Friday, December 7, 2007

One of The Best Christmas Books Ever - The Best Christmas Pageant Ever


UPDATE: I am sharing this as one of my "Works For Me Wednesday" for this week. We really like this book. It worked for us!


If you have not read this book yet, you're missing out. This is one of the best Christmas Books out there: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. My husband read it out loud to our family for the first time last week, and many times there were tears in our eyes - some from laughing out so loud, other times from just being so touched...

Here's the plot taken from Wikipedia: Year after year a small town always has their re-telling of the Christmas Story from the Bible. And year after year its always the same. Alice Windleken is always Mary while Elmer Hopkins, son of the minister, is always taking on the role of Joseph. But this year that changes. After the usual director, Ms. Helen Armstrong, breaks her leg housewife Grace Bradley steps up to direct. This is bad news for her children, Beth and Charlie, who are always in the pageant, but never want to be, as well as her husband Bob who puts his best effort into staying home for the pageant. But things get even worse. The Herdmans (Imogene, Ralph, Leroy, Gladys, Claude and Ollie), who are deemed the worst kids in the world, find out about the pageant after Charlie tells Leroy that it doesn't matter if he steals his lunch because he can get refreshments at Sunday School. The Herdmans show up and get all the leading roles because no one wants to be anywhere near them. During the weeks leading up to the show all of the rehearsals are a disaster. And just as it looks like the pageant would be terrible as well the Herdmans seem to pull their act together to turn it into the Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

Run, don't walk to the nearest library or bookstore and get this book. This is actually an independent reader material (3rd-4th grade level) but all in the family will enjoy this. My husband read it to us - the whole book in one night. It was a great family time :)


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Because we enjoyed this so much, I think I'd share this in Scribbit's Winter Bazaar. It's a good book to read in one of these wintery Christmas nights :)

4 comments:

Kristen said...

I think I'll try to get it from the library!

Unknown said...

We did this as a play in college. It's such a great story!

Kathy in WA said...

Thanks for the reminder! I simply have to pull this out of our Christmas book collection. It's a great favorite. The movie is fun as well.

Ms. Kathleen said...

I agree...a wonderful book!