The View From Saturday

Mrs. Eva Marie Olinski, the sixth grade teacher at Epiphany Middle School, is waiting nervously for the final of the Academic Bowl to start. She is thinking about her team of four sixth graders, The Souls, the youngest team to compete and the only team from Epiphany to have ever made it to the regional finals. The other team in the finals is Maxwell, made up of four eighth graders. The final is held in Albany, New York. The Commissioner of Education of New York State asks the first question: “What is the meaning of the word calligraphy and from what language does it derive?” (4). Mrs. Olinski hears Noah Gershom’s buzzer and relaxes, excitement replacing nervousness.

A section of Chapter 1 is titled “Noah Writes a B&B Letter” and introduces Noah, a sixth grader at Epiphany and one of the four members of The Souls. This section of the narrative takes place before The Souls form as a group and is told in the first person from Noah’s perspective.

Noah’s mother tells him to write a B&B letter—a “bread and butter (or thank you) letter”—to his grandparents, Grandma Sadie and Grandpa Nate Gershom, for hosting him at their home in Century Village, a retirement community in Florida. Noah pushes back—explaining that his mother should write the letter since he was only sent to his grandparents so that she could go on a cruise. Eventually, Noah sits down to write the letter and thinks about what to include. His trip had been eventful and unfolded as follows:

Margaret Draper and Izzy Diamondstein met at Century Village and are getting married in the clubhouse. Margaret’s daughter, Mrs. Potter, is the maid of honor, and Izzy’s son, Allen, is to be the best man. The residents of Century Village, including Noah’s grandparents Sadie and Nate, want to help with the upcoming wedding. Sadie bakes and constructs the wedding cake, and Nate arranges the music. Tillie Nachman, an expert in calligraphy, designs the invitations. Seeing Noah’s fascination with calligraphy, she teaches him the basics so he can help her write the cards.

Grandpa Nate had previously given Noah a red wagon, which comes in useful when Noah is tasked with delivering wedding supplies to the various helpers. Noah and Nate decide to move the elaborate, multi-tiered cake to the clubhouse from Sadie’s house in the red wagon, balanced on a bed of ice. As they are leaving Sadie’s house, Allen walks around the corner and trips over the wagon. The top layer of the cake is destroyed, and Allen is taken away in an ambulance with a broken ankle. Noah volunteers to take Allen’s place as best man, and Izzy accepts. Allen’s tuxedo is too big for Noah, so Nate asks another Century Village resident who is an artist to paint a T-shirt to look like a tuxedo, which she does, complete with a red bow tie. During the ceremony, Noah does a good job as best man, handing the ring to the rabbi at exactly the right time.

When Tillie and Noah were writing the invitations, Tillie’s cat left pawprints on five of them. Noah decides to turn them into “lucky” invites for which the recipients win a prize. Noah sticks Post-it Notes on the invites with “Bring this specially marked invitation to the wedding and receive a surprise gift” written in “faultless calligraphy” (11). However, he does not come up with actual gift ideas until he’s at the ceremony: his red wagon, his calligraphy pen and ink, his tuxedo T-shirt, and his Post-it Notes. Between the ceremony and the reception, Noah runs back to his grandparents’ house to take off his T-shirt and collect the other gifts. At the reception, Noah gives out the four prizes. Tillie points out that there are five pawprint invites and only four gifts. After a moment, Noah announces the fifth gift: “[T]he very best gift of all is…to give up your gift” (18). Everyone claps, and Mr. Cantor (who supplied the flowers) offers an orchid as the fifth gift.

Noah feels proud of the job he did as best man, and as he sits at his desk wondering what to write in his B&B letter, he thinks about all the “gifts” that he gave away. Noah puts away the ballpoint pen and takes out the replacement calligraphy pen he bought himself, and as he follows the six steps necessary to fill the pen “properly,” including squeezing a few ink drops back into the bottle, he realizes that he has a lot to thank his grandparents for and that “a B&B letter is giving just a few drops back to the bottle” (20).