Okay for Now
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40 free Okay for Now trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Okay for Now follows Doug Swieteck through one hard, funny, surprising year in the late 1960s. He arrives in a new town with a quick mouth, a difficult family and a talent nobody has noticed yet, and a volume of Audubon paintings in the local library slowly changes how he sees everything. This quiz covers the whole story: Doug's family and the people who take a chance on him, his school and its teachers, Lil Spicer, the damaged volume at the heart of the plot, and the war and the space race unfolding in the background. A few questions go behind the scenes to the author, the honors the novel earned and the real artist whose work runs through every chapter. It opens with questions most readers will get and builds to details only a careful reader will remember, so it suits a class finishing the novel, a club comparing notes, or anyone revisiting a favorite. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which secret does Doug Swieteck hide from his new teachers and classmates in Okay for Now?
He cannot read
He cannot read, so when a teacher calls on him Doug will do anything to dodge it. His author modelled that habit on a troubled boy he remembered from his own school days.
Q 02Why are pages missing from the Audubon book that Doug Swieteck finds in the library in Okay for Now?
The town sold them
The town sold them one at a time to raise money. Single plates fetch so much that few complete copies of the real book survive anywhere.
Q 03Which Audubon bird does Doug Swieteck learn to draw first in Okay for Now?
Arctic Tern
Arctic Tern is the plate Doug sees as a bird plunging helplessly into the sea. His author points out that it is really just diving down for something to eat.
Q 04Which historic event do Doug Swieteck and his science class follow the build-up to in Okay for Now?
The first Moon landing
The first Moon landing hangs over the whole story. Space flights went up every couple of months on the way to it, giving Mr. Ferris's class plenty to track.
Q 05What job does Lil Spicer's father give Doug Swieteck at the family deli in Okay for Now?
Delivering groceries
Delivering groceries takes Doug into homes all over his new neighborhood. That is how he meets customers like the fearsome Mrs. Windermere.
Q 06Okay for Now is a companion to which Newbery Honor novel, where Doug Swieteck first appeared as a classroom menace?
The Wednesday Wars
The Wednesday Wars cast Doug as the nemesis of its hero. He was a supporting troublemaker there before getting a whole novel to himself.
Q 07Which librarian in Okay for Now spots Doug Swieteck's talent and teaches him to draw Audubon's birds?
Mr. Powell
Mr. Powell is the one who starts calling Doug an artist. He keeps the lessons going even when most of his neighbors turn against the boy.
Q 08In Okay for Now, which classic novel does Doug Swieteck's English class study in an abridged version?
Jane Eyre
Jane Eyre starts out as a chore for Doug. He ends up deciding it is not such a bad book, and borrows its habit of speaking straight to the audience.
Q 09To which small upstate New York town does Doug Swieteck's family move in Okay for Now?
Marysville
Marysville is the place Doug keeps calling stupid. Its library, its deli and a green-eyed girl slowly change his mind.
Q 10Which American author wrote Okay for Now, the story of Doug Swieteck and a book of bird paintings?
Gary D. Schmidt
Its author taught English in Michigan for decades and used to mock writers of sequels. Then Doug's voice took over a story Gary D. Schmidt had already started twice.
Q 11Why does Doug Swieteck refuse to take off his shirt in front of classmates in Okay for Now?
To hide a tattoo
Doug keeps his shirt on to hide a tattoo, a large and humiliating one his father forced him to get. Once classmates find out, school becomes a fight for survival.
Q 12What has Doug Swieteck's oldest brother, Lucas, lost when he returns from Vietnam in Okay for Now?
Both legs
Both legs are gone above the knee. Doug, once the smallest target in the house, becomes the one strong enough to push Lucas back into life.
Q 13Which of Doug Swieteck's relatives is blamed for the break-in at Spicer's Deli in Okay for Now?
His middle brother
Q 21In Okay for Now, Lil Spicer, who has never shown any interest in acting, lands a role in what?
A Broadway play
A Broadway play arrives late in the story, and Doug ends up with an offstage part in it too. More than one reviewer called the twist implausible.
