Dr. Gary Schmidt

Biography

Recent Activities

Professor Schmidt is a prolific author of children's literature and young adult fiction. His most recent novel, Orbiting Jupiter, was published in 2015 by Houghton Mifflin. He also contributed to the Star Wars anthology From A Certain Point of View: Star Wars (2017) through writing the only chapter from Yoda's point of view. He was interviewed by both WZZM and Calvin's Spark magazine about his involvement with the anthology.

He has received two John Newbery Honor Awards from the American Library Association, the first in 2005 for his novel Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy and the second in 2008 for his novel Wednesday Wars. Professor Schimdt recently worked with Susan Felch to edit two volumes on religiously themed fiction called The Emmaus Readers. Professor Schmidt, originally from New England, regularly leads the New England Saints interim course in January.

Favorite Books

• The Little World of Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi
• The Aubrey series by Patrick O'Brian
• Bleak House by Charles Dickens
• Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli
• Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson

Additional Information

• Opening the Book that is Gary Schmidt, Spark, the Calvin University magazine
• The Making of The Wednesday Wars, Minds in the Making
• Old Style Writing, Mind in the Making

Hobbies

• Vegetable gardening
• Cutting and splitting wood
• Collecting first editions of the Concord authors