REVIEW OF HISTORICAL BOOK #3: THE WEDNESDAY WARS by Gary D. Schmidt

 

The Wednesday Wars

 Review by Lucinda Zamora-Wiley

 1. Bibliography:

Schmidt, Gary D. The Wednesday Wars. New York: Clarion Books, 2009.

2. Brief plot summary:

Set in the 1967-68 school year of a middle school in Long Island, New York, Holling Hoodhood is a 7^th-grader in Mrs. Baker’s English class. On the first day of school, he truly believes that Mrs. Baker hates him after she learns that Holling, as the lone Presbyterian in her class, will be the only student who’s forced to stay behind on Wednesday afternoons while his peers head off to Synagogue or Catholic CCD classes. After heading home to share with his mother, father, and older sister that Mrs. Baker hates him, Mr. Hoodhood cautions his son to do all that Mrs. Baker commands, as her family’s sporting goods empire is in the market for a new architect to design and build more stores for Baker Sports Emporium. Holling soon learns that he must always be on his best behavior in the event that his father’s architecture firm might be bidding on a job in their community, especially because Holling’s father expects Holling to become an architect and inherit the firm one day. On the first couple of Wednesdays that Holling is alone with Mrs. Baker, she presents him with some chores to keep him occupied—from cleaning her blackboard erasers to cleaning out the cage of the two class pets, a pair of rats named Sycorax and Caliban (which does NOT go well!); but after this, the “Wednesday Wars” become more intense as Holling believes Mrs. Baker’s disdain for him multiplies. This is when Mrs. Baker begins to teach Holling Shakespeare—one tragedy a month during the entire school year. Not only does the reader begin to understand that Holling is mistaken in presuming Mrs. Bakers hates him, but the reader also learns alongside Holling that there are so many other stories and hard times that others are living—from the tragic loss of Mrs. Bigio’s husband in Vientam (Mrs. Bigio is the school cafeteria manager) and Mrs. Baker’s own husband going MIA in the jungles of Vietnam, to some of the racism Americans felt towards Vietnamese who were living in the US—like Mai Thi, Holling’s Vietnamese friend and classmate and some regular old girl trouble as Holling begins to date the daughter(Meryl Lee)  of his father’s primary architecture competition. With every passing month of school and every new Shakespeare play, Holling learns some incredible life lessons along his 7^th-grade journey, and the reader can’t help but love—not only the amazingly unique, insightful voice and character of Holling, but also, this fantastic, potent year of history during the Vietnam War and Atomic Bomb era that Schmidt paints for his middle-grade readership.

3. Critical analysis with specific literary considerations pertinent to each genre:

By the time the reader is done reading The Wednesday Wars, he/she is convinced that this novel is his/ her new favorite in life! Schmidt does a spectacular job of painting an accurate historical portrait of Long Island, New York, during 1967-68. Schmidt recreates some very real atomic bomb drills that Mrs. Baker’s students must endure regularly, and the smooth manner by which the author incorporates the pain and loss endured by Americans whose loved ones were off fighting in the Vietnam War is equally commendable. But the real joy of this novel is the protagonist, Holling Hoodhood, who is reminiscent of a younger Holden Caulfield (minus all the darkness, though!) in terms of his deep ruminations about life as a 7^th-grader. At the beginning of the novel, the reader worries, alongside Holling, that Mrs. Baker really does hate him, but as the school year progresses and Mrs. Baker and Holling engage in some deep and meaningful conversations about Shakespeare’s most iconic works like The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet and more, over time the reader begins to realize that Mrs. Baker loves Holling and only has his best interests at heart. Not only does she make some amazing Yankees baseball dreams come true, but Mrs. Baker also saves Meryl Lee’s father from financial ruin. Mrs. Baker also models a fairness and humanity towards Mai Thi, Holling’s Vietnamese friend and classroom peer, after she’s racially abused by Mrs. Bigio in the cafeteria. Schmidt does an amazing job of humanizing Mrs. Bigio’s profound loss of her husband and all the trauma and pain she’s enduring…and relating that to the racial slurs she imposes on Mai Thi. At the end of the novel, Schmidt offers the reader a glorious reconciliation and happy ending for Mrs. Bigio and Mai Thi that makes all the suffering make sense. Told amidst the backdrop of MLK and Robert Kennedy’s assassinations, the author does an amazing job at keeping the primary focus on Holling’s poignant coming of age tale…in the end, the reader learns that Holling and Mrs. Baker needed and sustained one another along all the Wednesdays they spent together during the school year.  

4. Awards won (if any) and review excerpt(s):

·       2008 Newbery Honor Book

·       Nutmeg Award Nominee--Teen 2011

 

* Kirkus Reviews writes, “Holling navigates the multitudinous snares set for seventh-graders—parental expectations, sisters, bullies, girls—with wry wit and the knowledge that the world will always be a step or two ahead of him. Schmidt has a way of getting to the emotional heart of every scene without overstatement, allowing the reader and Holling to understand the great truths swirling around them on their own terms.”

* School Library Journal writes, "[An] entertaining and nuanced novel.... There are laugh-out-loud moments that leaven the many poignant ones."

* The New York Times writes, “There are many strands in this story: the Vietnam War, air raid drills, missing soldiers, a classmate who is a Vietnamese refugee, a rescue, extreme humiliation, chalk-covered cream puffs, yellow tights with feathers in all the wrong places and a bully. In fact, so much happens I wondered whether all the seeds Schmidt planted could flower by the end. To his great credit, they do.”

5. Connections:

·       Just as Holling did, the class can choose one Shakespeare play to study and appreciate, using a modern-day adaptation to aid in reading comprehension, such as Shakespeare Made Easy, which contains the original Shakespeare text on the left side and a modern day “translation” on the right side of the book. Students could act out their favorite scenes via a reader’s theater activity.

·       Further reading on Mickey Mantle or other baseball greats of the 1960s might interest some students, including the fascinating history of the New York Yankees.

·       PE teachers could collaborate with English teachers on a running project that teaches proper running form—just as Mrs. Baker did for Holling when he tried out for the cross country team.

·       The history teacher might collaborate with English teachers to offer students the opportunity to research and read further on the Vietnam War—everything from root causes of the war, to Anti-Vietnamese sentiment in the U.S. during the war, to Prisoners of War and those Missing in Action.

·       Additional history lessons for follow-up reading/ research might include the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, both of which are included in this novel.