Thou Shalt Have Another Teen Read Review...

The Wednesday Wars

by Gary D. Schmidt

Genre: Historical Fiction

Rating: 4.8 out of 5

"Meet Holling Hoodhood, a seventh-grader at Camillo Junior High, who must spend Wednesday afternoons with his teacher, Mrs. Baker, while the rest of the class has religious instruction over the course of the 1967-68 school year. Mrs. Baker hates his guts—he's sure of it. Why else would she make him read the plays of William Shakespeare outside class? Everyone has bigger things to worry about, like Vietnam, but Holling has plenty of his own stuff to deal with. A bully demanding cream puffs; angry rats; and a baseball hero signing autographs the very same night Holling has to appear in a stupid play in yellow tights! As fate sneaks up on him again and again, Holling finds Motivation—the Big M—in the most unexpected places and musters up the courage to embrace his destiny, in spite of himself."

Summary taken from Goodreads.com

I absolutely loved this book. It is told from the perspective of the main character, Holling Hoodhood, who tells the story in a hilarious voice that made me laugh out loud several times. It brought me back to my middle school years and I could connect with the main character's ideas and antics. My favorite part is when he's complaining about having to wear bright yellow tights with feathers (on the butt!) for an upcoming play who he hopes (and prays!) none of his classmates will see and which unfortunately makes its way onto the front page of the newspaper.

As a huge Shakespeare fan, I also loved the Shakespearean themes and stories that ran through the book. Mrs. Baker has Holling read Shakespeare with her while his classmates attend religious education, (proof to him, that she further hates his guts). He practices saying the curses, and loves reenacting the sword fights the characters undergo, but throughout the course of the book, realizes that Shakespeare is more than cursing and sword fights and interesting deaths. He finds that each Shakespearean story has a theme that relates to what he is going through. I loved the connections he was able to make, and is a great intro to Shakespeare for teens who may not know the story lines.

Did I mention I loved the voice of the narrator?