Part 5
A ceiling falls, a Valentine is won, and a placemat drawing costs Holling's father the contract.
The ceiling fallsFebruary opens with the Hoodhood family preparing for a Chamber of Commerce dinner honoring Holling's father as businessman of the year. The evening starts badly: the ceiling of the perfect, unused living room lets go and comes down on the furniture. Holling's father reaches his own banquet in a temper, sneering at Holling's sister about her flowers on the way.
A borrowed poemMrs. Baker hands Holling a tragedy about two feuding families and a pair of doomed teenagers. He announces it is ridiculous, then finds the lines sticking to him. Meryl Lee, who thinks the play beautiful, refuses to be his Valentine, then says yes when he asks again with borrowed poetry. That leaves a bigger problem: he has three dollars and seventy-eight cents, and Danny Hupfer is taking Mai Thi to an inn and a movie for several times that.
The placematMrs. Baker sees the problem without a speech about it, and tickets to a professional performance at the Festival Theater come Holling's way. He and Meryl Lee go, then sit at a lunch counter over Cokes, where Holling, showing off, draws his father's secret design for the new junior high school on a paper placemat. Meryl Lee keeps it.
Lost contract, lost helicopterAt the presentation of competing designs, the model from Kowalski and Associates carries the same ideas, and Hoodhood and Associates loses the contract. Holling's father blames him; Holling accuses Meryl Lee of using him and learns too late that she never knew what her father would do with a drawing on a placemat. They make up. Then word reaches Mrs. Baker that her husband's helicopter is down in Vietnam and he is missing.
| Section | What you will practice |
|---|---|
| Vocabulary | A collapse, a courtship, and a betrayal: banquet, plaster, debris, feud, reconcile… |
| Literary Elements | Symbolism built out of one unused room, situational irony that turns every plan inside out, character foils among the adults, and allusion to a famous stage tragedy |
| Cross-Curricular | Baseball in 1960s America — why the Yankees and Mickey Mantle owned a boy’s imagination, how the reserve clause froze players in place, and why signatures were free |
| Ch. | What happens |
|---|---|
| Early February | The Ceiling and the Banquet — The Hoodhoods dress for the Chamber of Commerce dinner honoring Holling’s father as businessman of the year, and the ceiling of the showpiece living room collapses onto the furniture. The award is collected by a man in a fury, and the ruined room stays a hole in the perfect house. |
| Wednesday afternoons | A Play About a Feud — Mrs. Baker assigns a tragedy about two families at war and the teenagers caught between them. Holling calls it ridiculous, Meryl Lee calls it beautiful, and Holling quietly memorizes enough of it to talk his way into a Valentine’s date after his first attempt is turned down. |
| Valentine’s Day | Three Dollars and Change — Danny Hupfer takes Mai Thi to an expensive dinner and a movie; Holling has less than four dollars. Mrs. Baker’s quiet help puts theater tickets in his hands, and afterward Holling shows off at a lunch counter by sketching his father’s design for the new junior high on a placemat. |
| Late February | The Lost Contract and the Telegram — A rival firm’s model appears with the same ideas on it, and Holling’s father loses the commission and blames his son. Holling accuses Meryl Lee, learns she never meant it, and repairs the friendship. Then word arrives that Mrs. Baker’s husband is missing in the war. |
ⓘ The vocabulary words in this list are selected to help you understand and complete this workbook. Some may not appear verbatim in the original novel.
- Mrs. Baker assigns a play about two feuding families.
- Word arrives that Mrs. Baker’s husband is missing.
- Holling and Meryl Lee spend Valentine’s Day at the theater.
- The living room ceiling collapses before the award dinner.
- A rival firm wins the contract for the new junior high.
Picture a living room nobody is allowed to sit in. The carpet has no footprints, the furniture is arranged for people who are coming to sign contracts, and the whole room exists to prove that the family inside the house is doing well. Now picture the ceiling of that room coming down in a white avalanche of dust and broken plaster, on the very afternoon the man of the house is dressing for an award dinner. February is the month the Hoodhood front cracks. It is also the month Holling gets handed a play about two families who cannot stop fighting, discovers that a boy with three dollars and change can still take a girl out if a teacher quietly clears the way, and learns the hard way what happens when you show off something that was never yours to show. And at the end of it, while everyone is busy with contracts and Valentines, a telegram reaches the one adult in this book who has been carrying her own war alone.
Mickey Mantle joined the New York Yankees in 1951, at nineteen, and within a few seasons he was the most famous ballplayer in America. He batted from both sides of the plate and hit home runs people described for the rest of their lives. He also played hurt from the start. He tore up his right knee chasing down a fly ball in his first World Series, and the damage never healed. For eighteen seasons he taped and wrapped and limped onto the field.
The team around him faded first. The Yankees won fourteen American League pennants in the sixteen seasons ending in 1964, then fell to last place in 1966 and never contended again while he played. To the dismay of fans who had never watched it lose, the great years were over. Mantle's own numbers fell with them, and the club moved him from the outfield to first base in 1967 to spare his legs. The 1968 season was his last, and he retired the following spring with 536 home runs, third in the game's history then.
It is hard now to explain what such a player meant to a boy. The reserve clause — a contract rule tying a player to one team until it chose to trade him — meant stars rarely changed uniforms, so no rival club could buy him away and a fan followed the same man for years. Salaries stayed modest; Mantle's best pay of one hundred thousand dollars a year looked enormous then but small beside the contracts free agency brought in the 1970s. Autographs were free as well. Players signed at store counters as a favor to the club, so a coveted signature cost only a wait in line.
This writing task is optional and is not part of your auto-graded score. The feedback below checks only the basics — length, spelling, and grammar — not whether your ideas are right or wrong. It is meant for classroom discussion and creative practice, so feel free to use your imagination!
Writing Task — Part 5 “The Thing You Showed Off”
Holling draws something private on a placemat because he wants to look impressive, and it costs his family a great deal. Write about a time you shared something that was not really yours to share — a secret, a plan, a photo, a family story — or a time someone did that to you. Describe why it felt good in the moment, what happened afterward, and how the two people involved ended up. 6–10 sentences. Finish by explaining what you would do differently.
No right or wrong — close the screen and tell someone nearby what happened in this part. Can’t find anyone? Tell yourself out loud. The moment you teach it, you truly understand it.
Part 5 Complete!
You finished February of The Wednesday Wars.
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Independent study guide by Garden Heights. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Gary D. Schmidt. Contains original analysis only; no text from the novel is reproduced. Reference text: This workbook follows Gary D. Schmidt’s classic text (the standard Puffin edition sold worldwide). Revised 2023 UK editions change some wording and may not match the vocabulary studied here.