What Are You Reading?

THE WEDNESDAY WARS by Gary D. Schmidt

From Booklist:
On Wednesday afternoons, while his Catholic and Jewish schoolmates attend religious instruction, Holling Hoodhood, the only Presbyterian in his seventh grade, is alone in the classroom with his teacher, Mrs. Baker, who Holling is convinced hates his guts. He feels more certain after Mrs. Baker assigns Shakespeare’s plays for Holling to discuss during their shared afternoons. Each month in Holling’s tumultuous seventh-grade year is a chapter in this quietly powerful coming-of-age novel set in suburban Long Island during the late ’60s…Schmidt, whose Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy (2005) was named both a Printz and a Newbery Honor Book, makes the implausible believable and the everyday momentous.

I’m listening to this as I run errands and after I drop off the kids for carpool. The voice is fabulous. The dialogue snappy. There are yellow tights with feathers, two escapee rats running through the ceiling of Camillo Jr. High, chalk-dusted cream puffs, a track coach who yells, “Faster, you dang wimpy slugs!” Shakespearean curses and a student/teacher relationship that has already made me cry. I wish this book had been available when I was a girl.

Here’s where I am with the 100+ Reading Challenge:

1. The Gypsies of Spain – Jan Yoors (NF)
2. If I Stay – Gayle Forman (YA)
3. Catalyst – Laurie Halse Anderson (YA)
4. Fat Cat – Robin Brande (YA)
5. Wintergirls – Laurie Halse Anderson (YA)
6. Freedom Crossing – Margaret Goff Clark (MG)
7. The Rights of the Reader – Daniel Pennac (NF)
8. The Witch of Blackbird Pond – Elizabeth George Speare (YA)
9. Th1rteen R3asons Why – Jay Asher (YA)  
10. The Last Treasure – Janet S. Anderson (MG)  
11. Twisted – Laurie Halse Anderson (YA)  
12. Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell (NF)  
13. Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell (NF)
14. Henry and Ribsy – Beverly Cleary (MG)
15. On the Banks of Plum Creek – Laura Ingalls Wilder (MG)  
16. Blink – Malcolm Gladwell (NF)  
17. On Writing – Stephen King (NF)  
18. The Help – Kathryn Stockett
19. Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman – Dorothy Sterling (MG)  
20. Leaving Gee’s Bend – Irene Latham (MG)  
21. Flash Burnout – LK Madigan (YA)
22. The Midnight Fox – Betsy Byars (MG)  
23. The Crimson Cap – Ellen Howard (YA)
24. Riding Freedom – Pam Munoz Ryan (MG)  
25. Blessing’s Bead – Debby Dahl Edwardson (YA)
26. Story of a Girl* – Sara Zarr (YA)
27. Alabama Moon – Watt Key (YA)
28. If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period* – Gennifer Choldenko (YA)  
29. The Long Winter – Laura Ingalls Wilder (MG)  
30. The Road – Cormac McCarthy
31. Fog Magic – Julia L. Sauer (MG)  
32. Ramona the Pest – Beverly Cleary (MG)  
33. Speak – Laurie Halse Anderson (YA)  
34. The Ballad of Lucy Whipple – Karen Cushman (MG)
35. Three Rivers Rising – Jame Richards (YA)  
36. Four Perfect Pebbles – Lila Perl and Marion Lazan (MG)
37. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett (MG)
38. The Dead-Tossed Waves* – Carrie Ryan (YA)
39. A Wedding in December – Anita Shreve
40. Luddie’s Life – Cynthia Rylant (YA) novel-in-verse
41. Aleutian Sparrow – Karen Hesse (MG) novel-in-verse
42. Love, Hope, and Ivy June – Phyllis Reynolds Naylor (MG)
43. The All-Of-A-Kind Family – Sydney Taylor (MG)  
44. The Moving Finger – Agatha Christie

* listened on CD

What are you reading right now?