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Pay It Forward: A Novel Kindle Edition
The story of how a boy who believed in the goodness of human nature set out to change the world.
Pay It Forward is a wondrous and moving novel about Trevor McKinney, a twelve-year-old boy in a small California town who accepts the challenge that his teacher gives his class, a chance to earn extra credit by coming up with a plan to change the world for the better -- and to put that plan into action.
The idea that Trevor comes up with is so simple and so naïve that when others learn of it they are dismissive. Even Trevor himself begins to doubt when his "pay it forward" plan seems to founder on a combination of bad luck and the worst of human nature.
What is his idea? Trevor chooses three people for whom he will do a favor, and then when those people thank him and ask how they might pay him back, he will tell them that instead of paying him back, they should each "pay it forward" by choosing three people for whom they can do favors, and in turn telling those people to pay it forward. It's nothing less than a human chain letter of kindness and good will.
Does his plan work? No. And yes -- it works wonderfully, but only after it has seemed to Trevor that maybe all his efforts have been for naught. The first person he chooses to help -- a homeless man to whom he gives his paper-route money so he can make himself presentable enough to find a job -- disappoints him by returning to a life of dissolution and eventually ending up in jail. The second is a lady on his paper route, old and alone and infirm, and with a garden that needs tending. No sooner has Trevor begun to help her, however, than she goes and dies on him.
The third person Trevor hopes to help is his teacher, Reuben St. Clair, a scarred, bitter, untrusting man who seems to come truly alive only when in front of his class. Trevor's goal is to match him with his mother, Arlene, a pretty, hardworking woman who has raised Trevor more or less alone, but who Trevor feels has a lot to offer the right man. It proves not to be a match made in heaven, though, and Trevor's dismay only deepens as he watches these two people come so close to achieving the connection he wants for them, only to turn away at the last moment.
Failure seems inevitable, and Trevor is resigned. What he doesn't realize, however, is that there really is a good side to human nature, and that the tiny seed of kindness and caring he planted has taken root. In neighborhoods in other California towns, and as far away as Los Angeles, there are others following the rules of "paying it forward." Soon fame comes knocking, bringing with it excitement and an unforeseen tragedy.
In the end, Pay It Forward is the story of seemingly ordinary people made extraordinary by the simple faith of a child. In the tradition of the successful and inspirational television show Touched by an Angel, and the phenomenally successful novel and film Forrest Gump, Pay It Forward is a work of charm, wit, and remarkable inspiration, a story of hope for today and for many tomorrows to come.
- Reading age8 - 12 years
- LanguageEnglish
- Grade level3 - 7
- Lexile measure630L
- PublisherSimon & Schuster
- Publication dateMarch 25, 2000
- ISBN-13978-1476796383
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Trevor, meanwhile, could use a little help himself. His father walked out on the family, and his mother, Arlene, is fighting an uphill battle with alcoholism, poor judgment in men, and despair. When the boy's new Social Studies teacher, Reuben St. Clair, arrives on the scene, Trevor sees in him not only a source of inspiration for how to change the world, but also the means of altering his mother's life. Yet Reuben has his own set of problems. Horribly scarred in Vietnam, he is reluctant to open himself up to the possibility of rejection--or love. Indeed, the relationship between Arlene and Reuben is central to the novel as these two damaged people learn to "pay forward" the trust and affection Trevor has given them.
