The Wednesday Wars

Our book for September is The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt (also the award-winning author of Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy). Set in the late 1960s, The Wednesday Wars is the story of a seventh grade boy who is convinced that his teacher hates him. Each chapter of the book is another month in the life of Holling Hoodhood (how's that for a name!) as he tries to survive his seventh grade year.

If you'd like to take the book for a test drive, so to speak, you can download the first chapter here:

September

You can also read a bit more of the book in Google Books. If you'd like to see if it's in your local library, click on the "Find in a library" link.

I'll post some questions to get us started talking about the book after I've read a bit more. I haven't read very far, but I can tell you that it's been quite entertaining so far! Seventh graders...they're such goofballs!

Come Join Us

Last week, one of the conversations I was a part of involved coming up with ideas that might help teachers remember that they have a life outside of school. One idea is a teacher's book club. Each month we will choose one book that we can all read together. Since our schedules may prohibit all of us getting together for an actual book club meeting, we thought we'd share our thoughts here on this blog.

To start, we need to choose a book for September (we can always read more than one a month, but it's a good place to start). Please vote in the poll here (links for book descriptions follow):

• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
• House Rules by Jodi Picoult
• Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
• Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
• The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt

The poll closes Friday, August 27th. Thank you!