THE WEDNESDAY WARS — Review

Thought for the Day:

“Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called ‘mad’ and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called ‘writers,’ and they do pretty much the same thing.”
~ Ray Bradbury ~

Gifts for My Writer Friends:

Tension on every page. It’s so important to keep that in mind when writing. HERE is a great post on World Builders by Nat Eliason with Secrets of Suspense that will help build tension.

If you want to keep your reader invested, you may need to raise the stakes for your main character. HERE is a great post by Rhiannon Richardson writing for The Good Story Company that will help you raise those stakes.

There is no story if there is no conflict. HERE, Janice Hardy at Fiction University has a great post called Where Does Your Novel’s Conflict Come From? Her posts are always so good.

There certainly was no dearth of baseball for baseball lovers this week. Unfortunately, the dastardly Dodgers got through the first round. I do think the Milwaukee Brewers have a chance against them. It’s a great team, and they need to be at their best in this series. I haven’t watched much of either Cleveland or Tampa Bay this year, but I think Cleveland looks good for that series. They have some outstanding pitching, and doesn’t it almost always come down to that? In any case, I will have a fun week with lots of games to watch. The heat has finally broken in the Sacramento area. We had mid-to-high nineties up until yesterday. The second week of October should never have that kind of heat. The weather everywhere is really strange. Anyone who thinks climate change is a myth isn’t paying attention. On another note, voting will be so important this year. There are some nefarious things afoot around the country. Be careful. Don’t use a site called VoteSafe.org. It is a scam set up by Elon Musk to harvest voter information. Vote.org is a safe site to use to check your registration. Please make sure you make your voice heard.

I sure am enjoying my journey through Gary D. Schmidt’s canon. I think THE WEDNESDAY WARS might have been the first book of Schmidt’s that I read, and it was many years ago. I remembered that I liked it and looked for more of his books, but I had forgotten just how good it is.

Holling Hoodhood is in seventh grade at Camillo Junior High School. He believes that his teacher, Mrs. Baker, hates him beyond belief and for no reason that Holling knows. Every Wednesday, all the students in the class except Holling are excused for religious instruction. Mrs. Baker first assigns Holling to clean her blackboards and erasers, then all the teachers erasers, but ultimately she decides he should read Shakespeare. Mrs. Baker and Holling end up having some great discussions and get to know each other. During this time, the Vietnam War is raging, and Mrs. Baker’s son is missing in action, but with hardly a blip, she soldiers on. At home, Hollings sister makes her anti-war feelings known, and his father let’s everyon know that she is wrong. He rules everyone with an iron hand. He seems only interested in his business and winning awards and adoration. Father of the Year is an award he will never win. Holling’s mother stays quiet and kind of disappears into the background. Holling also has an eighth-grade bully to deal with. As time goes on, Mrs. Baker becomes a true ally and teaches Holling life-changing lessons.

Here is a little sample of the great writing. “Spring break. War and green days. You know they aren’t going to last, but when you start in on them, they’re like a week of summer plunked down as a gift in the middle of junior high school. They mean the smell of dust and grass on a baseball diamond, the first fresh sea breezes that come all the way inland from Long Island Sound, all the maples decked out in green-gold leaves. They mean checking the tennis rackets to see if winter has warped them while they hung in the garage, and watching the first rabbit running across the lawn, and the neighbors putting the first ‘Free Kittens’ signs up on their stoops.” (Page 199)

Take my word for it, what I’ve written is just the tip of a wonderful iceberg of a story. If you’ve read it, it deserves a re-read. If you haven’t read it, you are missing much. The characters are complex and interesting. The Long Island small-town is a perfect setting to contain this wonderful cast of characters. There is plenty of humor, but keep a box of tissues at hand, because there are some very touching scenes and a lot of weighty, thought-provoking prose. I started this reading journey because of some names that kept popping up. In this book there are no Hurds, as there have been in three of the books I’ve recently reviewed. But there is a Hupfer — Danny Hupfer, one of Holling’s best friends. FIRST BOY had a social studies teacher by the name of Mr. Hupfer. Hupfer is actually the name that first got me curious about Schmidt’s repetition of names. There is also Doug Sweiteck, another good friend of Holling. I know that Sweiteck is a name that will show up again. I believe those names are attached to adults in other books. I’m pretty sure his re-use of names is not because of a lack of imagination. I hope I can figure it out, but if I don’t, I sure am enjoying the ride. I hope you are too.

Please don’t forget to check for other Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday posts at Greg Pattridge’s blog HERE.