Review: Wishin’ and Hopin’

Felix Funicello’s family owns the lunch counter at the local bus station and their claim to fame is that Annette Funicello is their cousin.  Felix is in the fifth grade at St. Aloysius Gonzago Parochial School. At the beginning of the school year Sister Dymphna, his teacher,  has a breakdown of sorts and is replaced by a lay teacher, the glamorous Madame Marguerite.  The classroom is full of characters typical of an elementary school and the school year progresses much like a normal year – mostly smooth but with a few bumps along the way.

That is until Madame suggests her class perform tableaux vivants for their part of the school’s Christmas pageant.  It seems that everything that can go wrong does that night for the fifth grade class, but something magical does happen for Felix and his family.

I really enjoyed Wishin’ and Hopin’ by Wally Lamb.  It’s not your traditional, inspirational Christmas story, but boy, is it a lot of fun!  For me, it’s in the spirit of A Christmas Story by Jean Shepherd.  The characters in the book are so real and Felix is the perfect narrator.  He’s sweet and innocent, but sure does hate to admit it, which gets him in trouble a time or two.  I laughed out loud quite a few times while I was reading this book.

Wishin’ and Hopin’ is set during the 1960’s and, even though Felix would have been a few years older than me, I think Wally Lamb did a great job capturing the spirit of the era.  Lamb included an epilogue in the back to let readers know how the fictional characters turned out and I thought that added another fun element to the book.   Reading Wishin’ and Hopin’ would make a great holiday tradition.

This is my first book for the Holiday Reading Challenge.

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