THE WEDNESDAY WARS, by Gary D. Schmidt

Quick Facts:
- Newbery Honor Book
- 272 pages

The Wednesday Wars, by Gary D. Schmidt, opens in 1967 with the improbably named Holling Hoodhood bemoaning the start of his seventh-grade year. His new teacher Mrs. Baker, Holling asserts, hates him. Loathes him. Is actively orchestrating his downfall. Holling attempts to rally support from his family, but to no avail. His mother doesn’t believe him, his sister dismisses him, and his father is more worried about maintaining positive business relations with Mrs. Baker’s family than he is with his son’s concerns. And thus the stage is set for Holling, who (because he is a Presbyterian) is the only student who doesn’t leave school early on Wednesdays, and must therefore spend his final period on those days alone with Mrs. Baker, literally and figuratively. 

The book chronicles Holling’s seventh grade year, from start to finish, with historical events like the Vietnam War, the assassination of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., and Yankee baseball as the backdrop. Through his time with Mrs. Baker, Holling slowly learns to see the world as a more complicated place than he once thought, and to appreciate his ability (and responsibility!) to shape the course of his own life.

One of the strongest aspects of The Wednesday Wars is the authenticity that Schmidt brings to Holling’s perspective of 1967 and 1968. Though there are major, historically massive events taking place in the background of the novel, Schmidt addresses them always through Holling’s eyes and experiences, never giving the seventh grader more of a reaction or more of an opinion than is believable.

This balance of having Holling serve as an unbiased and yet authentic lens through which the reader experiences history is struck also in Holling’s reading of Shakespeare. When Mrs. Baker decides that reading Shakespeare is the best use of their Wednesday one-on-one time, Holling is not thrilled. Though he comes to an appreciation of Shakespeare (particularly Shakespear’s insults), Schmidt never pushes Holling's literary appreciation too far. For example, though he likes The Tempest a lot, Holling thinks that Romeo and Juliet is the story of how, “If Romeo had never met Juliet, he would have been all right,” (Schmidt, page 150).

However, Holling’s believability would have been all for naught if Schmidt had not created around his hero an authentic and relatable setting. Again, Schmidt strikes the right balance of including details and side plots that reinforce the period without taking the focus away from Holling himself. One of the strongest of these is Mrs. Bigio’s relationship with Mai Thi. Mrs. Bigio is the school cook, whose husband is killed in action in Vietnam. Mai Thi is a Vietnamese student sponsored by the Catholic Relief Agency. Without spoiling the arc of their story, Schmidt handles both of their situations with delicacy and a commitment to genuine human emotions.

The New York Times observes that, “Mrs. Baker often seems too good to be true.” Though I understand the reaction here, I disagree. True to the novel’s perspective, Mrs. Baker is seen only through Holling’s eyes. Thus, as Holling’s experiences with Mrs. Baker develop, so does her portrayal in the book. The reviewer is certainly right to note that by the novel’s end, Mrs. Baker assumed almost unbelievable integrity. However, the reader must also recall that Mrs. Baker began the novel as Holling’s most feared and diabolical enemy— a characterization equally unbelievable. If Mickey Mantle’s treatment of Holling represents the fall of an idol, Mrs. Baker represents the rise of one. There are plenty of hints to the adult reader that Mrs. Baker is as flawed and human as anyone else (asking a thirteen year old to clean out a rat cage without supervising him? Rolling her eyes at students?) These, however, are not things that register with Holling; for Holling, what resonates about Mrs. Baker is that she is there for him time and again. Her seeming “too good to be true”, then, is appropriate when one considers Holling’s perspective.

What sets The Wednesday Wars apart from other historical novels that feature the same historical events is Holling’s unique position as a character coming of age, and Schmidt’s dedication to making that journey as authentic and relatable as possible. Holling is more than a lens through which the reader views history; his is a vehicle for the reader to experience for themselves the hard questions and realities of that time. The Wednesday Wars is outstanding historical fiction because it does more than simply represent a time period or show a boy growing up; it reveals the way in which these two things are inevitably intertwined, while still writing a hero universally human enough to resonate with young readers today.