Q 22Which school year is Doug Swieteck about to start when his family moves upstate in Okay for Now?
Eighth grade
Eighth grade begins badly for Doug. He is the only new student in his year, and several adults have already decided he is trouble.
Q 23Which staff member at Doug Swieteck's school in Okay for Now is a veteran haunted by memories of Vietnam?
The gym coach
His middle brother, Christopher, gets the blame. Soon the principal and many of Doug's new neighbors treat Doug as a criminal too.
Q 14Mr. Ferris, the science teacher in Okay for Now, keeps which toy named Clarence in his classroom?
A rocking horse
A rocking horse called Clarence really existed. The author's own high school teacher, also a Mr. Ferris, had a Clarence too, and was among the best teachers he ever had.
Q 15Okay for Now opens with Doug Swieteck boasting that which New York Yankees player once gave him a cap?
Joe Pepitone
Joe Pepitone's cap mattered because everything else Doug owned was a hand-me-down. Then his brother swiped it and traded it for cigarettes.
Q 16In Okay for Now, which visitor from his old school gives Doug Swieteck a Yankees jacket on moving day?
Holling Hoodhood
Holling Hoodhood makes his only appearance in the story here. The jacket he hands over had been a gift to him from a Yankees star.
Q 17On which single day of the week is the public library open in Doug Swieteck's new town in Okay for Now?
Saturday
Saturday is the only day the doors open, a sign of how short of money the place is. Doug's drawing lessons become a weekly ritual.
Q 18Okay for Now was named a finalist for which major American literary prize for young people's literature?
National Book Award
National Book Award judges shortlisted it in 2011. The prize itself went to Thanhha Lai's verse novel Inside Out & Back Again.
Q 19At the company picnic in Okay for Now, Doug Swieteck's team beats his father's in a quiz about which sport?
Baseball
Baseball is Doug's specialist subject. His father, who had his heart set on winning, insists afterwards that the contest was fixed.
Q 20Where does Doug Swieteck's family live before the move upstate that opens Okay for Now?
Long Island
Long Island is home until Doug's father loses his job there. The author was born on the same island, in the hamlet of Hicksville.
The gym coach starts out as Doug's tormentor. Things improve once Doug helps in class and introduces him to Lucas, who carries the same memories.
Q 24In Okay for Now, a drinking buddy finds Doug Swieteck's father a job at what kind of workplace?
A paper mill
A paper mill bearing the Ballard name is the reason for the move upstate. Its company picnic later hands Doug a rare public win.
Q 25At the company picnic in Okay for Now, Doug Swieteck teams up with an old man playing which game?
Horseshoes
Horseshoes brings Doug together with the old man who becomes his partner in the picnic quiz. One reviewer praised the author for making the game fun on the page.
Q 26Why are the pages so huge in Audubon's The Birds of America, the book Doug Swieteck loves?
Every species is life-size
Every species is life-size, which called for sheets about 39 inches tall. All 435 prints were then colored by hand.
Q 27Why does Doug Swieteck's father lose his job just before the family moves in Okay for Now?
He mouths off to his boss
He mouths off to his boss and is fired. The same quick temper, usually expressed with his fists, hangs over everyone in the Swieteck house.
Q 28Before Okay for Now, Doug Swieteck was notorious in an earlier novel for listing 410 ways to do what?
Get a teacher to hate you
Get a teacher to hate you was the aim of the list. By the end of that story Doug had mostly seen the error of his ways, which left room to make him a hero.
Q 29Which third book in the series that includes Okay for Now has Meryl Lee Kowalski as its main character?
Just Like That
Just Like That arrived in 2021, a decade after Doug's story. Each of the three books can be enjoyed without the others.
Q 30John James Audubon, whose birds captivate Doug Swieteck in Okay for Now, was born in which present-day country?
Haiti
Haiti, then the French colony of Saint-Domingue, was his birthplace. He sailed for America at 18 on a false passport to dodge Napoleon's draft.