The Wednesday Wars

Gary D. Schmidt
Clarion Books 2007

Holling Hoodhood is sure his seventh-grade English teacher, Mrs. Baker, hates his guts.

And that was before he accidentally wrecked the cream puffs, and before he accidentally let loose her pet rats, and before he started spouting curses from his Shakespeare reading (that was on purpose).

Repairing his relationship with Mrs. Baker is important. Mrs. Baker's family owns a sporting goods store, and Holling's father is hoping to get the architectural contract for their new building. As The Son Who Is Going to Inherit Hoodhood and Associates, Holling had better shape up and do whatever it takes to get on Mrs. Baker's good side, even if it means playing a dorky fairy in the community production of "The Tempest."

Set over forty years ago against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, The Wednesday Wars is the hilarious story of a boy trying to navigate the rocky shoals of seventh grade. Holling's voice has an air of tall-tale telling that kept me laughing. But the book isn't all comedy. Holling's evolving relationships with the people around him reveal some poignant insights on friendship, on racism, and on what it means to be a hero.

One of the best books I've read in a long time. I recommend The Wednesday Wars for ages eleven and up.

The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963

Christopher Paul Curtis
Yearling, 1995

Kenny's older brother Byron is big trouble. Hanging out with his delinquent friends, playing with matches in the bathroom, stealing cookies from the grocery store---Byron is not the kind of older brother a kid can look up to. When Byron dyes his hair his parents decide that's the last straw. His sentence - leave Flint, Michigan and spend a summer with Grandma Sands in Birmingham, Alabama. The whole family piles into the "Brown Bomber" and takes off on a marathon drive from the icy north down to to the deep south to drop of Byron at Grandma's Detention Center.

Sure, there's been some trouble down there in Alabama, something about segregation, but that won't stop the Watsons from taking a trip to the old hometown.

Byron's antics and Kenny's hilarious commentary create a heartwarming picture of a family just trying to do their best to get along in hard times. Quirky and human in a deeply believable way, by the end of the book the Watsons feel like part of your family.

Which makes the Sixteenth Avenue Baptist Church Bombing so much more than a historical event. It becomes a heart-stopping tragedy.

A book that reminds us how precious life is, how ugly hate is, The Watsons Go to Birmingham is a great piece of historical fiction. Mild language and vulgarity, some bullying situations. For readers 13 and up.

Ida B

Katherine Hannigan
Greenwillow Books 2004

Energetic, imaginative Ida B lives in Wisconsin, in a valley full of apple orchard with a stream running through it and a mountain behind it. Her loving parents are good, wise, and kind enough rescue her from the "Place of Slow but Sure Body-Cramping, Mind-Numbing, Fun-Killing Torture" more commonly known as public school. Ida is home-schooled, but she isn't lonely. As she roams the valley she talks to the apple trees and the brook and the rocks, and they talk back, just the way I remember trees and rocks talking when I was young. By the time I get through the first few chapters, I'm drooling just as much as Ida B's dog, Rufus. I wish I'd grown up in a place like that.

But Ida B's idyllic life doesn't last forever. Hard times come, and Ida B has to go back to school. Her family even has to sell some of the orchard. Ida B's a plotter and a planner, she's not going to take this lying down, but will her schemes for fighting back make things better or worse?

One thing very special about this book - Ida B's voice makes ordinary life feel as big and important as it really is. I loved it. Recommended for ages 10 and up.

Dogs Don't Tell Jokes

Louis Sachar
Alfred A. Knopf, 1991

Gary Boone's classmates and teachers are tired of his constant jokes. He wants to be a stand-up comedian, but all he can get from his friends are groans. When Gary announces that he wants to tell jokes at the school talent show his parents issue him a difficult challenge - keep his humor to himself until the performance. Will giving up telling jokes for weeks result in a final, incredible explosion of talent, or will Gary just lose his touch? And is someone planning to sabotage his act?

This is my favorite book by Louis Sachar. I like it even better than Holes. It's a story about an artist coming to terms with his muse, about the fine line between a weakness and a gift, and about how every disaster is a triumph waiting to happen. Great reading for ages nine and up.

First Day Jitters

Julie Danneberg
Illustrated by Judy Love
Charlesbridge Publishing, 2000

One of my children brought this charming picture book home from the elementary school library. I liked the whimsical personality of the illustrations and the dialog that sounded just like those mornings when a reluctant child is protesting as I try to wheedle him or her out of bed. I read along as the tension mounted, enjoying the story, until I got to the last page. What an utter and delightful surprise! I never would have guessed. I had to go back and read the whole book again looking for clues. They were there, I simply didn't notice.

This is a great book, sure to be enjoyed by children and parents alike.

The School Story

Andrew Clements
Simon & Schuster, 2001

This book makes me cry. The beginning makes me cry, the end makes me cry. Why? Because it's about a sixth grader who is trying to publish a book, and I've wanted to publish a book ever since third grade, so there.

Natalie's mother is an editor at a big publishing house, but Natalie doesn't want her mother's help. In fact, she wants to keep the project a complete secret. With the help of her English teacher and a good friend who becomes the world's first twelve-year-old literary agent, Natalie breaks into publishing right under her mother's nose. But how long can they keep the secret, and what happens when mom finds out the promising author she's been editing is her own daughter?