THE WATSONS GO TO BIRMINGHAM - 1963, by Christopher Paul Curtis

Quick Facts:
- Newbery Honor Book
- Coretta Scott King Honor Book
- 224 pages

I had the strangest experience reading The Watsons Go to Birmingham- 1963. For the first fifty pages or so, I knew what was going to happen next. Exactly what would happen next. I knew, for example, that By would get his mouth stuck on ice in some way before he and Kenny even went outside. It wasn't that I remembered reading it before, it was more that I remembered experiencing the scene before. So while the text all felt new, the direction felt familiar.

My guess is that I began reading The Watsons Go to Birmingham- 1963 at some point in my childhood, and then never finished it for some reason. I say never finished it because the premonitions stopped after a while. But I think that it speaks to the power of author Christopher Paul Curtis' writing and of the characters he has created that even without finishing the book, such an impression was made that it lasted over nearly two decades.

The Watsons Go to Birmingham- 1963 is not a novel concerned with getting anywhere. Despite the trip indicated in the title, the first two-thirds of the book is spent focused on character development. The reader gets to know and to love narrator Kenny Watson, and to understand the complicated but loving dynamics of his family. By the time they finally set out on their trip, the  reader is left wondering what exactly is going to make this trip worth the title of the book. Those with prior knowledge of the historical events covered in the book are wondering how Curtis will do them justice with over half of his book nearly over already. The answer, for me, lies in Curtis' audience.

The Watsons Go to Birmingham- 1963 is a work of fiction. The goal of good fiction is not to tell the reader the facts of an event, but rather to make the reader feel an event as acutely as if they were there. In Curtis' case, he had another goal as well: to make the reader identify directly with the people affected by the tragedy he recounts. It is for this reason that he has the reader spend so much time with the Watsons at the beginning of the novel.

The Watsons are an African-American family, which is not something that matters much in the first part of the novel. Though there are mentions of segregation, and of the Civil Rights movement sweeping the nation, the focus is really on the Watsons as a familiar, loving family unit. By having the reader follow Kenny through his conflicts with By, his moral dilemma with his friend Rufus, and his observations of his parents, Curtis allows the reader (and particularly the child reader) to identify with Kenny as a child. Not as a distinctly African-American child, but as a child just like we once were. We see in his family shades of our own, and this is the purpose of the first two-thirds of The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963.

In Birmingham, the Watsons are witnesses to one of the most horrific events of the 1960s: the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing. This is an event that younger readers may or may not have yet encountered in their studies, but one with which older students and adults are likely very familiar. The facts are heartbreaking. But the emotional impact of the event is made that much more acute when it occurs to characters with whom we've spent nearly 180 pages identifying. The reader's reaction becomes necessarily much more personal.

Had Curtis focused his novel more on the details of the bombing, had he used his characters functionally more as eyes into the event, the reader would likely learn more of the facts of what occurred that day. But by making his characters instead souls with whom the reader empathizes, Curtis drives home the emotional impact of that day: that bomb killed little girls. Daughters. Sisters. Friends. People we've come to know and love were threatened, for a reason as arbitrary as the color of their skin. By the time you reach this point in the book, you can't help but feel your heart race for Kenny's sister Joey, even if you do know the historical facts. It is this that makes The Watsons Go to Birmingham- 1963 so powerful. 

The Watsons Go to Birmingham- 1963 was made into a tv movie in 2013. There are suggestions in the trailer below that the film places more emphasis on the Civil Rights Movement and awareness of segregation. I can't comment on the appropriateness of this choice (if indeed that is the direction the film makers went), as film is an entirely different medium and I have not yet seen the full movie. However, I do think that in terms of his novel, Curtis made the right storytelling choice: to give children an experience of injustice, rather than another history lesson.

CODE NAME VERITY, by Elizabeth Wein

Quick Facts:
- Michael L. Printz Honor Book
- shortlisted for Carnegie Medal
- 368 pages
- review based on audiobook:
   + read by Morven Christie and Lucy Gaskell
   + 10 hr, 7 min

This book floored me.

No really.

It had me on the floor.

