This story is described as a young adult historical fiction novel. This book is brilliant and hilarious while also being poignant and tender. Schmidt himself loves Shakespeare, and he deftly weaves the themes, ideas, and situations of Shakespeare’s plays into the lives of the students, faculty, and families of Camillo Junior High. What starts as an experiment becomes something powerful as she and Holling read and discuss the works of William Shakespeare together on those awkward Wednesday afternoons. Baker, as it turns out, doesn’t hate Holling’s guts, and is, in fact, one of his most authentic advocates by the end of the year. “Toads, beetles, bats, lights on you!” – The Tempest Because, you know, she hates Holling’s guts and wants to kill him. Baker finds a better way to torture her pupil – William Shakespeare. A seventh-grade English teacher, accustomed to having her Wednesday afternoons to herself, was saddled with one moody pupil in need of supervision and instruction.Īfter a few Wednesdays of chalkboard eraser cleaning, Mrs. Aldebert’s for Catechism class nor to Temple Beth-El for Hebrew school. Baker’s year because he went neither to St. Holling Hoodhood, the lone Presbyterian in his class, seemed destined to ruin Mrs. This look came over her face like the sun had winked out and was not going to shine again until next June.

“Since the mutilation of ‘guess’ into an intransitive verb is a crime against the language, perhaps you might wish a full sentence to avoid prosecution – something such as, ‘I guess that Wednesday afternoons will be busy after all.” “So on Wednesday afternoon you attend neither Hebrew School nor Catechism.” As the war in Vietnam heats up, the anti-war and civil rights movements in America rage on, life at Camilo Junior High is as normal as anything in the 1960s ever was. Life is pretty tough all around, and yet not so bad at all.

In the school year of 1967-1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, Holling Hoodhood is a baseball-loving seventh grader at Camillo Junior High who has good friends, a girl he likes, and a teacher who hates his guts. In The Wednesday Wars, he offers an unforgettable anti-hero in Holling Hoodhood, a kid from the suburbs who embraces his destiny in spite of himself.” – from the 2007 book jacket Schmidt has written a novel that is at turns comic and compelling, down-to-earth and over the top.

The wednesday wars by gary d schmidt