The Wednesday Wars

Well, like I said, I'm back. I promised to keep this thing updated, so here I am. I finished The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt the other day. It's about Holling Hooodhood, a seventh grader in Long Island, during the Vietnam War. When all the other kids leave during the middle of the day on Wednesday to attend their respective churches, Holling (whose church doesn't have Wednesday classes)has to stay with his English teacher, Mrs. Baker. During their time together, Mrs. Baker has Holling read different Shakespearean plays. Slowly, Holling begins to understand them as he applies them to his life as he grows from a boy into a young man.

I ADORED this book. It won the 2008 Newbury Award and definitely deserved it. It's a great book to maybe get young adults into Shakespeare and is also really great for adults who have already read some Shakespeare. For me, it was funny to hear Holling call Romeo a wimp, only to understand him later on. He walks around using Shakespearean curse words on his enemies, the eighth grade bullies. All of this coming of age is set against the backdrop if the Vietnam War and will have you in tears at one point in the story. You end up loving Holling and Mrs. Baker. I want to know what happens to him once he reaches grade eight. I highly recommend this one for both you and your kids. It's really a wonderful treat. I am pretty confident that you'll love it.

In other news, I'm really loving my tutoring that I am doing with a few high schoolers at Bexley High School. Things have been going really well and it feels great to know that I'm definitely on the career path that I was meant to be on. I wish I had discovered it a bit earlier, but there's no time like the present. I've helped a few students understand their subjects a little bit better than they did before, and that is truly the feeling that I've been waiting for with starting this whole teaching thing. All I can say is that it feels really good.

Up next on my reading schedule: My Lady Of Cleves, by Margaret Campbell Barnes. I have read nothing about Henry's fourth wife, so I'm really very excited to learn a little about her.