Code Name Verity, by Elizabeth Wein, is not a book for elementary students. It was recommended to me by a sixth grader (which is why I picked it up), but after reading it I would hesitate to recommend it for the average 11 year old. I think that thematically and in terms of the background knowledge required, it's better suited to eighth grade and up. That said, it is very likely that advanced middle school readers of all ages (like the sixth grader to suggested it to me) will be reading it, so it is certainly a book teachers should place on their to-read lists.

And also it's incredible. That's the main reason teachers and everyone else should read it.

Set in 1943, in Nazi-occupied France, Code Name Verity opens with a female, un-named prisoner of war being tortured for information by a commanding SS officer. The reader quickly learns three things about the narrator: she's Scottish, she's an Allied spy, and she is selling information to pay for her life. Wein, who has been praised for her historical accuracy, walks a careful line of accurately depicting the conditions of an Allied prisoner of war, without being sensational. Thus, although all of the Nazi hideousness we expect is present, it is not so explicitly drawn as to make the book too painfully uncomfortable to read, or developmentally inappropriate for upper middle and high school students.

This is a heavy place to begin. And yet, the narrator's voice comes through with such clarity, such humor, that it tempers the horror of her ordeal. One recurring point of frustration for our narrator is that her captors persist in calling her English:

“[I'm] . . . filthy, it goes without saying, but whatever else the hell I am, I AM NOT ENGLISH.”
- Code Name Verity

"I'M SCOTTISH!"
- Code Name Verity

This serves a duel purpose of developing the narrator as a character while also lightening the tone of the prose.

The conceit of Code Name Verity is that our narrator is writing for her captors a prose account of how she came to be in Nazi-occupied France, revealing secret Allied code and protocols as she goes. This is buying her niceties in her captivity. Like her own clothes returned so she doesn't freeze in her cell. Over the course of her account, she tells of her friendship with an female Allied taxi pilot named Maddie, and it becomes evident that the entire novel is ultimately a backdrop for the story of their friendship.

There is little more I can say about the plot or the structure of Code Name Verity without ruining a massive twist for future readers. That said, I will comment on the strikingly warm and authentic way in which Wein depicts a female friendship.

The Bechdel Test for evaluating film asks viewers to consider the following in movies they watch:

1. Are there two or more female characters with names? 
2. Do these characters talk to each other? 
3. Do they talk about something other than men?

This is a perfectly acceptable test to apply to literature as well, particularly literature written for young adult women. Too often books aimed at young women define their female characters by their relationships with men (see: Gossip Girl, Twilight), or feature an otherwise almost exclusively-male cast (see: The Fault in Our Stars). For anyone upset with me for calling out John Green's tale of teenage love, consider the following:

• There are three female characters with names: Hazel Grace, Mrs. Lancaster, and Lidewij.
• They do talk to each other, but besides Hazel's medical condition, the only thing two things they talk about are Gus and Van Houten. Men.

Which is not to belittle The Fault in Our Stars. Only to say that when even some of the most celebrated and wide-read literature for young women barely passes the Bechdel Test, books like Code Name Verity stand out in stark and reassuring contrast.

The friendship our narrator (who is eventually named) and Maddie share is complex. They talk about everything from food to planes to affecting foreign accents and working for the British Royal Air Force (RAF). Though men enter their conversation at times, it is always as a side note, and the men most often discussed are the narrator's brothers in the context of her family. Both these women, as well as the others in this story (who shall at this time remain anonymous in the interests of keeping this post spoiler-free) are well-rounded, dynamic female characters in their own right, and seeing them in contact with other well-rounded, dynamic female characters is such a refreshing change.

The audiobook was beautifully read, and I recommend it to anyone who has limited time. However, after picking up a print copy of Code Name Verity, I realized that the book is really designed for (and rewards!) a traditional reader. There are many choices Wein makes with the text, print and structure of the traditionally bound book that give greater depth to the story.

As I've said, I think that Code Name Verity is a bit too mature a book for most upper elementary/lower middle school students. However, it is an incredibly beautiful, heartbreaking, and intellectually rewarding read for those ready for it.

And it will leave you on the floor. A little weepy, a little numb, a lot exhausted, but not regretting a single bit of the ride.