Customer Reviews

Libby on Wednesday

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I think that Libby On Wednesday is a really good book. Libby is a girl who is completely unsocialized and accidentally wins a writing contest. She and five other students that win, start a writing club. The other students are a bully named Gary Greene who everybody calls G.G. (Gary the Ghoul), Alex a geeky boy who is physically challenged, Wendy a popular cheerleader who thinks she's a queen, and Tierney a chunky girl who's into punk. The students start a writing club and read their stories to the other members and say what they liked and give constructive suggestions. Wendy likes to write about teens and their love life, Alex writes parodies, Tierney writes detective stories, G.G. writes gruesome stories about killing, ang Libby writes all kinds of stories that are so good that the other kids think that her famous grandfather wrote them for her. The students all dislike each other. They say mean things about stories that people share with each other. As you read on, you will find that each student has a secret. I recommend this book to anyone over the age of eight.

I usually enjoy Zilpha Keatly Snyder's books and this was no exception. In this book the main character, Libby, has been homeschooled all her life by her eccentric relatives until her mother decides she must be "socialized." Libby is very different from everyone else at Morrison Middle School and hates the school. Libby enters one of her stories into a writing contest and wins. All the winners must join a creative writing group, which is later in the book named FFW, or the Future Famous Writers. Almost the entire book is centered on the relationships between the FFW members.

The FFW members were not just your ordinary nerds, bullies, and cheerleaders, either. It was very interesting to see how the FFW members' views of each other changed during the book. One of the characters, that intriged me the most was Gary Greene, otherwise known as G.G.. All the other characters actions were explained throughout the book. Only at the end did you find out why G.G. acted so strangely. I really enjoyed this book and I strongly recommend reading it.

This book is about a girl named Libby, who struggles to make friends, but finally makes friends in the end. The book opens up as Libby stops home-schooling and goes to Morrison Middle School. She has a hard time fitting in because of the way she looks and the way she acts. There is a writing contest and Libby wins it because of her excellent writing. The other winners are G.G., a mean bully; Alex,a wierd boy in special classes; Tierney, a punk and detective girl and Wendy, president of student council and cheerleader. A famous writer who was head of the contest, decides that they should meet every week and talk about their writing. The five teens are not very nice to each other in the beginning. As they meet every week, they become good friends, best friends at that. I felt that this book was very good and told a true story that happens in real life.

Libby on Wednesday by Zilpha Keatley Synder is about a different type of student writer. For one thing, Libby McCall has been home schooled. Now, at eleven, Libby is in public school for the first time because her mother thinks she needs to be "socialized". Being precocious, Libby is placed in eighth grade, a grade where even so-called normal students are often subject to ridicule. Libby doesn't know how much contact she can take with her peers, who make fun of her because she is small and smart. When she discovers that the prize is a weekly writing workshop with four other students, rather than risk more ridicule, Libby announces to her family: "I've decided to quit school." Her family denies her request and so Libby attends her first workshop where she learns that participants will critique each other's stories. At the end of that first day, she writes in her journal: "I'm sure it will be terrible--horrible--unbearable--next time I'll have to read for sure, but this time--this time, it wasn't so bad after all." Some have criticized Libby on Wednesday for its unrealistic portrayal of homeschooled children. I can't speak to that, but I loved reading a full-length novel about a serious aspiring writer in the school environment. Moreover, I appreciated how each of the participants brought their own baggage to the table and ultimately needed to work through it as part of the writing process. How Libby adjusts forms the heart of a sometimes sad and dark but always riveting story.

ISBN 0385299796 - One of the first things about this book to catch my attention was that it's a full-sized book for young adults. Not a flimsy little 100 page medium sized paperback - this is 196 pages, a full sized hardcover! Since I find those so rarely, I was already ready to like it.

Libby's the granddaughter of author Graham McCall, the daughter of unique parents of artistic temperaments. She has been homeschooled in what might possibly be the strangest set of circumstances, ever. But that's all about to change, when her mother decides that Libby ought to be socialized. That means going to school and going to school, right off the bat, isn't working for Libby. Still, when she wins a writing competition and becomes part of a writing workshop, Libby finds herself slowly drawn into the lives of other children her own age - and becoming socialized, purely accidentally. She brings home friends, opening her family situation to scrutiny and ridicule, and she finds that normal isn't just over-rated, it might not even exist.

I really liked Libby's family, even her almost totally absent mother. Mostly, I liked their support of Libby, in all things, at all times. Most kids, and even adults, benefit from finding out that they're not the only ones - whatever it is. You're not the only weird one, you're not the only one with divorced parents... it's comforting to find out that you're not alone. Libby on Wednesday sends that message in a nice way, with all the realistic picking on each other that kids do to each other.

- AnnaLovesBooks

This is a wonderful book! It has a great story, and once you get into it you can't put it down. The characters are all really likeable. This is a great book for anyone to read, not just elementary students (although elementary students will enjoy it, too). This is a totally awesome book!

this book really 's got a lot going for it, and is good for kids ages 8-about 11 or 12. it has examples of a good family life and good friends, as well as a wholesome, if somewhat odd, girl. I would read it if I were you.

I thought Libby on Wednesday was a great book. It was about a girl named Libby who had been tutored at home all her life. Her mother, Mercedes, decided Libby needed to be "socialized", so Libby was forced to go to school. There she got put in a writing club that met weekly with a bunch of people who teased her for being short and smart. Libby on Wednesday is about what happened to them. I loved the book because I'm tutored at home and people think I'm weird and they tease. I highly recommend it!

What can a genius do when, after years of home schooling, her wacky family decides that she needs to interact with her peers? Not much. After being forced to enter a writing contest and accidentally winning, Libby has to spend the afternoons in a writing club with four other, vastly different students who also won: the school bully, the punkish tomboy, the princess, and the geek. As in the movie "The Breakfast Club," their relationships and interactions evolve from the stereotypical ones (bully picks on everyone, princess snubs punk girl)into something almost akin to friendship as circumstances force them together.

I have never met any homeschooling parent who sent a homeschooled child to school so she could be "socialized." The author buys into the socialization myth, a non-homeschooler's idea of homeschooling, rendering the better part of the book quite unrealistic. The old adage "write what you know" is a good rule. I suppose since most editors and publishers are also not homeschoolers, and believe all the rumors they hear about socialization, they could not be expected to catch this glaring mistake.

In other ways, the book is quite good. It clearly, though perhaps unintentionally, outlines the best reasons why normal socialization can never happen in an institution. Accepting abuse from other students is not normal.

Libby's struggles in school are quite real, and from that perspective, the book is enjoyable for those of us who have been there, and is an amusing, well written, and interesting (though skewed) treat for homeschooled kids who wonder what all the blather about "school" and "socialization" are really about.

And it begs the question...can a child coming from a brilliantly eccentric housefull of social misfits still fit in at home after attending institutional school? And while the author admits that a child who can read the NY Times will learn nothing in kindergarten, she leaves us to answer the question, "Can a child familiar with Socrates learn anything in middle school?"