Hyde tells her tale from many different perspectives, using letters, diary entries, and first- and third-person narratives from the various people whose lives Trevor's project touches. Jerry Busconi, for example, the addict Trevor tried to help, one night finds himself talking a young woman out of jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge: I'm a junkie, Charlotte. I'm always gonna be a junkie. I ain't never gonna be no fine, upstanding citizen. But then I thought, hell. Just pay it forward anyway. Kid tried to help me. Okay, it didn't work. Still, I'm trying to help you. Maybe you'll jump. I don't know. But I tried, right? But let me tell you one thing. I woke up one morning and somebody gave me a chance. Just outta nowhere. It was like a miracle. Now, how do you know that won't happen to you tomorrow? Pay It Forward is reminiscent of Frank Capra's classic It's a Wonderful Life. Like the film, this novel has a steely core of gritty reality beneath its optimism: yes, one person can make a difference, can help to make the world a better place, but sickness, pain, heartache, and tragedy will still always be a part of the human condition. If at times Hyde stumbles a bit while negotiating the razor-thin line between honest feeling and sentimentality, it's generally not for long. And the occasional lapse into artificially colored emotion can be forgiven when weighed against the courage it takes to write so unabashedly hopeful a story in such cynical times. --Sheila Bright
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Claudia Moore, W. T. Woodson High School, Fairfax, VA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
-AMichele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., VA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Review
"The philosophy behind the book is so intriguing, and the optimism so contagious, that the reader is carried along with what turns out to be a book that lingers long after the last page is turned.” (The Denver Post)
“The story is a quick read, told with lean sentences and an edge….Hyde pulls of a poignant, gusty ending without bathos.” (The Los Angeles Times)
“Heartwarming, funny, and bittersweet….A quiet, steady masterpiece with an incandescent ending.” (Kirkus Reviews (starred))
“Speaks to the hunger so many of us feel for something to believe in that can give us hope… Hyde’s book delivers a profound vision: The simple magic of the human heart.” (David Field San Francisco Chronicle)
"If the success of Harry Potter suggests that many of us yearn for magic, Hyde's book delivers an even more profound vision of what it may be: the simple magic of the human heart." (David Field San Francisco Chronicle)
"Pay It Forward"—a book poised to become a phenomenon—is a well-designed confection that author Catherine Ryan Hyde has executed with abundant skill. If you ever had a yen for the utopian, you will have a sweet time with this heartfelt fable. (San Jose Mercury-News)
"An extraordinary tale that, like its young protagonist, just might change the world. Big things are expected of this book (there was already a movie deal in the works before its release), and with good reason. Pay It Forward is a delightfully uplifting, moving, and inspiring modern fable that has the power to change the world as we know it—which would be a wonderful phenomenon indeed." (Bookpage)
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The woman smiled so politely that he felt offended.
"Let me tell Principal Morgan that you're here, Mr. St. Clair. She'll want to talk with you." She walked two steps, turned back. "She likes to talk to everyone, I mean. Any new teacher."
"Of course."
He should have been used to this by now.
More than three minutes later she emerged from the principal's office, smiling too widely. Too openly. People always display far too much acceptance, he'd noticed, when they are having trouble mustering any for real.
"Go right on in, Mr. St. Clair. She'll see you."
"Thank you."
The principal appeared to be about ten years older than he, with a great deal of dark hair, worn up, a Caucasian and attractive. And attractive women always made him hurt, literally, a long pain that started high up in his solar plexus and radiated downward through his gut. As if he had just asked this attractive woman to the theater, only to be told, You must be joking.
"We are so pleased to meet you face-to-face, Mr. St. Clair." Then she flushed, as if the mention of the word "face" had been an unforgivable faux pas.
"Please call me Reuben."
"Reuben, yes. And I'm Anne."
She met him with a steady, head-on gaze, and at no time appeared startled. So she had been verbally prepared by her assistant. And somehow the only thing worse than an unprepared reaction was the obviously rehearsed absence of one.
He hated these moments so.
He was, by his own admission, a man who should stay in one place. But the same factors that made it hard to start over made it hard to stay.
She motioned toward a chair and he sat. Crossed his legs. The crease of his slacks was neatly, carefully pressed. He'd chosen his tie the previous night, to go well with the suit. He was a demon about grooming, although he knew no one would ever really see. He appreciated these habits in himself, even if, or because, no one else did.
"I'm not quite what you were expecting, am I, Anne?"
The use of her first name brought it back, but more acutely. It was very hard to talk to an attractive woman.
"In what respect?"
"Please don't do this. You must appreciate how many times I've replayed this same scene. I can't bear to talk around an obvious issue."
She tried to establish eye contact, as one normally would when addressing a coworker in conversation, but she could not make it stick. "I understand," she said.
I doubt it, he said, but not out loud.
"It is human nature," he said out loud, "to form a picture of someone in your mind. You read a résumé and an application, and you see I'm forty-four, a black male, a war veteran with a good educational background. And you think you see me. And because you are not prejudiced, you hire this black man to move to your town, teach at your school. But now I arrive to test the limits of your open mind. It's easy not to be prejudiced against a black man, because we have all seen hundreds of those."
"If you think your position is in any jeopardy, Reuben, you're worrying for nothing."
"Do you really have this little talk with everyone?"
"Of course I do."
"Before they even address their first class?"
Pause. "Not necessarily. I just thought we might discuss the subject of...initial adjustment."
"You worry that my appearance will alarm the students."
"What has your experience been with that in the past?"
"The students are always easy, Anne. This is the difficult moment. Always."
"I understand."
"With all respect, I'm not sure you do," he said. Out loud.
