Module 5 - History, Biography & Non-Fiction
"Read three of the following selections:"
Plot Summary
Holling Hoodhood has a teacher who hates him (or so he thinks) and they're stuck alone together every Wednesday afternoon as the rest of the class goes off to their respective temples for religious education. He is put to work doing various classroom chores, but botches every one of them somehow. Eventually, he is set to reading Shakespeare in this time instead. Over the course of his school year he participates in his first Shakespeare performance, goes on a first date, gives away the secret to his father's latest architectural project to his rival, and he lives every boy's dream of meeting and playing with some spectacular baseball heroes. By the end of the school year, he's formed friendships in unexpected places and been featured twice on the front page of the local newspaper.Critical Analysis
The student and teacher characters of this novel are the most dynamic of the cast. We see definite changes in the behavior of not just our protagonist Holling, but also Doug, Meryl Lee, Mai Thi, and Danny in various ways. Holling himself grows throughout the novel, realizing more and more about the world and the people in it with every triumph or setback. Most tellingly he gradually becomes friends with his teacher who he thought hated him at the beginning of the year. Doug, Danny, Meryl Lee, and Mai Thi all bully Holling in October. But by the end many of these characters have changed. Danny Hupfer shows significant maturation at several points in the narrative. In December he rejects Mickey Mantle's signed baseball after Mickey refuses to sign Holling's baseball and in March he stands up to eighth grade lunch room bullies on behalf of Mai Thi. Doug Swieteck, who the previous year was suspended for driving Mrs. Sidman crazy with pranks, disposes of his box of rotting food in December, thus giving up on his next teacher prank. Meryl Lee, after bullying Holling earlier in the year over cream puffs, begins to appreciate him more as the year goes on; they date first in February which leads to ruining her family's livelihood and angering Mr. Hoodhood, and by June, Holling and Meryl Lee are making excuses to spend time together at the class camping trip.Several of the teachers progress over the course of the novel as well. Ms. Sidman and Ms. Bigio noticeably treat students differently between the beginning and the end of the narrative. Ms. Sidman makes it through her nervous breakdown and eventually emerges triumphant over rats and becomes principal. Ms. Bigio loses her husband in Vietnam but ends up coming to terms with her hatred of the Vietnamese and treating Mai Thi with affection and showing cultural appreciation; she even offers to adopt Mai Thi. Ms. Baker doesn't so much change, as simply become more fully revealed. We learn of her background as an Olympic runner and her appreciation for architecture and she simply becomes a more rounded character than Holling's first observations would indicate.
Holling's parents, however, are static and stereotypical. His father is completely wrapped up in work so much that he misses all of Holling's big events, even while pushing his son to do them and do them well because of his business contacts. His mother is consistently in the background of his father's wishes, trying to maintain appearances of the stereotypical nuclear family living in the perfect house. We see his mom hiding her cigarettes from the family and trying to keep up appearances at Kiwanis club meetings, but she still doesn't show up for her son's biggest moments. The family's only appearance together in public epitomizes the image which Mr. Hoodhood tries to maintain:
"My father sat up there, and the rest of us sat below him at a center table with the wives of the Kiwanis Club officers. My mother refused an offered cigarette--I could tell this wasn't easy--and then she chattered to the Kiwanis wives while my sister and I sat silently through the dinner--roast beef and mashed potatoes and buttered lima beans--and through dessert--lemon meringue pie with a whole lot more meringue than lemon--and through the opening greetings and speeches, and then through my father's speech of grateful acceptance."Holling can see that their ideal family life is a sham as he goes through events such as these, but his idealism still leads him to believe his father will later take him to baseball games and his mother will drive him to New York to pick up his returning sister.
As events unfold around him, Holling consistently brings his current Shakespeare work into use to help explain and understand the world. Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Much Ado About Nothing, Hamlet, The Tempest, and The Merchant of Venice are all featured to some degree over the course of the school year. The ways in which Holling applies these classics to his own life might help to draw new young readers into the world of Shakespeare. Of particular note is his early adaptation of Shakespeare's curses to his own uses. "Toads, beetles, bats" becomes Holling's catch phrase as he navigates all the disappointments of the school year.
The setting of this novel in the Vietnam war era gives it a certain flavor that it would lack if it were set during another historical period. Even though the historical mentions are mostly passing mentions and don't impact the story in significant ways, the cultural expectations of the time play a larger role. Ms. Bigio's mistreatment of Mai Thi at the beginning of the novel is typical of the general attitude of Americans towards Vietnamese in this time period. The aspirations of Mr. Hoodhood to maintain appearances as the perfect family and upstanding citizens for career purposes is common to the "Leave it to Beaver" era. The conquests over school bullies and the development of relationships, however, could have occurred during any historical period and come out with merely a different flavor of background events.
