The Wednesday Wars follows Holling Hoodhood through a school year. Everyone at Camillo Junior High is either Catholic or Jewish—except for Holling Hoodhood. On Wednesday afternoons, the Catholics in Holling’s seventh-grade class go to catechism. The Jewish kids go to Hebrew School…and the school has to decide what to do with Holling. He is assigned to Mrs. Baker’s room. Holling gets the impression that Mrs. Baker hates him because she quizzes him about why he will be in her room on Wednesdays, criticizes his grammar when he answers, gives him extremely complex sentences to diagram in English class, and suggests that he might benefit from sitting in on a sixth-grade math class. He shares his fears about Mrs. Baker with his friends and family, but no one seems overly concerned.Come October, Mrs. Baker sets Holling to more active work: cleaning erasers and the coatroom. One afternoon she orders him to move several trays of cream puffs the school cook had baked. After he does, she has him go outside to clean more erasers, promising Holling a cream puff as a reward if he does a good job. He does—but the chalk dust drifts through an open window to settle on the cream puffs. Holling does not say anything, and the charity members who eat the puffs all get sick. His classmates had hoped he would get them cream puffs, and threaten to kill him if they do not get any. Mrs. Baker then starts a new practice for their Wednesdays: reading Shakespeare. That same month, Mrs. Baker’s two rats, which had been given to her by her husband, escape. At home, Holling’s sister begins a fairly quiet rebellion against their ambitious, conformist father.In November, Holling’s life continues its up-and-down pattern. At home, water leaks through the roof, rotting the ceiling of the “Perfect House,” designed by his father. At school, he is assigned to sing soprano—and to read The Tempest. The first leads to growing closer to Meryl Lee; the second lands him the part of Ariel in a production of Shakespeare, which wins him some free cream puffs.In December, the production is held. Holling hopes to keep his part in the play a secret, but Mrs. Baker offers extra credit to any student who attends. The play is held the same night that the great Mickey Mantle is signing autographs at Baker Sporting Emporium; after a successful performance, Holling rushes across town in costume to meet Mantle. However, the star ignores him. To make up for this, Mrs. Baker gets two other Yankees to come to the school and play catch with Holling and his friends.As January arrives, pictures of Holling in his Ariel costume are taped up everywhere in the school, and his friends and sister tear down as many as possible. The day of the state’s standardized tests, Holling saves his sister from getting hit by a bus, only to get hit himself. Mrs. Baker drives him to the emergency room.In February, when he and Meryl Lee are reading Romeo and Juliet , he takes her to a production on Valentine’s Day. However, they talk about his father’s architectural concept for the new proposed junior high. When Meryl Lee shares the details with her father, he adapts part of the design so that he gets the contract. Holling explodes with anger at her, but soon realizes that he has been unfair. He visits Meryl at home to make it up to her, and her father withdraws his design. After they have come back together, though, Mrs. Baker gets the news that...