The Labors of Hercules Beale

December is always a really fun reading month that feels either incredibly stressful because it’s award season, or really really stressful for the same reason. This December was somewhere in the middle, because I was DONE with one award committee, but I was looking forward to participating in Heavy Medal for the 3rd year in row, which meant I had some catching up to do on great Kid Lit that I had missed out on throughout the year. 

Heavy Medal is a Mock Newbery blog, and each December, a team of 15 is assembled to discuss 15 “nominated” titles to discuss as if we were the real Newbery committee, which we are not. The 15 chosen titles are usually ones I’ve heard of, even intended to read, but every year there are a few “huh” books that I somehow missed. In my efforts to catch up and engage in the discussion, I grabbed a few hard copies of nominated titles from the library before heading home for the holidays, and made The Labors of Hercules Beale by Gary D. Schmidt. I actually think I first read the only other Schmidt book I’d read because of Heavy Medal…interesting. 

Anyway, The Labors of Hercules Beale is an upper middle grade prose novel about a boy named, you guessed it, Hercules Beale, who is left orphaned and living with his older brother after a car accident kills his parents. They run the family greenhouse/outdoor place—think plants, trees, soil, firework, etc—and now Hercules, who has always been small for his age, is starting middle school at an Environmental Sciences academy because it’s a closer walk than the nearest public school, and he’s got a scholarship. He is less than enthused, which is an understatement even more so when he meets his primary teacher, a retired military Lt. Colonel who is going to give them a year long assignment based on mythology, and he doesn’t want to hear any excuses. Some kids are drawing graphic novels, other researching more diverse myths, and Hercules well…obviously he has to complete the 12 Labors of Hercules, even if there’s no lions or hydras around. Hercules has to find modern equivalents in his rural town and journal about it. As Hercules goes through his labors, and his year, he learns to be more thoughtful, more creative in his problem solving, and that the people around him are worth a lot more than he maybe ever anticipated. 

I really enjoyed this novel, and if I didn’t know that Gary D. Schmidt dos this in like all his stories, I would call it Newbery Bait. It’s got a historical/mythological tie-in. A small-town, rural but intense setting. Embedded school writing that offers insights into both the writer and the grader. There’s some harrowing moments, a few tear-jerkers, and kids being really adult-ish for a few moments of Terror. I chuckled, I cried quietly while the person next to me on the train slept, and I’m glad I read this book! It’s not the book I can hand to any reader, but it’s interesting, well developed, and I can see it really resonating with the right reader.