The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt

I just read this book today, and now I'm wishing that I had spent more time on it, savored it, drawn out the experience longer.  The writing is stunning.  Take this beautiful sentence, for instance, "The air was coloring everything gray, and the fog was coming up from the ground in white shreds and billows, as if the whole campsite had lifted itself up into the clouds overnight."

It's about Holling Hoodhood, a seventh grade boy in 1967, who is the lone Presbyterian in his class, stuck at school with his teacher on Wednesday afternoons while his Jewish and Catholic classmates go to religious studies.  It's not a traditional book where you can say there's one main conflict, solved at one climactic point, and then wrapped up.  It's more like life, where there is a never-ending series of mishaps and adventures, each one having its own climax and resolution, and each one impacting other parts of the story.

Although the story does have some sad and some poignant moments, I'd say, overall, it has a more positive tone than many serious young adult books.  This one's for the people who always complain that YA books are depressing and dark.  This one is touching, inspiring, heart-warming.  And funny.  There are definitely laugh-out-loud parts.

It's told in first person, and Schmidt really does a great job of establishing Holling's voice.  He seemed a little too sophisticated for a seventh grader sometimes, but then I thought about some of the seventh graders I know, and I changed my mind.  Anyway, Holling was so real that I just happily went along for the ride. 

Honestly, I don't want to say too much about the book because I don't want to give anything away or over-hype it.  It did, though, make me feel a little guilty because I spend a lot of time reading, and I'm not always (or, really, very often at all) reading books that I feel are valuable. I read a lot of things just to be entertained.  (And don't get me wrong, I do feel there is value in being entertained!)  But when I read something that's so well done on so many different levels, it does make me realize that I could do better for myself.  Maybe not all the time, but a little more often.

(PG: There is nothing to worry about in this book at all.  Holling self-edits any language, and there are no troublesome references.  I'd give it a G rating, but it's really for a more sophisticated audience--middle school at least.)