The Best School Year Ever
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
Buckle up for a wild ride involving a missing gerbil, a crazy cat, and a tattooed baby that will have readers of all ages laughing! This hilarious novel stars the Herdmans, the worst kids in the world, who made their first appearance in author Barbara Robinson's classic The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.
In The Best School Year Ever, Imogene, Claude, Ralph, Leroy, Ollie, and Gladys Herdman haven’t changed a bit. They still set things on fire and knock the other kids black and blue.
One day the teachers ask all the students to think of compliments for their classmates, and Beth Bradley picks Imogene Herdman’s name. At first, Beth can’t think of anything good, but soon she begins to see Imogene in a new light.
Maybe behind all of the outrageous pranks, there is something good about the Herdmans?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.