The Wednesday Wars

The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt is a 2008 Newbery Honor book. It’s a fascinating story set in the late sixties on Long Island about a seventh grader named Holling Hoodhood who has to spend Wednesday afternoons alone in his classroom with his nemesis and teacher Mrs. Baker while half of his classmates go to Catechism class and the other half attend Hebrew school. Holling is Presbyterian. He is also somewhat paranoid and convinced that his teacher hates him and is plotting his demise. The first several weeks of Wednesdays are spent with Holling doing classroom chores, but then in October they begin reading Shakespeare’s plays together. It turns out that Mrs. Baker doesn’t hate him at all. She’s a great teacher who not only has him read and discuss in depth seven of Shakespeare’s plays, but she also goes out of her way to coach him in running and take him to a baseball game and take the class camping. She’s there for him and other students when they need her, and he and his classmates are there for her when her husband returns from Vietnam. I enjoyed the way Holling internalized many lines from Shakespeare’s plays, and quoted them to himself and others as comebacks.