At his former school, in Cincinnati, Reuben had a friend named Louis Tartaglia. Lou had a special way of addressing an unfamiliar class. He would enter, on that first morning, with a yardstick in his hand. Walk right into the flap and fray. They like to test a teacher, you see, at first. This yardstick was Lou's own, bought and carried in with him. A rather thin, cheap one. He always bought the same brand at the same store. Then he would ask for silence, which he never received on the first request. After counting to three, he would bring this yardstick up over his head and smack it down on the desktop in such a way that it would break in two. The free half would fly up into the air behind him, hit the blackboard, and clatter to the floor. Then, in the audible silence to follow, he would say, simply, "Thank you." And would have no trouble with the class after that.
Reuben warned him that someday a piece would fly in the wrong direction and hit a student, causing a world of problems, but it had always worked as planned, so far as he knew.
"It boils down to unpredictability," Lou explained. "Once they see you as unpredictable, you hold the cards."
Then he asked what Reuben did to quiet an unfamiliar and unruly class, and Reuben replied that he had never experienced the problem; he had never been greeted by anything but stony silence and was never assumed to be predictable.
"Oh. Right," Lou said, as if he should have known better. And he should have.
Reuben stood before them, for the first time, both grateful for and resentful of their silence. Outside the windows on his right was California, a place he'd never been before. The trees were different; the sky did not say winter as it had when he'd started the long drive from Cincinnati. He wouldn't say from home, because it was not his home, not really. And neither was this. And he'd grown tired of feeling like a stranger.
He performed a quick head count, seats per row, number of rows. "Since I can see you're all here," he said, "we will dispense with the roll call."
It seemed to break a spell, that he spoke, and the students shifted a bit, made eye contact with one another. Whispered across aisles. Neither better nor worse than usual. To encourage this normality, he turned away to write his name on the board. Mr. St. Clair. Also wrote it out underneath, Saint Clair, as an aid to pronunciation. Then paused before turning back, so they would have time to finish reading his name.
In his mind, his plan, he thought he'd start right off with the assignment. But it caved from under him, like skidding down the side of a sand dune. He was not Lou, and sometimes people needed to know him first. Sometimes he was startling enough on his own, before his ideas even showed themselves.
"Maybe we should spend this first day," he said, "just talking. Since you don't know me at all. We can start by talking about appearances. How we feel about people because of how they look. There are no rules. You can say anything you want."
Apparently they did not believe him yet, because they said the same things they might have with their parents looking on. To his disappointment.
Then, in what he supposed was an attempt at humor, a boy in the back row asked if he was a pirate.
"No," he said. "I'm not. I'm a teacher."
"I thought only pirates wore eye patches."
"People who have lost eyes wear eye patches. Whether they are pirates or not is beside the point."
The class filed out, to his relief, and he looked up to see a boy standing in front of his desk. A thin white boy, but very dark-haired, possibly part Hispanic, who said, "Hi."
"Hello."
"What happened to your face?"
Reuben smiled, which was rare for him, being self-conscious about the lopsided effect. He pulled a chair around so the boy could sit facing him and motioned for him to sit, which he did without hesitation. "What's your name?"
"Trevor."
"Trevor what?"
"McKinney. Did I hurt your feelings?"
"No, Trevor. You didn't."
"My mom says I shouldn't ask people things like that, because it might hurt their feelings. She says you should act like you didn't notice."
"Well, what your mom doesn't know, Trevor, because she's never been in my shoes, is that if you act like you didn't notice, I still know that you did. And then it feels strange that we can't talk about it when we're both thinking about it. Know what I mean?"
"I think so. So, what happened?"
"I was injured in a war."
"In Vietnam?"
"That's right."
"My daddy was in Vietnam. He says it's a hellhole."
"I would tend to agree. Even though I was only there for seven weeks."
"My daddy was there two years."
"Was he injured?"
"Maybe a little. I think he has a sore knee."
"I was supposed to stay two years, but I got hurt so badly that I had to come home. So, in a way I was lucky that I didn't have to stay, and in a way your daddy was lucky because he didn't get hurt that badly. If you know what I mean." The boy didn't look too sure that he did. "Maybe someday I'll meet your dad. Maybe on parents' night."
"I don't think so. We don't know where he is. What's under the eye patch?"
"Nothing."
"How can it be nothing?"
"It's like nothing was ever there. Do you want to see?"
"You bet."
Reuben took off the patch.
No one seemed to know quite what he meant by "nothing," until they saw it. No one seemed prepared for the shock of "nothing" where there would be an eye on everyone else they had ever met. The boy's head rocked back a little, then he nodded. Kids were easier. Reuben replaced the patch.
"Sorry about your face. But you know, it's only just that one side. The other side looks real good."
"Thank you, Trevor. I think you are the first person to offer me that compliment."
"Well, see ya."
"Good-bye, Trevor."
