Hello and happy Wednesday. I promise, the title of the book and the day I’m posting the review are coincidental. I recently listened to the audiobook of The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt.

This novel is set in the late 60s in the US during the Vietnam War. This is a historical context that I know very little of, so it was interesting to read from the perspective of a middle-schooler. He has to stay on Wednesday afternoons with a teacher he is convinced hates him, but as the story progresses both the main character and the reader start seeing this teacher as a complex woman, who really doesn’t hate her student. I liked that, obviously, because as a teacher I feel that we are often portrayed in books and media in general as these silly, cartoonish, very stereotypical characters who have no life outside of school. Reading this also inspired me to come up with the “100 Books Everyone Must Read” post because the teacher has the main character read Shakespeare. All in all it was an alright book and I enjoyed reading it.