I just finished a great Newbery Honor Book called Wednesday Wars.  It’s by Gary Schmidt.

While his Catholic and Jewish classmates attend their religious instruction, Holling Hoodhood (who is the main character of the book and is the only Presbyterian in his seventh grade class) is stuck staying with his teacher, Mrs. Baker, on Wednesday afternoons.  And because Mrs. Baker is forced to stay at school because of this one lone student, Holling is positive she hates his guts.  His belief is reinforced when she makes him read Shakespeare.

The author deftly weaves in writing about the angst of growing up, the turbulent 1960s, the Vietnam war, and the timeless wisdom of Shakespeare into a tale of a likable kid in his seventh grade year at school.  Holling gets into many predicaments (being late to the New York Yankee’s baseball game, getting hit by a school bus, being a slow runner) and Mrs. Baker comes flying in like a super hero to solve all of his problems.  Well, most of them. (Mmmmm. . . none of my school teachers were involved in my life — or any other student for that matter — like Mrs. Baker is involved in Holling’s life . . .)

This book will keep your grandchildren engrossed — even if they might happen to be girls and even if the book is about a boy.  It will even hold grandma’s attention if she reads it.  (It kept me happily occupied while riding to and fro on public transportation.)

I only have one beef about the book.  And that’s the incident with the rats and the cream puffs.  The delaying of the eating of the cream puffs seemed too contrived to me.  While the thread of the rat incidences runs through the tapestry of this story, this one thread seems to be flawed.  But did it stop me from reading?  Not in the least!  I instantly forgave the author (well, I forgave him after thinking about it for three minutes) and continued reading.

This would be a good book to give as a birthday present to a grandchild.  Or, you can have a ‘virtual’ book club with your grandchildren and read this book.

If you are in a book club yourself, this would be a fun book to discuss with adults — and especially discuss the use of Shakespeare’s words and themes in the story. (Using the phrase ‘pied ninnies’ sure wants to roll off my tongue lately . . .)

Wednesday Wars.  Try it.  You’ll like it.

(And I’ll give a big Symphony creamy-milk-chocolate-almond-and-toffee-bits one-half pound bar to the first reader who can tell me what the last two sentences refer to.)

Do your grandchildren live far, far away?  Do you pine to celebrate their birthday with them but can’t?  Here’s a way that you can sort of take your grandchild out to lunch for his birthday.

Purchase a gift card for her favorite lunch spot (Arby’s, Wendy’s, Burger King).  Wrap the card in a box.  Put that box inside another box with birthday presents.  Then, mail it off!

My upscale niece (and her husband) from New York taught us another fun game on New Year’s Day while we were at my mother’s home. It’s called Things. Here’s how it works.

Select a player to be the reader.  The reader decides a topic about ‘things.’  Such as ‘things you can buy at the mall’ or ‘things to eat as a snack’ or ‘things to do that drives your siblings crazy.’

Give each player a slip of paper. Have them write an answer to that topic and give the paper to the reader without letting anybody see what was written. The reader then says the answers out loud.  The players go around the circle trying to guess which person wrote which answer. If a player guessed correctly, the person whose answer was guessed correctly is ‘out’ for that round of play.  The player who guessed correctly keeps guessing until he makes an incorrect guess.  Then the play goes to the next person.  The last person left wins the round.

On the new round, the person sitting next to the left of the reader is the new reader.  She selects a different topic, people write down a response, and people try guessing who said what.

To make this challenging, you can write down something that is not in line with the type of thing that people might normally connect with you.  Say that the topic was things you can buy at the mall.  My family knows that I am an avid reader.  So if I wrote ‘a book,’ everyone would immediately think of me.  To throw them off, I could write something like long boarder pants since I am not into long boarding!

Now that I’ve explained the game, I just have to tell you what happened while we were playing.  The topic was ‘things you don’t want your mother to know.’ Some of the answers were ‘how many people you kissed in high school’ and ‘that you broke a window’ and ‘your grade in your math class in your first semester as a freshman in college.’

We were having a hard time guessing who wrote about the grade they got as a college freshman.  Someone finally guessed correctly.  It was my sister who wrote that.  We started harassing her about the grade.

“Was it a one-legged A?” I asked — meaning was it an F.

“Was it a D?”

“Come on!  Tell us what it was!”

There was lots of laughter and good-natured joking about it.  During all of this hullabaloo, my mother quietly got up, left the room, and then came back.  She held out two pieces of paper to my sister.

“Do you mean these grades?” she asked.

We immediately burst into gut-busting laughter. My mother had produced my sister’s report card from her first semester in college from forty years ago!  I don’t know who was more surprised: my sister that my mom really had her grades or the rest of the family to see the look on my sister’s face.

We laughed and laughed.  It took us over 10 minutes to settle down.

My mother has moved three times in the last 40 years.  What are the odds that she would still have a copy of my sister’s grades?  When asked why she still had them, she merely said, “I just thought that someday it might be interesting to see them.”

So, who would have thought that topic would have been selected.  Who would have thought that my sister would have written about a poor grade from a college class she took forty years ago.  And who would have thought that my mother would really still have a copy of those grades after all of these years!

So, gather your children, grandchildren, friends, neighbors, or random man off the street and play this game.  There’s no preparation and it’s a hoot to play!

(NOTE: You can buy the game for $30.  Or you can play it without purchasing it.  We did and it turned out just fine.  In fact, it turned out hilarious!)

My mother hosted a lovely dinner on New Year’s Day for family members. My niece and her husband, who live in New York City, were there. Being from that wonderful, avant guard city (compared to the backwaters where I live . . .) they are up on all the cool new games. They taught us two.  I’ll share one of them today and then the other one tomorrow.

The first game they taught us was called the Name Game.  This game would be fun to play with teen-aged grandchildren. Younger grand kiddos might have a hard time with it.

Here are the rules.

Pass out slips of papers to the players.  Each player writes the name of one person on one slip of paper.  (Depending on how large the group is, have each person write down 2-3 names.)  Fold the pieces of paper in half and put them in a bowl, box, or sack.  Divide the players into 2 teams.

There are 4 rounds of play. The first round is like the game Taboo.  Give the container with the slips of paper to one player on one team.  That person pulls out one slip of paper.  She can say anything she wants to get her team members to say the name of the person on the slip of paper.  (You can’t use any part of the name in your clues.)  Set a timer for one minute.  The person giving clues will try to get her team to guess as many names as they can in that one minute.  If there is a name that she is not familiar with, she can set it aside.  After the minute is up, that team is given a point for every name that is guessed.  Deduct one point for every name that was set aside.

Pass the container to one person on the other team.  Set the timer.  Have that person give her teammates clues to see how many names they can guess in one minute.

Play continues back and forth from team to team until all of the names have been guessed.

For round two, you play charades to get team members to guess the names of the people.  Since everybody has heard all of the names, it can be fairly easy to act out a person’s name.  One person will act out the names for her team to guess.  When a minute is up, they count their points and then a person on the other team takes a turn to act out the names of the people.  Continue until all of the names have been guessed.

For round three, the person giving clues can only say one word to get her team to guess the names.  Set the timer for one minute.  Count up points at the end of the minute and play goes to the next team.  Continue until all of the names have been guessed.

Round four is the hardest.  By far!  By this time, everybody should be really familiar with the names on the slips of paper.  For this round, the person giving the clues can only give clues by using facial expressions or motions of the head.

The end of round four is the end of the game — unless you want to start completely over with a new set of names. You can keep playing as long as your grandchildren seem to have interest. The winning team is the one with the most points.

Happy playing!