The Little Bookworm

Holling Hoodhood can't win. He's the only kid in class who doesn't have to go to either Hebrew school or Catechism thus making him spend Wednesday afternoons with his teacher, Mrs. Baker who makes him read Shakespeare. This one fact leads to him performing in a play as a fairy, getting the girl, letting lose the class rats among other things all well learning some valuable lessons and suffering many death threats.

I really enjoyed this book. The reader, Joel Johnstone, did an excellent job bringing Holling to life. I loved how Holling related the events in his life to the Shakespeare plays he was reading. I felt sorry for how certain people in his life treated him (his dad mostly) and how he could never seem to get a break. At first I was sure about Mrs. Baker but she proved to be the most reliable and honest adult in the book. I guess because it was set in 1967 it was a different me then but I was bothered by Holling's father. But Holling is a good kid and he tries very hard.

I also loved Holling's interpretations of Shakespeare's plays and his attitudes about Romeo and Juliet, and Hero and Claudio among others were very funny. This is a nice little introduction to Shakespeare for kids and might get them interested in reading some of the plays plus there is some history on the Vietnam War.

The Wednesday Wars is a 2008 Newbery Honor book. ( )

I started reading this book thinking it was just a regular teen, comedic book and boy was I wrong. I loved it! So many topics are deftly woven into this coming of age type story of a 7th-grade boy reading Shakespeare with his teacher, running, camping, and living through the vietnam war. Wonderful writing and narrator. I can't say enough about this one. It's great -- read it! ( )

The story is, at times, a little grandiose but overall I really enjoyed the chronicling of Holling HoodHood's weekly adventures stuck all alone with a teacher he mistakenly thinks hates him. I'm not sure if the Mrs. Baker character was especially identifiable with most kids, but as a future educator myself I really enjoyed following her progression of slowly learning to relate to and inspire a somewhat unruly student.

Holling Hoodhood (what a great name!) is a seventh grader in 1967-68. The only Presbyterian in a class of Catholic and Jewish students, he has to spend every Wednesday afternoon alone with his teacher Mrs. Baker while his classmates go to religious instruction. The first two sentences of the book leave no question about Holling's relationship with Mrs. Baker:

"Of all the kids in the seventh grade at Camillo Junior High, there was one kid that Mrs. Baker hated with heat whiter than the sun. Me."

Those two sentences tell us a lot about Holling in general. He lives his life in superlatives. He goes from being the class hero to the class goat and back again in a matter of pages. Like many seventh graders, the events of his own life take on extreme importance, while the events of history occupy the background. As we go from September to May with Holling, his relationship with Mrs. Baker improves, he becomes a hero of stage and track, and he gets the girl. Schmidt tells a compelling story, but his real talent is in writing about relationships. Through the smallest details, we see Holling's relationships develop with Mrs. Baker, with his sister, and with his dad.

But even more interesting is the way in which Schmidt layers the events of 1967-68 in the background of Holling's story. Mrs. Baker's husband is away at war, as are many other family members and friends of the staff Camillo Junior High. Holling's sister embraces the peace movement, and even Holling's dad pauses when assassinations rock the country. Schmidt shows us these events through the eyes of a seventh grader, capturing the essence of this period in history.

This book is funny and sad and rings true with each word. I finished it in a marathon reading session after my family was asleep last Sunday night. With tears rolling down my face, I felt lucky to have seen the world through the eyes of Holling Hoodhood, if only for a year. ( )

This book is set in 1967 Long Island, narrated by a seventh grade boy, the awesomely named Holling Hoodhood. As the book starts, Holling is convinced that his seventh grade teacher, Mrs. Baker, hates his guts. While the other students in his class go to Catholic or Jewish religious education classes, Holling, a Presbyterian, is forced to stay alone with Mrs. Baker. Eventually they start reading Shakespeare together. Sounds like a fairly simple story, right? Think again. In the hands of Schmidt, what could be a basic, boring coming of age story is a masterpiece. I laughed out loud and I sobbed out loud, sometimes within the space of the same page. I really cannot recommend this book enough. Highly recommended for kids and adults! Five stars. ( )