Secure A Copy The Wednesday Wars Produced By Gary D. Schmidt In Paper Copy

can I say Now I feel peer pressured onto reading Shakespeare plays, I would really like to read over this book again, studying the writing, I was biting my nails and had my heart in my throat all the way through, Gary Schmidt makes me laugh and cry like few others can, He is a master at middle grade fiction, and I can't wait to read his books with my own kids one day.
One of the best books I've ever read, Absolutely brilliant. A nailedon classic.

Mr. Schmidt, take a bow.

And thank you, Holling Hoodhoods got a problem, Its, and hes just started seventh grade at Camillo Junior High, and his teacher, Mrs, Baker, hates his guts. Every Wednesday afternoon, half of the kids in Hollings class go to Hebrew school and the other half go to St.
Adelberts for catechism. And Holling, as the only Presbyterian in the class, stays behind with Mrs, Baker.

And Mrs. Baker makes him read Shakespeare, Outside of class.

What follows is a year in Hollings life, a year of Wednesdays with Mrs, Baker and life in general, Its, and his sister wants to be a flower child, and his father owns the architecture firm Hoodhood and Associates and sees Holling

as The Son Who Will Inherit Hoodhood and Associates.
There are rats, and cream puffs, and Doug Swietecks brother, There are telegrams and baseballs and tights with feathers! and atomic bomb drills,

This is a quiet book that gets you in all the right places, If I had to sum it up in a phrase, Id say it was about how people surprise yousometimes in bad ways, and more often in very good ways.
Its about heroesthe ones you create for yourself, and the ones that you discover, Its about finding your way when the world is confusing, Its about being in seventh grade, and learning that its not who you are that matters, but who you decide to be.


This book made me laugh out loud on the subway, those big belly laughs that make strangers think youre crazy.
It also made me cry, no less that four times, This is not a book with great tragedy, but it is a book with great power, Its a book that made me feel,

I read it slowly, reading and rereading each line and word, savoring the chapters, But I didnt horde it, didnt put it down and save it for later, because I could, not. stop. reading.

I just couldnt, It wasnt so much that I needed to know what happenedit was more that I desperately wanted to hear Hollings voice in my head some more.
I wanted more afternoons with Mrs, Baker.

This is the kind of book that you read and reread, and then read bits aloud to the people you care about, because you want to share it with them.
Its the kind of book that makes you feel like you really, really know the characters, like what happens to them is important to you.


Its the kind of book that makes you want to read Shakespeare, and more importantly, to curse like Caliban.


Its really one of the best reading experiences Ive had in a long time, I urge you to read it, I want to talk about the Mickey Mantle episode with you, I want to hear what you think about cream puffs, And I want you to know what I mean when I say, “toads, beetles, bats, ” Or “chrysanthemum. ”

Mostly, I want you to meet Holling Hoodhood and Mrs, Baker, two of my new favorite literary creations, I want them to be part of your life the way theyve been part of mine since I started this book.
I really think youll like them a lot, One of the best books I have read in a long time, I felt my self reading slower in an attempt to never get to the end,

Mrs. Baker is one of the greatest teacher characters I have met, It oozes charm. In the first half of the book, Schmidt really had me, I absolutely loved everything surrounding the incident with the creampuffs and its aftermath, While the charm remained, the second half lacked a bit of direction, It didn't quite stall, but the plot is a very slender reed here, And outside of Holling and Mrs, Baker, the characters are all pretty thin,

There's also a fairly horrifying aspect here, During this book, Holling does the following: Appears as Ariel in a local performance of The Tempest gets brushed by a school bus while saving his sister and landing in the hospital, gets opening day tickets to see the Yankees, goes to Port Authority again to rescue his prodigal sister, runs and wins a varsity cross country match.
His parents are not there for any of these things, For his performance in the play, they are too busy watching the Bing Crosby Christmas Special, When he lands in the hospital, they couldn't be bothered, For opening day, his father promises to take him, in spite of already having two prior engagements which he knows he will keep.
The father is an incredible asshole, more distant than any Dad I knew of while growing up, And the mom is almost a cypher, With parents like these, its basically a miracle that Holling and his sister grow up with any sense at all.
This leaves me wondering: is this how many Boomers think of themselves As having turned out well in spite of the neglect of their parents

An additional charm of this book for me is that I grew up in the next town over from Hicksville, where this takes place.
He never mentions Hicksville in the book, but its where Schmidt is from, Also, I was one of the kids who left our school for religious instruction on Fridays instead of Wednesdays.
That lasted until I got kicked out for arguing with the nuns, Schmidt does such a great job of capturing the spirit of growing up in sheltered Long Island in the sixties.
It almost makes me think that most of the book would be lost on its targeted audience, That said, early teenagers recommended this one to me, so it must play pretty well to at least some of the YAs at least those who don't spend all of their time rereading yet again the same couple of series.
Without too much effort, you could probably come up with a dozen or so books of the TeacherWho'sTotallyMeanAtFirstDevelopsAMentoringRelationshipWithTheStudentAndThereAreSomeLifeLessonsAndABunchOfGrowingUpHappens Genre, but dollars to doughnuts, none would be quite as good or as fun to read as Wednesday Wars.
Toads, beetles, bats, I loved itas the Bard might say, This one could probably work as young as fourth grade, Another reviewer mentioned that this book shows that it was written by a Baby Boomer, and I had the exact same thought while reading.
My parents were exactly the age of the protagonist in, and while they remember where they were when they heard MKL Jr had been assassinated, the stories they tell about junior high are all about normal life, not what Walter Cronkite was saying about the Viet Cong on the evening news.
I mean, I bet American history teachers everywhere are assigning this to their classes because it checks all the major's boxes, including the unfeeling capitalist father, bomb drills, flower children, and even a bright VW Bug.
But somehow in the midst of all the historical details, the main storyof the power of Shakespeare and a quirky bond between a student and his teachergets lost in the shuffle.
Holling's family are completely twodimensional stereotypes, And there are some beautiful lines spread throughout, but they just end up highlighting how uninspired a lot of the other prose is.
Mrs. Baker is the best character, and the last chapter of the book is by far the high point.


I can't help but compare this to the Al Capone Does My Shirts books, because the kids and I just read through those this spring.
In those, the historical setting feels so natural and real, theyear old boy's POV is sympathetic and interesting, and every character on the island is vivid and alive.
By comparison, this book feels like a school assignment, It's not horrible, and I'll let the kids read it next year when we do the twentieth century in history, but it's definitely not one I'll buy.
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