A Herculean Effort

T o: Mr. Gary D. Schmidt

From: Sarah C. Schutte

Dear Mr. Schmidt,

Until I read your recent book The Labors of Hercules Beal, I’d only really cried at one other story (Katherine Paterson’s Bridge to Terabithia). But that’s the beauty of your stories: They are funny without being cynical, descriptive without being overwritten, and heartrending without being sappy.

You have perfected the skill of showing, not telling. That’s an element I so deeply appreciate in your books, and each rereading brings out new elements I hadn’t noticed before. Hercules, your protagonist, has already been through so much by the time we first meet him. He’s in seventh grade, being raised in a small town on Cape Cod by his older brother Achilles after the tragic death of their parents over a year ago. That right there is enough fodder for you to create a snarky, wildly emotional pre-teen who smolders with resentment and takes it out on those around him. But you don’t.

You give us a grieving boy who loves his parents and is trying to learn what it means to carry on after his world is shattered. How you present this to readers is wonderfully insightful and grasps how many of us deal with loss. Hercules seems to have shut himself off. He misses his parents terribly, thinks Achilles hates having to live on Cape Cod, loathes his brother’s girlfriend, Viola, and is being sent to a new school (Cape Cod Academy for Environmental Sciences). Thank goodness for his one friend, Ellie Rigby, and for his dog, Mindy.

That school switch turns out to be life-changing. For one thing, he makes a new friend and bonds with an old acquaintance. But more importantly, he meets Lieutenant Colonel Hupfer.

D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths was quite the favorite in my house growing up, with its bright pictures and simple introductions to various Greek myths. My siblings and I spent hours poring over it, and my sister recently told me that certain scenes from its pages still stick in her memory. Though we read our copy so much that it fell to pieces, I can’t remember whether Hercules was mentioned. He must’ve been, though — who could write a book about Greek myths without mentioning one of the most famous heroes?

Famous though he is, the idea of taking his twelve labors and making them relevant in the 21st century seems a bit far out there. Wouldn’t it come across as contrived and stilted? Clearly, Lieutenant Colonel Hupfer — Hercules’ homeroom teacher — doesn’t think so when he tasks the boy with re-creating the twelve labors of the mythical Hercules and writing reflection papers on them all so he can learn something “about the world and [his] place in it.”

Where the heck is a seventh-grader going to find the Aegean Stables on Cape Cod? Or the Belt of Hippolyte, for that matter? But it’s not really about those things, is it, Mr. Schmidt?

It’s about hope. And about relationships. So basic and simple, yet so hard to grapple with. You’ve given us a wounded character who is struggling with his own loss but is continually thinking about the needs of others, from noticing Mr. Moby’s love of dogs to using all his savings to buy back Ira the Hippo for his neighbor. He learns to notice the importance of the perfect lighting, to connect with his brother, and to love a very ugly cat. And even more than that, he shows us what it means to cherish one’s home and roots, and to let oneself be loved and helped by those around one.

My youngest brother hasn’t gone through a terrible loss like Hercules, but as the youngest of seven kids in a close-knit family, he’s been struggling mightily as we older ones have left home for jobs, school, and families in new cities and new states. We listened to another of your books, Wednesday Wars, together on audiobook recently, and now he’s working through Hercules Beal. Your stories have power, and I hope this one — with all its moments of courage and pain and determination — will speak to him.

Little Women has long been my favorite book, Mr. Schmidt, but The Labors of Hercules Beal might be edging it out.