Wednesday, December 29, 2010

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson

genre: middle grade

When it comes to trouble, the Herdmans take the cake. If it can be burnt, hit, stolen or lied about - they've done it. So when they decide to go to church and join the annual Christmas Pageant, not one soul is thrilled. Is it possible to completely destroy the nativity story? The Herdmans seem determined to find out, although when the big day finally comes, things aren't quite what people expected.

I read this one out loud to my three children (10.5, 8, 5.5) and they were huge fans. There were moments of hysterical laughter and some lines are still being quoted. The ending nearly had me teary and I think my kids (at least the two older ones) GOT it. My only caveat is that, for me, parts were so outrageously "sacrilegious" that I felt sort of bad reading them to my kids! It also has more than a few cuss words that I just edited out as I read. Everyone enjoyed it enough, though, and it got us thinking enough about what Christmas is all about, that I think we'll be reading it again next year.

1 comment:

Deb said...

we read this aloud this year, too! and i was glad because i'd forgotten about the cussing! even samuel thought it was funny. :)

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