The Best School Year Ever (2005) - Plot & Excerpts
Although kids apparently like this book best of the stories about the Herdmans, I noticed more flaws. When trying to write this sequel, Robinson struggled to find a focus. Then one boy suggested she put the Herdmans in school, because after all this is where students spend most of their time. The first chapter therefore starts at Woodrow Wilson School. The chapter is a rambling one, which picks up only when Miss Kemp assigns the class to study one another. Narrator Beth Bradley, about whom we learn only snippets, sits near the infamous Imogene Herdman who thinks that mice would make a better project than people. At the end of the year, each student will draw a name from a hat and give many compliments about that person. As a teacher, this doesn’t sound like a particularly realistic project. Still, I might have bought into it if Robinson had referred to it throughout the book and not just sporadically or as a tacked-on ending. The follow-up cat in the Laundromat incident seems out of place. Again though, I might have been more forgiving if the rest of the book had felt unified. What really happens in the teachers’ lounge, the school talent show, or the compliments assignment could have provided the glue but none of them do. Then there’s my last problem with The Best School Year Ever. It’s hardest with this book for me to believe that youngest who have been kicked out of pretty much every place in town could have any redeemable qualities. Consequently, I felt as if I were reading more about the childhood of Jesse James rather than mere mischievous kids. Please check out my reviews of her other Best Ever books, which I do highly recommend.
Growing up, one of my favorite books was Barbara Robinson's "The Best Christmas Pagent Ever." I read it at least once a year at Christmas and even convinced by parents to record the one-hour special version from television so we could watch it every year. Now, I'm older and trying to find good books for my neice and nephew. Pondering the books I read as kid, I thought of "Best Christmas Pagent" and went looking for it at my local library to make sure it was age-appropriate for my niece. And that's when I discovered that Robinson had written a couple of sequels to her popular story. The first sequel is "The Worst School Year Ever" which is more a series of vignettes on the Herdmann family than an actual plot. The stories are all linked by the class assignment to spend all year studying your classmates and then give them a compliment or two on the last day of school. So, we get to hear about the Herdmann's trying to wash their cat at the laundromat, trying to find their way into the teacher's lounge and carrying other such hijinx as you would expect if you'd read "Best Christmas Pagent." And while I enjoyed the stories, I found that it lacked something the first was missing. I think part of it is that Robinson is working hard to make these stories as timeless as possible, along the lines of "Best Christmas Pagent" and left me wondering just what era these stories were taking place. And while most of the stories are extremely funny, the thing there's not really any redeeming qualities to the Herdmann family seen here as we got with "Last Christmas Pagent."
What do You think about The Best School Year Ever (2005)?
My teacher in elementary school read Barbara Robinson's The Best Christmas Pageant Ever to the class one year and we all loved it and couldn't wait each day for story time to find out what happened next. Many years later I remembered loving hearing all about the notorious Herdman kids and all their adventures. I found an old copy of it and shared it with my mom, my sister, and several friends. I did not even know Robinson had written any other Herdman stories. When I found out there were in fact two more books in this series, I had to know what other shenanigans the Herdmans had been up to! I didn't find this one to be as funny and heartwarming as The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (which could be colored by nostalgia on my part), but it has its charm, the Herdmans are still up to their old tricks and pranks, and it was a delight to catch up with these old friends again. Children will get a kick out of all the no-good the Herdmans get up to, and adults like me will smile fondly remembering old school days. I give it a 3.5.
—Shan
Cute and funny. I read this book for a mother/daughter book club. My daughter and I both enjoyed the book but I was let down that there was no real resolution. With the dysfunction of the Herdman family, I needed to see a light at the end of the tunnel but there didn't really seem to be one which turned a funny children's book into a depressing children's book in my mind. (My nine year old daughter did not see it that way though. And since she is really the target audience, I guess that speaks volumes.)
—Jennifer
This story was by Barbara Robinson and performed on playaway by Elaine Stritch. It was approximately three hours long (9 chapters). Mrs. Kemp Beth's fifth grade teacher gives an unusual assignment the first day of school. The assignment is to think of compliments for each person in the class and a few more for the person you are partnered up with. These compliments must be about personal qualities, and/or some special characteristic this person holds. They have the whole year to observe each other to find these compliments. But, in this school is the heardman family, they are bad, rude, dirty, and troblesome children. Beth is partnered up with Emmagene Heardman, and through many adventures is forced to see the good in her. This book does encourage children to find the good in all, but at the same time I feel that the book negatively portrays the heardman family all throughout the story. This story is good for 3rd through 5th grade. There is alot of characters to follow in the story. This story is realistic fiction because the story could happen and involves the school as one world and outside the school as another world...going inbetween. The story ends with the question; "Is it harder to give compliments or recieve them?"
—A_Cathy
