Welcome to Litsy!

Carter Jones, his mom, and his sisters are puzzled by an impressive real-life butler showing up on their doorstep at 7:15 one morning. They have no idea how their lives will change! A beautiful, humorous, and compassionate story MG

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Hello, Litsy! I‘ve had a crazy week, preceded by a challenging five months, and haven‘t been very active here or doing much reading for days. But I‘m happy to share that my husband is home from deployment and I‘m no longer the only adult in the house! No more single parenting for this frazzled mom. Probably less reading time overall for a while, which is a bummer but it means more family time.

The only other Schmidt I‘ve read was Orbiting Jupiter (which knocked me on my butt) so I really should‘ve seen this coming. What a delightful and unexpectedly powerful, relatable story. The audio narration was amazing. Christopher Gebauer was convincingly a British butler, middle school boy, and grumpy vice principal in the same breath. 🏏🏏🏏🏏🏏

I am loving this audiobook! The narration is spot on. I‘m even finding myself interested in the game of cricket. If the butler pulls a Mary Poppins at the end I will SOB. ☂

This is a humorous and poignant middle reader level book about a 12 yo boy and his family going through some really tough issues when a very British butler shows up on their very American, chaotic doorstep. (Think Mary Poppins, without the magical bits.) I especially loved how the kids adopted the Butler‘s speech patterns.There is a lot of cricket, both being played and used symbolically, to deal with loss, responsibility.A wonderful read.

Well this was such fun. You‘ll need to suspend a bit of disbelief for this Mary Poppins-esque tale of a very proper British butler showing up to help with Carter‘s family while his dad is deployed. It‘s not flawless, but there‘s a lot going on under the surface here while still managing to be frequently laugh-out-loud funny. Alas, I still understand almost nothing about cricket. #middlegrade #kidlit

Reading on my lunch break. The narrator just referred to his little sister as a pain in the glutes, and now I have a new favorite fake-cuss. #middlegrade #kidlit

It has taken me 11 pages to discern that Pay Attention, Carter Jones is going to be an utter delight. I am about to gobble up every last thing in this photo.

Also, to whoever stuck that barcode right smack over Gary D. Schmidt's name: 🤦‍♀️

#BookMail from the past couple weeks. 😍 I‘m excited.