Author: Gary D. Schmidt
Genre: Fiction
Comments: In the pages I red this week, Holling Hoodhood helps Mr. Vendleri change the ceiling tiles, that the two rats, Sycorax and Caliban, who escaped from their cage, have been packing with everything and anything they could find. When they finally managed to take them off and put on new ones, they find a lot of missing things but they still can't capture the rats.
When Holling is assigned to read Shakespeare's 'Julius Caesar', he learns a new line. 'Beware the ides of March'. Starting that day, Holling realizes that the school council and the tryouts for the Camillo Junior High School cross-country team are both happening on the ides of march.
Holling gains more respect for Mrs. Baker when she tell him that she won the women's four-by-one hundred relay in the XVIth Olympiad- Melbourne- 1956. So she helps Holling get ready for the tryouts and in return, he decides to coach her how to be a teacher for when the school council comes. He gives her advice like; no teacher jokes because no one ever laughs at teacher jokes, no folding your arms because it looks like you are about to shoot us if we don't know what to say, no rolling your eyes, even if someone says something really stupid. and lastly, congratulating a student when he/she does something right.
With all of that, Hooling beats the record for the fastest student to pass for the tryouts and Mrs. Baker impresses the school council.
After that, Holling and Mrs. Baker go on field trips on every Wednesday when everyone else is either at Temple Beth-El either at Saint Adelbert's. They get closer and become good friends.
Holling's sister, Heather decides to run away from home with her boyfriend and go to California but they argue on the way there and she is alone and doen't know what to do. She calls Holling when she knows that he is the only one who will pick up and they both start crying on the phone. Heather wants to come home but only has 4$ left and a bus ticket to New York costs 44.55$. Holling goes to the bank they next morning and asks for his savings to be sent to the bank the nearest to his sister so she can get home. Whe she arrives at the station in New York, her parents refuse to pick her up and Holling finds a way for Meryl Lee to drop him off, this is perhaps the most touching scene of the entire book and well worth reading.
At the end of the school year, Mrs. Baker receives a letter from Mr. Baker telling her he will be home from war soon and she continues the tradition and takes all of her students camping!
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