The Best School Year Ever
Barbara Robinson. HarperCollins, $16.99 (128pp) ISBN 978-0-06-023039-5
The many readers who have laughed out loud at Robinson's uproarious 1972 novel, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever , will enthusiastically welcome the return of the six cigar-smoking Herdman kids. These six waste no time bending rules: they break them outright. While the original story centered on the church Christmas pageant, the sequel has a broader focus, paving the way for more varied misadventures, virtually all of which the Herdmans craftily orchestrate. Among the dastardly deeds are the siblings' kidnapping of a bald baby, whose head they ``tattoo'' and show to other kids for a fee; their attempt to wash their cat (which is ``missing one eye and part of an ear and most of its tail and all of whatever good nature it ever had'') in a laundromat machine; and their ingenious sabotage of the school's Fire Safety Day observance. In one of the funniest scenes, cunning Imogene Herdman comes to the rescue of a boy whose head (thanks to Imogene's brother) is stuck in a bike rack: she flattens his prominent ears with Scotch tape and slathers his head with margarine so it slides through the bars. If this novel doesn't have quite the consistently razor-sharp repartee of its predecessor, it comes very, very close. Ages 8-up. 50,000 first printing. (Sept.)
Details
Reviewed on: 10/03/1994
Genre: Children's
Analog Audio Cassette - 978-0-06-054274-0
Downloadable Audio - 978-0-06-087357-8
Downloadable Audio - 978-0-06-087358-5
Other - 176 pages - 978-0-06-208995-3
Paperback - 176 pages - 978-0-06-440492-1
Paperback - 978-0-06-449535-6
Pre-Recorded Audio Player - 978-1-60514-713-0
Prebound-Glued - 117 pages - 978-0-7807-6808-6