Reuben moved to the window and looked out over the front lawn. Watched students clump and talk and run on the grass, until Trevor appeared, trotting down the front steps.
It was ingrained in Reuben to defend this moment, and he could not have returned to his desk if he'd tried. This he could not release. He needed to know if Trevor would run up to the other boys to flaunt his new knowledge. To collect on any bets or tell any tales, which Reuben would not hear, only imagine from his second-floor perch, his face flushing under the imagined words. But Trevor trotted past the boys without so much as a glance, stopping to speak to no one.
It was almost time for Reuben's second class to arrive. So he had to get started, preparing himself to do it all over again.
From The Other Faces Behind the Movement
by Chris Chandler
There is nothing monstrous or grotesque about my face. I get to state this with a certain objectivity, being perhaps the only one capable of such. I am the only one used to seeing it, because I am the only one who dares, with the help of a shaving mirror, to openly stare.
I have undergone eleven operations, all in all, to repair what was, at one time, unsightly damage. The area that was my left eye, and the lost bone and muscle under cheek and brow, have been neatly covered with skin removed from my thigh. I have endured numerous skin grafts and plastic surgery. Only a few of these were necessary for health or function. Most were intended to make me an easier individual to meet. The final result is a smooth, complete absence of an eye, as if one had never existed; a great loss of muscle and mass in cheek and neck; and obvious nerve damage to the left corner of my mouth. It is dead, so to speak, and droops. But after many years of remedial diction therapy, my speech is fairly easily understood.
So, in a sense it is not what people see in my face that disturbs them, but rather what they expect to see and do not.
I also have minimal use of my left arm, which is foreshortened and thin from resulting atrophy. My guess is that people rarely notice this until I've been around awhile, because my face tends to steal the show.
I have worked in schools, lounged in staff rooms, where a Band-Aid draws comment and requires explanation. Richie, what did you do to your hand? A cast on an extremity becomes a story told for six weeks, multiplied by the number of employees. Well, I was on a ladder, see, preparing to clean my storm drains....
So, it seems odd to me that no one will ask. If they suddenly did and I were forced to repeat the story, I might decide I had liked things better before. But it's not so much that they don't ask, but why they don't ask, as if I am an unspeakable tragedy, as new and shocking to myself as to them.
Occasionally my left arm will draw comment, always the same one. "How lucky that it was your left." But even this supposed consolation is misguided, because I am left-handed, by nature if not by practice.
Until I was shipped home from overseas, I had a fiancée. I still have pictures of us together. We were a handsome couple -- ask anyone. To someone who wasn't there, it might seem as if my fiancée must have been a coldhearted woman. Surely she could have married me just the same. I wish Eleanor had been a coldhearted woman, or even that I could pretend such to be the case, but unfortunately I was there. The real truth is hard to re-create. The real truth is that we both agreed so staunchly not to see it or care about it that it was all we could see, nor had we time left over to care about anything else.
Eleanor was a strong woman, which no doubt contributed to our defeat.
She is married now and lives with her husband in Detroit. She is a plastic surgeon. I haven't entirely decided how much significance to attribute to these facts.
Any of them.
From The Diary of Trevor
I saw this weird thing on the news a couple of days ago. This little kid over in England who has this, like...condition. Nothing hurts him. Every time they showed a shot of him, he was wearing a crash helmet and elbow pads and knee pads. 'Cause I guess he would hurt himself. I mean, why wouldn't he? How would he know?
First I thought, Whoa. Lucky. But then I wasn't that sure.
When I was little I asked my mom why we have pain. Like, what's it for? She said it's so we don't stand around with our hands on a hot stove. She said it's to teach us. But she said by the time the pain kicks in, it's pretty much too late, and that's what parents are here for. And that's what she's here for. To teach me. So I don't touch the hot stove in the first place.
Sometimes I think my mom has that condition, too. Only on the inside where nobody sees it but me and maybe Loretta and definitely Bonnie. Except, I know she hurts. But she still has her hand on that hot stove. On the inside, I mean. And I don't think they make helmets or pads for stuff like that.
I wish I could teach her.
Copyright © 1999 Catherine Ryan Hyde
From AudioFile
Product details
- ASIN : B002DQW9YO
- Publisher : Simon & Schuster; Reissue edition (March 25, 2000)
- Publication date : March 25, 2000
- Language : English
- File size : 2402 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Print length : 323 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: #32,764 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #19 in Movie Tie-In Fiction
- #839 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
- #1,905 in American Literature (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Catherine Ryan Hyde is the author of more than 40 published and forthcoming books.
