleton. Does he KNOW how much work it takes to excavate a dinosaur skeleton? Does he know how much possible scientific knowledge was lost when he destroyed it? Jail for monkey! Jail for monkey for ten thousand years!
And now similarly Simon and co are potentially undermining decades of scientific research for the LOLs. (Well, okay, they have more complicated reasons than that. Their reasons are still stupid.) Thanks! I hate it!
Oh, and as it turns out, there IS internet in the National Quiet Zone. You can’t use WiFi or cell phones, but wired internet, like landline phones, is fine. So even if YouTube WAS the only source of information on the entire planet, Simon’s incognito could have been blown the moment a classmate went to the computer lab.
However, there are times when this backfires.
Case in point: Erin Bow’s Simon Sort of Says, one of the Newbery Honor books of 2024. So as you read this review, please bear in mind that this is the bitter carping of a reader who didn’t want to read a book about a school shooting in the first place, and is therefore extra-irritated by flaws that might not otherwise have registered.
***
Okay, first of all, a couple of things I liked about this book. It appears that we may finally have left behind the victim-blaming era of “I’m not saying that school shooters are justified, but just think how their classmates must have bullied them to push them to this point!” (Todd Strasser’s Give a Boy a Gun, Nancy Garden’s Endgame, that one Criminal Minds episode, countless internet comments.) (If you struggle to see the problem with this formulation, consider: “I’m not saying wife-beaters are justified, but just think what their wives must have done to force them to this point!”)
Admittedly Simon Sort of Says sort of side-steps the issue by making the shooter some adult off the street rather than a student, but still, kudos.
Also, Erin Bow is often quite funny.
Now, to the things I disliked about this book.
I’ve mentioned before that modern children’s book authors have a Cell Phone Problem; that is, that most children’s book authors (now and always) are in a sense writing about their own childhoods, and contemporary children’s book authors did not, for the most part, grow up with cell phone and internet, whereas these have a large impact on contemporary children’s lives. Different authors solve this problem different ways.
1. You just straight-up set the book in your own childhood. (Pedro Martin’s Mexikid.)
2. You set the book more generally in The Past. (Amina Luqman-Dawson’s Freewater.)
3. You set the book in a fantasy world. (Christine Soontornvat’s The Last Mapmaker.)
4. You make the book a sci-fi space adventure on a spaceship that seems curiously devoid of personal communication devices and/or surveillance despite being a dystopia. (Donna Barbra Higuera’s The Last Cuentista.)
5. The heroine breaks her cell phone two chapters in and the town is curiously devoid of other internet devices. (Lisa Yee’s Maizy Chen’s Last Chance.)
6. The family has only one computer and all three children have to share it to do their homework because it’s Covid, plus sometimes the adults need it, so the kids get lots of time to play outside and have fantasy adventures. (M. T. Anderson’s Elf Dog and Owl Head.)
7. The family lives in the back of beyond and has no cell phone reception or internet. (Kyle Lukoff’s Too Bright to See.)
8. The hero is the sole survivor of a school shooting, so he’s thrilled when his parents decide to move to the National Quiet Zone where no one is allowed to have internet or microwaves because these interfere with the local “listening for aliens” project. (Erin Bow’s Simon Sort of Says.)
The resulting media attention was nearly as traumatic as the shooting itself, but Simon is convinced that in the Land of No Internet, no one will recognize him. He is so confident that this will work that he doesn’t even bother to, for instance, change his name.
I understand why actual child Simon O’Keeffe would believe this, but his parents and Erin Bow who was born in 1972 have no excuse. Newspapers exist. (Bow mentions newspapers, but apparently has forgotten that their function is to spread news.) This extremely famous shooting happened in the very same state as Simon’s new town, and was such a big deal that Simon’s new school has a memorial event for it, inexplicably two days before the actual anniversary, because Bow wants Simon to have the trauma of attending a memorial event but also realizes he’s probably not going to go to school on the anniversary itself.
And, in fact, Simon’s very first teacher on the very first day of class recognizes him. In the book, apparently she locks this knowledge in her heart and never tells anyone, because Simon’s incognito remains intact until one of his classmates (on a trip to family outside the Quiet Zone) looks him up on Youtube.
But let’s be real. An actual human being would spill the beans the moment she made it to the teacher’s lounge, for the noble reason of “Is he getting the support he needs???” By the end of the day, all the teachers in the school will know. That evening, all their spouses will get an earful, and presumably at least one of them has a child who will overhear. The child will tell their friends (either over the landline phone or at school the next morning), and by lunchtime every single child in this combined junior high/high school with one hundred students will know.
However, in Simon Sort of Says, the cruel bean-spiller is Simon’s classmate’s mother, who happens to be the leader of the “listening for aliens” project, presumably because if the good doctor has Wronged Simon by telling people about his identity, which realistically all of them would already know, not only because of the gossip mill but also because everyone seems to be surprisingly well informed about every aspect of Simon’s school shooting except the fact that Simon was there—
If the good doctor is responsible for blowing Simon’s incognito, as I was saying, then it’s okay for Simon and a couple of classmates to carry through their plan to prank the “listening for aliens” project by faking a message from aliens with a microwave.
Unfortunately for Simon and company, this kind of plotline has always filled me with rage. I’m still mad at Curious George for the time that he destroyed a dinosaur skeleton. Does he KNOW how much work it takes to excavate a dinosaur skeleton? Does he know how much possible scientific knowledge was lost when he destroyed it? Jail for monkey! Jail for monkey for ten thousand years!
And now similarly Simon and co are potentially undermining decades of scientific research for the LOLs. (Well, okay, they have more complicated reasons than that. Their reasons are still stupid.) Thanks! I hate it!
Oh, and as it turns out, there IS internet in the National Quiet Zone. You can’t use WiFi or cell phones, but wired internet, like landline phones, is fine. So even if YouTube WAS the only source of information on the entire planet, Simon’s incognito could have been blown the moment a classmate went to the computer lab.
