The Wednesday Wars

The Wednesday Wars is a young adult historical novel by the American writer Gary D. Schmidt, published in 2007. It received a Newbery Honor in 2008.

The book follows Holling Hoodhood through the school year of 1967 and 1968 in suburban Long Island, a year in which the Vietnam War runs in the background of everything: a brother who may be drafted, a classmate whose brother is serving, and a teacher whose own family is caught up in it. Holling spends Wednesday afternoons with Mrs Baker because he is the only student who does not leave for religious instruction, and she fills the time with Shakespeare, which he reads mostly against his will and which gradually becomes the way he understands what is happening around him. At home his father is building a business and expecting his son to fit into it, and the school year is as much about that expectation as it is about the plays.

Schmidt wrote the novel for readers of Holling's age and kept the period detail of the late 1960s in place, and it was followed by a companion novel, Okay for Now.