Gary D. Schmidt's The Wednesday Wars

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Living on Long Island, NY during the Vietnam War with a teacher that hates your guts; this is the world that seventh grader Holling Hoodhood lives in, and in Gary D. Schmidt’s The Wednesday Wars, he has to deal with the war, Mrs. Baker, and seventh grade. Holling Hoodhood is a seventh grader with a teacher who hates his guts. He finds out that he likes Shakespeare because since he stays at school on Wednesdays when everyone else is either at Temple Beth-El or Saint Albert’s, he reads Shakespeare with Mrs. Baker, because he is presbyterian and there is no presbyterian school for him to go to, and because Mrs. Baker makes him; he even performs in some Shakespeare plays. Holling has a sister named Heather who loves the Monkees and the Beatles. …show more content…

Later, he finds out that on Wednesdays, he has to stay with Mrs. Baker while everyone else goes to some form of religious school. Then, on one of October’s Wednesdays, Holling is asked to clean out Sycorax and Caliban’s cage, who are the class rats. Unfortunately, the rats escape and run into the wall and ceiling. Months later, Holling’s sister almost gets run over by a bus, but he saves her and gets his name on the front page of a newspaper. In February, on Valentine’s Day, Holling takes one of his best friends, Meryl Lee Kowalski, to a Shakespeare play, and she thinks that it is beautiful. In the ides of March (the 15th), when Mrs. Baker is teaching, Sycorax and Caliban fall from the ceiling, run outside, and are demolished by a bus. Then, Holling runs in track and gets the record of fastest laps. When it is time for April, he wins a race against 139 other runners. Then, in May, Holling’s sister Heather runs away trying to find herself, but gets lonely and scared, so she comes back home. Also, Mrs. Baker’s husband was found because he was originally MIA. And when summer was just approaching, Holling goes on a camping trip and Mr. Baker goes home to Mrs.

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