The Wednesday Wars

Schmidt, Gary D.. (2007). The Wednesday Wars. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Brief Annotation: Holling Hoodhood is a seventh grader in a Long Island town in 1967. His family, which includes his architect father, his flower child sister, and his nondescript mother, are one of the few Presbyterian families in a town almost equally split between Catholic and Jewish families. This means that on Wednesdays, when almost all of the students in the Junior High go to religious classes in the afternoon, Holling is left alone with Mrs. Baker, his strict, grammarian, seventh-grade teacher, who seems to not like him, and who is unhappy that her husband is fighting in Vietnam. On top of this difficulty, one of the school bullies, a classmate's brother, seems out to get Holling. Mrs. Baker starts having Holling read Shakespeare plays during his Wednesday afternoons, and he develops a deep interest in the plays and their themes, even acting in a Shakespeare play for the community theater company. His growing affection for the daughter of his architect father's rival provides some interesting parallels with the plays that he reads with Mrs. Baker. The Shakespearean parallels continue as he tricks the bully, outruns some vicious runaway pet rats, deals with the aftermath of his sister running away to California, and chafes against his father's expectations. The ending ties Holling's conflicts together with more Shakespeare, a lot of hope, and some happy endings for the other characters in the novel.
Genre: Historical fiction
Grade Level: 5-8
Readers who will like this: Readers interested in the late 1960s, readers who like funny stories, readers who like plays, readers who want to know more about Shakespeare
Response/Rating (1-4): 3. I liked the vivid portrayal of life in late 1960s America, and the characters of Holling, his classmates, sister and teachers are all multifaceted and compelling. His parents, however, are such sad characters that I have trouble reading about them. His father is only motivated by his own architectural business, and he judges all of Holling's interactions by how they will affect his (the father's) architectural future. The mother is almost a non-character, sneaking cigarettes when the father is out, and otherwise just being a shadow to the father. I suppose that this could lead to an interesting discussion about what it means to be a father or mother, and you could ask the students if Mrs. Baker or Holling's mother is more "motherly" toward Holling. I guess that I can only hope that no students would read this and relate to Holling's relationship to his mother.
One question you would ask before a read aloud: What do you think your parents want you to be when you are an adult?