Writer. Contributing Editor at The Discarded Image. Digital Content Strategist. Here's where I publicly explore the books I'm reading, the projects I'm working on, and other current interests. The Wednesday Wars
The year is 1967, and Holling Hoodhood is in Mrs. Baker’s seventh grade class, the only Presbyterian in his Jewish and Catholic Long Island neighborhood. This means that on Wednesday afternoons, when all the other students are off to Hebrew or catechism class, Holling is left alone in his classroom with his chagrined teacher. In disgust?, laziness?, revenge?—Holling isn’t sure which—Mrs. Baker assigns him to read Shakespeare every week, which they will then discuss on Wednesdays.
This sets the stage for Gary D. Schmidt’s latest and lively young adult novel, The Wednesday Wars. I put it on my To Read list when it won a Newbery Honor Medal, and then was delighted to discover that the author would be presenting at the Festival of Faith & Writing (he is a member of the English department at Calvin College, which created and hosts the event). This is the first of his books I’ve read, but not the first of his books to win a Newbery honor—his Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy also snagged one. I can see why.
Holling is an utterly believable and entertaining voice. One of my favorite sections includes his comment, in English class, about “Alfred, Lord Tennyson—who, I guess, couldn’t figure out how to punctuate his own name.†With courage, wit, and the awkwardness of his age, he survives track meets, atomic bomb drills, political arguments at home between his parents and his older sister, a slight accident involving a school bus and a patch of ice, and a starring role as a fairy in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
Schmidt does a great job of inhabiting the middle-school perspective in a way that will capture the interest of both middle school readers and middle aged readers. And anyone with an appreciation for Shakespeare will get an extra kick out of it.
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