“Learn everything you can Holling, and use it.” Amazing quote from an amazing teacher, Mrs. Baker. The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt is bildungsroman at its best! Schmidt transports us to Long Island, NY back to 1967. Readers meet Holling Hoodhood, a lone seventh grader who is stuck spending Wednesday afternoons with his teacher, (Who he says, ‘kept her face as still as Mount Rushmore) while the rest of his class receives religious classes at their prospective churches. Holling is positive his teacher hates him because he is robbing her of her ‘free time’. This episode airs in August as everyone heads back to school. May each child have a teacher as invested in students as Mrs. Baker! She poured into her class all the while her husband was MIA during the Vietnam War.
This book brings a gambit of emotions and depth! Readers experience unstoppable guffaws, injustice, encouragement, no-excuse friendship that blooms in surprising ways, and takes sibling love to a whole new level. Holling is one of our favorite characters to meet between the pages of a book! Going and growing with him as he faces problem after problem helped us to see what happens when a small cog in the wheel genuinely care about those around him. Let us never forget the impact we have on those around us!
This book throws a wide loop. There’s several Shakespeare plays, Mickey Mantle signing baseballs, cream puffs, a snowstorm, disengaged parents, cream puffs, diagramming sentences, bomb drills, cross country meets, cream puffs, missing sister, a camp out, along with pet rats, er- escaped rats run amok in the school! Did I mention cream puff? : )
Holling’s dad is image focused, how he and his architect company are perceived by the town is all he thinks about. Yes, Holling has a mother, but she has given up and is disengaged as well. When Holling’s sister leaves home the parents seem unconcerned because they do nothing! He might be an awesome architect but he is a lousy father with a capital L.
More cool quotes:
Mrs. Baker: “Shakespeare uses defeat to help us grow.”
Holling: “Sometimes the real world is like Hamlet. A little scared, unsure, a little angry. Wishing you could fix something that you can’t fix – hoping it would fix itself…”
Maybe he (Macbeth) shouldn’t try to find himself, but let himself be found.”
“I was amazed that Mrs. Baker was letting me read this (Shakespeare’s The Tempest). It’s got to be censored all over the place. I figured that she hadn’t read it herself, otherwise she would never have let me at it.” : )
“And sometimes the quality of mercy IS strained…” Holling misquoting Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice : )
The audio for this book is amazing! A delight for the whole family! Blessings dear readers!