Family Book Club: The Wednesday Wars

Last weekend we had our family book club discussion night for the book The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt. It had so many funny parts that had us laughing our heads off, but also some serious parts about the Vietnam war, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, and a dad who only cares about his job. It had some really touching parts about how to be a good friend and a loving sibling. This book never gets boring. However, there are quite a few Shakespeare references that even I didn't get but we sort of just brushed them off and moved on. For our discussion night we talked about the author, insulted each other using Shakespearean insults, and talked about the words and phrases we use today because of Shakespeare. We also watched a short Youtube video about what life was like for Vietnam soldiers. For dinner we had grilled cheese sandwiches (they get mentioned a few times) and lima beans (which the Hoodhoods have for dinner pretty much every night and become symbolic when life in The Perfect House became a little strained.) We drank Coke from the old fashioned style bottles (the book is set in the 60's) because there are a few scenes that involve Coke in a significant way. Then for dessert we had "brown, light, perfect cream puffs." I think cream puffs are mentioned at least a dozen times throughout the book so it would have been awful to not have some of those! I even drove to all three grocery stores in town looking for "brown, light, perfect cream puffs" and finally settled on a cream filled doughnut from Smiths. Now we are moving on to another book by Gary Schmidt called Okay for Now. It is sort of a companion novel to The Wednesday Wars.