The Best School Year Ever

Actress Elaine Stritch lends her dry voice to this recording of the long-awaited sequel to THE BEST CHRISTMAS PAGEANT EVER. Sixth-grader Beth has the ill fortune to draw Imogene Herdman's name in a year-long "Compliments for Classmates" project, and she must contend with the antics of the rest of the infamous Herdmans as well. Although clearly not a child's voice, Stritch's raspy, sardonic tone suits the story well, giving the sense of a wry, old teacher recounting an exaggerated tale of her own school days. Listeners will enjoy hearing the continuing misadventures of the Herdmans so pluckily recounted. R.Q.D. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

Starred review from October 3, 1994
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.