A Day at the Beach, Gary D. Schmidt
A Day at the Beach, Gary D. Schmidt
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

A Day at the Beach

Author: Gary D. Schmidt, Ron Koertge

Narrator: Ramon de Ocampo, Victoria Villareal

Unabridged: 4 hr 6 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Clarion Books

Published: 04/01/2025


Synopsis

Look Both Ways meets Seedfolks in this masterful novel that follows a diverse cast of young people whose lives intersect in surprising and hilarious ways over the course of a summer day.From two-time Newbery honoree Gary D. Schmidt and two-time PEN Award winner Ron Koertge comes a moving and often laugh-out-loud funny middle grade novel about family, friendship, and belonging, told by a group of kids spending a day at the beach.Here’s what’s so cool about the beach. Kids are everywhere! Kids you know, kids you want to know. Wandering from one blanket to another, from one family to another. Somebody’s mom reads a fat summer novel. Somebody’s dad snores with an iPad on his chest. Babies cry. Girls laugh. Frisbee players whoop! Kites in the perfect blue sky.Some kids bodysurf. Some don’t even like the water. They build sand cities for their friends and sand jails for the grown-ups, and when the tide comes in everything gets washed away.There’s the other world, where all kids hear is tomorrow, next week, next year. And then there’s the beach, where everything is right now! Why can’t every day be a day at the beach?Thoughtful vignettes brilliantly weave together an irresistible tale of tween conflict and connections.

About Gary D. Schmidt

Gary D. Schmidt is the bestselling author of The Labors of Hercules Beal; Just Like That; National Book Award finalist Okay for Now; Pay Attention, Carter Jones; Orbiting Jupiter; the Newbery Honor and Printz Honor Book Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy; and the Newbery Honor Book The Wednesday Wars. He is also coauthor, with Ron Koertge, of Styx and Stones. He lives in rural Michigan.

About Ron Koertge

Ron Koertge is the author of many acclaimed novels for young people, including Stoner & Spaz and Shakespeare Bats Cleanup, and most recently is coauthor, with Gary D. Schmidt, of Styx and Stones. A two-time winner of the PEN Award, Ron lives in South Pasadena, California, where he is currently the city’s poet laureate.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Regina on October 07, 2024

In extremely short chapters Schmidt and Koertge explore the lives of regular, and not so regular kids. It is really a braided short story collection in which all the people have only the Rockcastle beach in common. It is a story about all the drama of one day at the beach! The characters are diverse......more

Goodreads review by Chris G. on March 13, 2025

It turns out that combining the talents of two strong authors to create a story collection organized around a day at a New Jersey beach is a good idea. Each story is distinct but a few threads run through the whole narrative - a boy who has lost his precious new phone, a brother and sister who are c......more

Goodreads review by Josephine on March 29, 2025

Gary D. Schmidt took off in a totally different direction in this book. I’ve been a summer beach goer since I was six months old and the cover art is spot on. Beaches are crowded! I frequent the North and South Carolina beaches still, much is the same: coolers, umbrellas, kites, music, funnel cakes,......more

Goodreads review by Karen on April 01, 2025

Every day the beach is filled with so many kids. Each kid has a unique experience. A story of their own. A Day At The Beach is a compilation of parts of many kids stories. The perfect book for when you need a short read aloud or something easy to consume yourself. The chapters are really just snippe......more

Goodreads review by Faith on January 02, 2025

This was such an interesting read: a connected collection of very short stories about the people who spend their day on a beach in New Jersey, with a small plot line of one beach-goer's missing phone threaded throughout. Because of the sheer number of characters and a couple plot elements, I think th......more