Wednesday Wars
by
Gary Schmidt
(This author has won the Newbery Honor award and the Printz Honor award)
young adult fiction
Holling is growing up in Long Island in 1967. He is a Protestant 7th grader in a class full of Catholics and Jews. On Wednesday afternoons the Jewish and Catholic kids all leave for Wednesday religious classes. Holling is the only one left in Mrs. Baker's English class. She has him takes on assignments reading Shakespeare. He is reluctant, but at first learns to love Shakespeare's curses and uses them under his breath. As time goes by he appreciates more about Shakespeare, even acting in a play.
Since he is in 7th grade, he is learning a lot about himself and who he wants to be. His older sister is a flower child. His father wants Holling to be an architect like he is. Holling doesn't know what he wants, but a girlfriend would be nice!
A colleague of mine recommended this book and said that it should have won the Newbery award instead of getting runner-up status.
This is the kind of book that English teachers and librarians love to recommend, but children don't always want to read. The year 1967 is before today's 7th graders were born, and even before many of their parents were born, so this book may need some "selling" on the part of adults getting students to read it.
Once they do crack this book open, however, they will find that some thinks about 7th grade remain the same - the jokester in class, the awkwardness, the "what-if" of early adolescence, and more. In constrast, some aspects of this book are very 1967 - hippies, atomic bomb drills, and the Vietnam conflict. I can see that an essay would compare and contrast 1967's hippies with today's Goths, atomic bomb drills with today's lockdowns, and the Vietnam conflict with today's Afghanistan and Iraq.
