The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt: Review by Chloe

I recently read the book The Wednesday Wars By Gary D. Schmidt. The Wednesday Wars is a 264 paged realistic fiction book about a boy named Holling Hoodhood, who is living in the year 1967 and has just started 7th grade. The book is mainly about his conflict with his 7th grade teacher, Mrs. Baker, and some conflict with his father about his work business. Holling thinks that Mrs. Baker really hates him. You can tell because the first sentence of the book says :

" 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."

Holling lives in Long Island, New York, and in the town where he lives, the people who live on the north part of the town who are Jewish go to Temple Beth-El, and the people on the South side whoa re Catholic go to Saint Adelbert's. But since Holling's house is in the middle, and since he is Presbyterian, he goes to Saint Andrew Presbyterian Church. The only reason why being Presbyterian is bad for Holling is that in his class every Wednesday, half of the kids go to Temple Beth-El to go to Hebrew School, and the other half went to Saint Adelbert for Catechism. So that only left Holling in is class with his teacher, Mrs. Baker. Most of the time he has to do tedious work such as clapping erasers, cleaning chalkboards, and washing windows. During most these Wednesdays, many events happen to Holling. One is that Holling must clean out the class pet's cage. The two pets are rats named Sycorax and Caliban and have big yellow teeth and weight about 15 pounds. So as you can imagine, while Holling is cleaning out their cage, they rats both escape. The rats hide up inside the ceiling for a long time while all the teachers try to get them.

Another event on one of those Wednesdays are the cream puffs. On Wednesday Holling is sent down to the school cafeteria to get some cream puffs for a special club. Holling leaves the cream puffs in Mrs. Baker's room with the window open so the cream puffs don't get soggy. After Holling leaves the cream puffs in Mrs. Baker's room he goes outside to clap some erasers for some of the other teachers. While he claps the erasers, a big cloud of chalk dust rises up through the window and right onto the cream puffs. As you can imagine, this does not go well. Lots of these events (including the cream puff one) start chain reactions throughout Holling's school year( One event includes wearing yellow tights with white feathers). What will happen to the two rats, Sycorax and Caliban? What happens to Holling with the cream puff incident? Will Mrs. Baker ever stop hating Holling? Read The Wednesday Wars to find out!