The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

The first book of December was The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. I have read this one before, but it's been awhile, so in the spirit of Christmas, and seeing lots of people talking about reading it on facebook, I decided to give it a reread.

This story focuses on the Herdmans, a family of five children whose mother works all the time and are left to do whatever they want, which is usually getting up to no good. The book starts out by introducing us to these children and some of the terrible things they have done including burning down a toolshed, stealing, hitting, lying, and making fun of anyone they please.

Told in first person by a girl who is the same age as Imogene Herdman, the reader gets an outside view of the Herdmans. After introducing the Herdmans, the Christmas Pageant is introduced. The lady who normally runs the pageant has an accident and winds up in the hospital. No one else volunteers to do the pageant, and the narrator's mother ends up in charge.

The usual director tries to direct it from her bed by calling the new director and explaining every little thing. The mother gets fed up with her calling and declares that the Christmas pageant is going to be "the best Christmas pageant ever" just to show her how capable she is.

The Sunday before the first rehearsal for the pageant, all five of the Herdmans show up to church, because the narrator's brother, Charlie, told one of them that they had refreshments at Sunday School. When they hear about the pageant, Imogene Herdman seems interested, and they all show up to the first rehearsal.

The Herdmans have threatened anyone who tries to volunteer for one of the main parts at the first rehearsal. No one dares to go against the Herdmans, so they end up with all of them, with Imogene herself as Mary.

The narrator tells us about the antics of the Herdmans as the rehearsals for the pageant go on, and her friend is bound and determined to get her role of Mary back for herself. Everyone wonders if five children who have never set foot in the church in their lives before this can actually pull of the Christmas pageant or if they'll completely ruin it.

It's not a super exciting story. The narrator isn't clever or witty, but there are a few moments where she starts to think a little more about the Christmas story and what actually might have happened when Christ was born because of things that the Herdmans do or say throughout the story. There's a sweet, although somewhat anticlimactic ending with the pageant itself and a few closing thoughts from the narrator.

It's worth the read as it did offer some points to ponder and showed that sometimes it might be better to do things a little differently from what people may be used to.