Wednesday's Child is Full of Wonder

Libby on Wednesday by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

Dear Saralinda*:

Although I was skeptical of her at first, Zilpha Keatley Snyder is quickly becoming one of my favorite juvenile fiction authors. She's certainly up there in the top 10-which is quite a rise for someone who was barely on my radar as a writer until about five years ago. Yet, I keep discovering books of hers that I had read and never associated with her.

The most recent book of hers that I finished, Libby on Wednesday reminded me a lot of the movie The Breakfast Club, though the students are in an honors club rather than a detention. So similar are some of the characters-at least in the beginning-that I wonder whether she was partly inspired by the movie.

The book opens with us meeting Libby McCall announcing to her rather eccentric relatives that she wants to quit school again. Up until she was 11, her poet father, two grandmothers, and a live-in friend of the family had home schooled her. Then her actress mother (who lives all the way across the country but is still married to her father) decides she needs to be socialized. It's not a process that is going well for Libby as she is frequently made fun of for being smaller, younger, and smarter than most of her peers.

Then she and four other students are put into a "Future Famous Writers" club after all of them win a writing contest. Libby is smart and quiet. Tierney is a large girl with pink hair who is into punk. Wendy is the nice, popular, student-government type. Alex is the geek, but a geek with cerebral palsy. Gary is an obnoxious bully who torments his fellow classmates. They meet every Wednesday afternoon.

They're thrown together and, against their wills, begin to find commonalities. They start to learn to look beyond stereotypes and discover that perhaps there are things to value about each other.

The book takes a hard look at "socialization" without ever getting theoretical or preachy. Snyder spares none of the pain of middle school-she shows exactly how cruel students can be and how very hard it is on their targets. We also get to see the various defense mechanisms that people engage when they are suffering either physically or mentally.

Libby on Wednesday is filled with fantastic characters and interactions. Snyder's characters are highly believable, yet none of them are stock characters with wooden personalities. Even those who are created from stereotypes take on richer, fuller portraits as we become better acquainted with them. Each of them have an appealing quirkiness or a reason to sympathize with them.

As a writer, I especially enjoyed the sections in the book where they were learning how to critique each other's work. Snyder would give us samples and then take us through Libby's thoughts as she grew to recognize the value in the writing of each of her peers-even as their writing was wildly different.

Libby on Wednesday will never be classic literature, but it is a well-told and sensitively handled novel with memorable characters. I think you'll enjoy it!

Love,
Aunt Bridgette

*I've changed the name of my niece to protect her identity. Saralinda is a name I borrowed from another beloved children's book. She's the princess in James Thurber's The 13 Clocks.

--B. Redman