“When gods die, they die hard. It’s not like they fade away, or grow old, or fall asleep. They die in fire and pain, and when they come out of you, they leave your guts burned. It hurts more than anything you can talk about. And maybe worst of all is, you’re not sure if there ever will be another god to fill their place. Or if you’d want another god to ever fill their place. You don’t want fire to go out inside you twice.”
That is a passage from “Wednesday Wars”. I have included that passage to show you just how fantastic of a writer Gary Schmidt is.
Holling Hoodhood is a 7th grader, and every Wednesday he is forced to spend his afternoons alone with his teacher while the rest of his classmates have religious training (they are Catholic and Jewish, and he is Presbyterian). It is an arrangement that even his teacher hates. But after Mrs. Baker finally realizes there’s no way out of these afternoons together, she starts to teach him Shakespeare, and from there they form a relationship.
I loved this book—I loved the writing, the story, the town, the characters. I wanted Sage to read it, but I’m not sure how much a 10 year old could connect to these characters, or understand any of the passages of Shakespeare, or even could relate to the time period—it’s set in 1967, during the Vietnam war, and even mentions the assassinations of both MLK Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. I’m actually curious about whether a modern-day 7th grader could connect to this story the way an adult can. (And, I want to point out that even though I was not alive during the 60s, I have seen “Forrest Gump” so I have an idea of how it was. :D)
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