I usually don't like to encounter characters in books who want to become writers because the author is so obviously writing about him or herself. But The School Story takes a different angle. Andrew Clements knows how it feels to be a writer, and that's what he's captured in this marvelous story. Recommended for ages 8 and up, essential for any kid who wants to become an author.

Frindle

Andrew Clements
Simon & Schuster, 1996

Where do words come from? Nick's teacher, Mrs. Granger, says that people agree on what words to use and what they mean, and if everyone decided to change the meaning of a word then one day it would be changed in the dictionary.

Mrs. Granger never expected Nick to try it.

A battle of wills ensues, with Mrs. Granger defending the dictionary and Nick Allen attempting to get his entire school to use the new word "frindle" instead of "pen." This book is the first and one of the best of Andrew Clements' collection of school stories which feature unique and well drawn characters, clever plot lines, and heart-warming endings. Great for readers age 8 and up.

Twilight

Stephanie Meyer
Little, Brown Young Readers 2006

In the opening pages of "Twilight," the author leaves a compelling question unanswered. By the time you know the answer so many other even more compelling questions have come up that the book is impossible to put down. I have never tried to wash dishes while reading a library book before, not until now. The library police will be after me, I'm sure.

But by about page 300, my enthusiasm had petered out. I was getting tired of hearing how wonderful and ideal Edward was, ideal except for the fact that if Bella so much as gets a paper cut in his presence he won't be able to stop himself from sucking her dry. The two of them were so into each other I was beginning to feel like I'd tagged along on a date with an engaged couple. I looked at the clock, it was only 10:45. I put the book down and went to bed.

To my surprise, I couldn't sleep. Meyer has an extraordinary gift. Her direct prose style, combined with a keenly accurate sense of internal emotions and motivations, gets right under your skin. It reminded me of Orson Scott Card. And, just like I dreamed I was enrolled in battle school the night after I first read "Ender's Game," last night when I finally did get to sleep I dreamed about Edward.

He was on a skiing trip with some dangerous, blonde woman who was dressed all in red. In my dream, I was torn between watching the two of them and finishing the book. Then several planes landed nearby, full of Japanese zombies, and I had to run for my life. Huh? I guess that's why everyone, myself included, is glad that I didn't write "Twilight."

I finished up the book this morning, tucking chapters into my morning routine. The pace picked up again, and the action climax was almost worth getting through 500 pages for. Overall it was an intoxicating read. I kept grinning like a fool at things Edward and Bella would say to each other. As silly as the book was in places, the characters felt so believable that I went right along with it.

But in the end, the most terrifying thing about the book was not the vampires at all. It was the behavior of the teenage girl. I have a daughter, and it shook me to my socks that Bella would lie to her father about where she was going to be, then willingly go off alone with Edward to some secluded spot in the woods so that she could have a three hundred page conversation with him about what it is like to be a vampire. And then, when they get home, she invites him to sneak into her room and spend the night! Did this girl's parents never have a talk with her about basic safety rules for dating? I sat down with my daughter and went over it all again, and insisted that there are no exceptions for cute vampires!

Still, I have to admit that Meyer is amazing. It is no accident that this book got picked up out of the slush pile and catapulted to the bestsellers list.

Project Mulberry

Linda Sue Park
Yearling 2007

This is a great little book.

I love Linda Sue Park. She does her homework! What she doesn't already know about, she finds out about before she writes about it. She already knows about being a Korean American, and she handles this subject deftly and naturally, as only someone who has really been there can do. She didn't know about silk worms, so she recruited family members to raise two different batches. Hence the loving detail with which she describes the life of the silk worms through the eyes of her main character.

This would be a great book for a middle school English class. It's a school story, a friendship story, it deals well with issues of racial prejudice, and brings up questions on animal rights and environmentalism. There's plenty of fodder for good discussion here.

My favorite, favorite part, though, were the clever asides between chapters when the author records conversations she had with her main character in the course of writing the book. As a writer whose characters follow her to the grocery store and pester her while she is doing her housework, I am comforted to know that if I really am insane, at least one other writer I admire and respect is insane in the same way.

So I hope to make Linda Sue Park fans out of all of you. I hope you'll read all her books. Project Mulberry is a good place to start.

Hidden Talents

David Lubar
Starscape 2003

I have wanted to read Hidden Talents by David Lubar for a long time. I started it once, but the first few pages were so much like Holes I thought "Been there, done that" and hopped off the bus. I took a look at it again and this time, I'm glad I stayed on for the ride. The book is clever, fun, and it even has a great sequel! I read them both in one day. The main character is a boy who has such a smart mouth that he's been sent to alternative school for very bad boys. He gets a pyro for a roommate, makes freinds with a clepto and a pathological cheater, and fills out his crowd with a hyperactive boy who wears his hair in little braids (that was one of my favorite parts) and a kid famous for randomly throwing objects.

They all have one thing in common, one thing they haven't discovered yet.

None of it is their fault.

There is some language in this book I wouldn't want to hear my kids use, but other than that, nothing objectionable. The sequel is more action oriented and less contemplative, but still clever and well written. I recommend them both.