Schmidt packs a lot of events into this one school year, but Holling manages them all without seeming too overwhelmed. He stars in a Shakespeare play, runs for the varsity cross country team, plays baseball with the Yankees, reads six or more Shakespeare dramas, releases and runs from the rats, camps with his classmates, and improves a multitude of relationships with those around him. The narrative skillfully blends all of these together without leaving any loose ends. Each episode is fully resolved by the end of the school year. The School Library Journal reviewer observes that "the plot occasionally goes over-the-top, but readers who stick with the story will be rewarded." There is so much going on, it is a bit overwhelming to a reader and it takes a good writer to pull off as ambitious of a narrative so convincingly. The Booklist reviewer even notes "Schmidt ... makes the implausible believable and the everyday momentous." And Publishers Weekly states "Schmidt ... delivers another winner here." If the events were pared down to the most centrally important, the novel might have a more obvious overarching theme, but because of Schmidt's skill it is a compelling read even at its frenetic pace.
Bibliography
Schmidt, Gary D. The Wednesday wars. New York: Clarion Books, 2007. ISBN 9780618724833.Reviews
From Kirkus:Schmidt plaits world events into the drama being played out at Camillo Junior High School, as well as plenty of comedy, as Holling and Mrs. Baker work their way from open hostility to a sweetly realized friendship. Holling navigates the multitudinous snares set for seventh-graders—parental expectations, sisters, bullies, girls—with wry wit and the knowledge that the world will always be a step or two ahead of him. Schmidt has a way of getting to the emotional heart of every scene without overstatement, allowing the reader and Holling to understand the great truths swirling around them on their own terms. It's another virtuoso turn by the author of Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy (2005).From Publishers Weekly:
Schmidt, whose Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy won both Printz and Newbery Honors, delivers another winner here, convincingly evoking 1960s Long Island, with Walter Cronkite's nightly updates about Vietnam as the soundtrack. The serious issues are leavened with ample humor, and the supporting cast-especially the wise and wonderful Mrs. Baker-is fully dimensional. Best of all is the hero, who shows himself to be more of a man than his authoritarian father. Unlike most Vietnam stories, this one ends happily, as Schmidt rewards the good guys with victories that, if not entirely true to the period, deeply satisfy.From VOYA:
There is a lot going on in this novel not all related to the politics of the turbulent 1960s. The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, and the unpopular Vietnam War play a part in Holling's seventh grade year but so do two rats, Sycorax and Calliban, with their clacking yellow teeth; a part as Ariel in yellow tights; a track team; bullying and racism; a camping trip; and disappointment in a first love. Ms. Baker gently guides him through everything even as she brokenheartedly deals with the news that her husband is MIA. This novel is funny, warm, sad, and touching all at the same time. Holling Hoodhood will live with the reader for a very long time after he finishes seventh grade and learns to thine self be true.-Kathie Fitch.From School Library Journal:
This entertaining and nuanced novel limns Holling Hoodhood's seventh-grade year in his Long Island community, beginning in the fall of 1967. His classmates, half of whom are Jewish, the other half Catholic, leave early on Wednesdays to attend religious training. As the sole Presbyterian, he finds himself stranded with his teacher, Mrs. Baker, whom he's sure has it in for him. She starts off creating mindless chores for him but then induces him to read Shakespeare-lots of Shakespeare. Chapters titled by month initially seem overlong, relating such diverse elements as two terrifying escaped rats, cream puffs from a local bakery, his dad being a cheapskate/cutthroat architect, and Holling's tentative and sweet relationship with classmate Meryl Lee. The scary Doug Swieteck, and his even more frightening brother, and the Vietnam War are recurring menaces. A subplot involves a classmate who, as a recent Vietnamese refugee, is learning English and suffers taunts and prejudice. Cross-country tryouts, rescuing his older runaway sister, and opening day at Yankee Stadium are highlights. There are laugh-out-loud moments that leaven the many poignant ones as Schmidt explores many important themes, not the least of which is what makes a person a hero. The tone may seem cloying at first and the plot occasionally goes over-the-top, but readers who stick with the story will be rewarded. They will appreciate Holling's gentle, caring ways and will be sad to have the book end.-Joel Shoemaker, Southeast Junior High School, Iowa City, IAFrom Booklist:
Each month in Holling's tumultuous seventh-grade year is a chapter in this quietly powerful coming-of-age novel set in suburban Long Island during the late '60s. The slow start may deter some readers, and Mrs. Baker is too good to be true: she arranges a meeting between Holling and the New York Yankees, brokers a deal to save a student's father's architectural firm, and, after revealing her past as an Olympic runner, coaches Holling to the varsity cross-country team. However, Schmidt, whose Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy (2005) was named both a Printz and a Newbery Honor Book, makes the implausible believable and the everyday momentous. Seamlessly, he knits together the story's themes: the cultural uproar of the '60s, the internal uproar of early adolescence, and the timeless wisdom of Shakespeare's words. Holling's unwavering, distinctive voice offers a gentle, hopeful, moving story of a boy who, with the right help, learns to stretch beyond the limitations of his family, his violent times, and his fear, as he leaps into his future with his eyes and his heart wide open.--Engberg, Gillian
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