An avid hiker, traveler, equestrian, and amateur photographer and astrophotographer, she has a published book of photos, 365 DAYS OF GRATITUDE: PHOTOS FROM A BEAUTIFUL WORLD.
She is co-author, with fellow author and publishing industry blogger Anne R. Allen, of HOW TO BE A WRITER IN THE E-AGE: A SELF-HELP GUIDE.
Her novel PAY IT FORWARD was adapted into a major motion picture, chosen by the American Library Association for its Best Books for Young Adults list, and translated into more than 23 languages for distribution in over 30 countries. The paperback was released in October 2000 by Pocket Books and quickly became a national bestseller. Simon & Schuster released PAY IT FORWARD: YOUNG READERS' EDITION in August of '14. It is suitable for kids as young as eight. A special Fifteenth Anniversary Edition of the original PAY IT FORWARD was released in December of '14
LOVE IN THE PRESENT TENSE enjoyed bestseller status in the UK, where it broke the top ten, spent five weeks on the bestseller lists, was reviewed on a major TV book club, and shortlisted for a Best Read of the Year award at the British Book Awards. Both BECOMING CHLOE and JUMPSTART THE WORLD were included on the ALA's Rainbow List, and JUMPSTART THE WORLD was a finalist for two Lambda Literary Awards. WHERE WE BELONG won two Rainbow Awards in 2013 and THE LANGUAGE OF HOOFBEATS won a Rainbow Award in 2015.
New Kindle editions of her backlist titles FUNERALS FOR HORSES, EARTHQUAKE WEATHER AND OTHER STORIES, ELECTRIC GOD, and WALTER'S PURPLE HEART are now available. Also available is THE LONG, STEEP PATH: EVERYDAY INSPIRATION FROM THE AUTHOR OF PAY IT FORWARD, her first book-length creative nonfiction.
More than 50 of her short stories have been published in The Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train and many other journals, and in the anthologies Santa Barbara Stories and California Shorts and the bestselling anthology Dog is my Co-Pilot. Her stories have been honored in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest and the Tobias Wolff Award and nominated for Best American Short Stories, the O'Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize. Three have been cited in Best American Short Stories.
She is founder and former president (2000-2009) of the Pay It Forward Foundation, and served on its board of directors for over 20 years. As a professional public speaker she has addressed the National Conference on Education, twice spoken at Cornell University, met with Americorps members at the White House and shared a dais with Bill Clinton.
For more information and book club questions for most backlist titles, please visit the author at catherineryanhyde.com (Note: The newer titles have book club questions included at the back of the book.)
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Catherine Ryan Hyde is one of my favorite authors. Pay It Forward, the original story, was an early work for her and boosted her writing career. Each of her novels is better than the last, and I'm glad I still have a long list of them to read.
I orginally saw the movie and fell in love with the idealism behind it so much I knew I had to read the book- Now, I kind of wish I had just read the book- the movie leads out major details and creates HUGE gaps that the story only fills- Hyde talks in very simple terms and breaks the chapters up into first person narratives jumping from main characters to minor characters and back again- this might seem a little tedious- but, I found it extremely personal- it gave me extreme insight into what one character was feeling versus another- It also makes you feel as though everyone involved/behind the pay it forward movement is IMPORTANT.
The book focuses on some points/areas the movie just does not go particularly the relationship between Arlene and Reuben... which the movie touches only the tip of the iceberg with. Their is also a major bond between Trevor and his teacher Reuben reflected better in the book than the movie... The book also covers the "Pay It Forward" method that becomes a NATIONALLY known/ effective method- in which Trevor meets the President is the focus of many news shows and newspapers... he becomes very well known and a revolutionary hero of the hour.
The book is dated in the 90s- Clinton is president. One of the characters was affected by the Vietnam War and suffered burn scars. But I don't see the "liberal" agenda that so many other readers seem to have seen in it. The book is very idealistic in subject matter but, I couldn't help but WISH the world would really change for the better- if we ourselves would only change for the better. This is DEFINATELY one of those books that sticks with you long after you read it- a definate keeper in your book collection!
I would not let children read this unless they are maybe fourteen or above the book- seems to appeal to the older teenagers and adults and talks about some tough issues- such as homosexuality, thugs, sex, and some other inapporiate issues for younger readers. However readers will LOVE this story about human kindness, the power of love, giving to others, and imperfect people doing extra-ordinary things. The book is PERFECT and a real treat to read. Definately hit the buy it-now button and think about PAYING IT FORWARD yourself.
Overall I liked the book, but the ending was predictable and not especially believable.
Top reviews from other countries
A must read for all ages.
anche il film e un capolavoro con Kevin spacey helen hunt joel osment