Richie’s Picks: A DAY AT THE BEACH
Richie Partington
Richie’s Picks: A DAY AT THE BEACH by Gary D. Schmidt and Ron Koertge, HarperCollins/Clarion, April 2025, 224p., ISBN: 978-0-06-338092-9
“This summer I went swimming
This summer I might have drowned
But I held my breath and I kicked my feet
And I moved my arms around
I moved my arms around”
– Loudon Wainwright III “The Swimming Song” (1973)
“Tobias Jackson sprawled on the blanket.
He didn’t care if he got sand all over himself.
He didn’t care that the morning sun would soon start turning him pink.
He was in Triumph Mode.
No. In Conquering Warrior Mode.
No. In some mode even cooler than that.
He lifted his T-shirt from the bottom, felt for just a second the old hesitation, then with a jerk, lifted it up and over his head.
The sun burned onto his chest. And you know what? It felt great. It felt triumphant. It felt like heroic warrioring.
No. It was even cooler than that.
This is what four horrible weeks at Fat Camp and four more horrible weeks under a supervised diet stricter than a Navy SEAL’s regimen and a summer’s worth of gym visits with his dad had given him. From XXX Large to Large. Look at him! My God, look at him! He had the beginnings of a washboard!
And that wasn’t all.
In the back pocket of his trunks, turned to silent mode, he had the new iPhone Infinity Plus. No kidding. The iPhone Infinity Plus. No one had an iPhone Infinity Plus, because it wasn’t out yet. It was only through his father’s amazing connections that one had snuck out of the factory–the reward his parents had promised him for dropping from XXX Large to Large. A prototype in his pocket while everybody else on the planet was just talking about the best phone ever in the entire history of phones and planning to get in line three months from now.
Not even the president of the freaking United States of America had one.”
Are you a beach person? I sure am. Growing up on Long Island (Long ISLAND), one is always within a half-dozen miles of some shoreline or another. I fell in love with the beach at an early age, and have fond memories of long days in the water, of sprawling out on a towel, alongside family and friends. Or of sometimes sitting quietly, all by myself in the dark, bobbing around just offshore in an old wooden rowboat at night.
“Abram Tolland was the best Frisbee player that Booker T. Washington Middle School had ever seen. What he could do with a Frisbee was stuff Mr. F.R. Isbee himself could never have imagined. Abram Tolland could sniff the air once, and his throws would settle on the back of the wind and go forever. Principal Bao–who was no slouch himself at throwing a Frisbee and who had won Booker T. Washington Middle School’s Frisbee Golf Tournament every spring until Abram Tolland showed up in his sixth grade class–could point to any spot on the athletic fields behind the school, and Abram Tolland could settle a Frisbee there from a hundred yards away. ‘On the dime,’ Mr. Bao would say, laughing.”
A DAY AT THE BEACH takes place on the Jersey Shore, near Asbury Park (and Ocean Grove where, according to the old family stories, my great-grandmother maintained a summer place a hundred-and-something years ago).
“If Ruth had Snapchat or FB or TikTok or YouTube or Tumblr or Instagram or any other ‘Gram, she’d say the same thing every time: ‘ONE MORE DAY.’ What she’d mean is this: One more day before I get my phone back.
Ruth steps off the blanket her mother laid out and tugs at it until the corners are perfect. The sand is hot, so Ruth is onto the sand, back onto the blanket, onto the sand, back onto the blanket. Perfect for a TikTok video.
If she had her phone, she’d dance that out in a heartbeat and then post it for Marco and Ben and Jasmin and Carla. Instead, she’s on day six of a seven-day social media fast, thanks to some very low grades in math.
She hasn’t lost a pound on that fast. In fact, she’s probably gained a few, snacking just to keep her hands busy, hands that are usually wrapped lovingly around her phone, that lifeline to the world. Her world. No wonder that kid was asking everybody if they’d seen his phone. Ruth feels totally alone without hers. Abandoned. Forsaken. She kind of wants to lie down and stare out a window at a windswept moor.”
Tobias, Abram, and Ruth. They are just three of the dozens of preadolescents we meet at the Jersey Shore on this lovely summer day. Over a fifteen hour stretch, jogging, swimming, kite flying, sandcastle fabricating, Frisbeeing, acquiring new friends (human and animal), contemplating a washed-up dead whale, and all sorts of other good clean (sandy) fun will be had.
And, yes, there are also a few kids at the beach who are going through some pretty tough stuff.
Given that the book features a great variety of tales starring these dozens of tween characters, A DAY AT THE BEACH initially feels like a collection of short stories. And I’m typically not much of a short story fan. Too often, you just get into a story and then it’s over. You start another one and the same thing happens.
But here, with intertwining threads, with characters making cameo appearances, comically stepping into and out of each other’s chapters, those ends all tie together into a frequently moving and often laugh-aloud read. It makes for the best of both worlds: A knockout tween read from which one can readily pluck, reread, and share individual chapters/stories that are strong and complete enough to stand on their own.
Up for a sunny summer day amidst the dunes? A DAY AT THE BEACH combines young characters and seaside situations into stories you won’t soon forget. But, hey! What else would you hope for when you pair up a couple of old favs, the award-winning, veteran authors of THE WEDNESDAY WARS and STONER & SPAZ.
“And so castles made of sand
Fall in the sea eventually”
– Jimi Hendrix (1967)
So don’t forget to apply your sunscreen regularly. Make sure to stay hydrated. Watch those riptides. Go suck in that good salt air, and join the crowd for A DAY AT THE BEACH.
Richie Partington, MLIS
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