38 pages • 1 hour read
Barbara RobinsonThe Best Halloween Ever
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1981A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 12-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12 Summary
Nearly every kind of candy imaginable is crammed into the boiler room. All the missing kids are there as well, stuffing their pockets with the candy. Louella wishes she had Howard’s stroller so she could fill it up. No one knows where it came from, but they know it isn’t from their parents, the principal, or the mayor. When Mr. Crabtree shows up and starts yelling at them, one of the first graders says it was the “Halloween tooth fairy.” He doesn’t know who to blame without any Herdmans around; after all, many of the younger kids were already down in the boiler room before Alice caused the power outage.
Mr. Crabtree cancels the rest of the Halloween party. The supermarket refuses to take the candy since it is stale, so all the candy goes to the kids. Beth observes that, when it comes to Halloween candy, it doesn’t matter whether it is good—just that there is a lot of it. Mr. Crabtree vows never to host Halloween at school again, which means next Halloween will be back to normal. Beth and Charlie decide that is what is best, even though their mother can’t understand why they would want to go trick-or-treating with the threat of the Herdmans’ pranks looming over their head. Charlie replies that even those pranks are part of the fun. Charlie tells his dad he found out about the candy because he followed Boomer in his gorilla suit down the slide. Beth knows it wasn’t Boomer at all.
Chapter 13 Summary
Mr. Crabtree investigates what happened on Halloween night, but he questions teachers, parents, and “a bunch of random kids” without figuring out how the candy got into the boiler room (110). Beth, however, has a better idea of how it all came to be. Beth is surprised that Imogene applauds so enthusiastically at the end of Alice’s long and boring report on her near-electrocution—and that Imogene forces those around her to applaud as well. Imogene isn’t applauding the content or delivery, however; rather, the Herdmans “owe” Alice for having caused the power outage that allowed them to implement their plan and escape. Mr. Crabtree might have regretted how much his Herdman-free Halloween backfired, but Beth and the others know the Herdmans were there all along. They had stolen Boomer’s grandmother’s fur coat and Beth’s dad’s old pants, along with several long black coats, so that they could sneak into the school undetected; later, those garments resurfaced in the lost-and-found. They had stolen the slide, spray-painted their cat, and brought in years’ worth of stolen candy to stock the boiler room. Louella thinks they did it for the free doughnuts. Alice speculates that they just had to get the candy out of the house so that Mrs. Herdman wouldn’t find it. Boomer calls it “the greatest trick or treat ever” (122), suggesting that the prank itself was the appeal. Beth knows that they could just ask, but, in the end, decides that it’s up to the Herdmans to decide whether to tell them or not.
Chapters 12-13 Analysis
The final two chapters explain most of the questions raised in the previous section and also illustrate the key themes of The Importance of Inclusivity in Communities, Finding Joy in the Unexpected, and The Enduring Appeal of Halloween. Mr. Crabtree and most of the other adults remain oblivious to what really happened on Halloween, even though the clues are all there. Without any evidence that the Herdmans ever set foot in the school that night, Mr. Crabtree is at a loss for who to blame—he can’t even figure out who to ask. Alice cannot be blamed even though it was her action that led to the power outage; that, in her mother’s eyes, is the fault of the electric company itself.
Chapter 12 lists the candy in the boiler room in a breathless paragraphs-long catalog. The inclusion of the list of candy shows the narrative’s understanding of a child’s point-of-view and encapsulates the fun and joy around unwrapping and consuming different kinds of sweets. Beth calls it a “giant trick-or-treat supply for the rest of your life” (102). When a first-grader tells Mr. Crabtree that the candy came from a Halloween tooth fairy, his ears turn red again. Mr. Crabtree has been trying to tame and control Halloween, but the proliferation of candy—even candy that is too stale to be edible—puts the magic back in the night. The Halloween tooth fairy is a symbol of the magic and whimsy of Halloween, which is beyond rules and regulations. In a symbolic sense, the candy also represents the childish world of imagination and joy gaining over the grown-up world of control and routine.
The description of what happens after Alice inserts the plug brings together the images of several holidays: The boy who witnessed it compares the flying sparks to the “fourth of July” (90). Again, what the grown-ups find horrifying, the children find exciting. Alice is not hurt in the incident and claims to have electricity running through her fingers in the aftermath, as if she were a superhero.
Boomer’s question at the end of the novel brings together its key themes. Boomer wonders why the Herdmans would go out of their way to do something nice for their classmates. The subtext, which the novel does not dwell much on, is that the town has excluded the Herdmans yet the Herdmans have saved, rather than ruined, Halloween. Beth’s answer illustrates the theme of Finding Joy in the Unexpected. According to Beth, decoding the Herdmans is futile. If they want to tell one their motives, they will, like Imogene has been telling Beth. If they don’t, “you should just wonder about it and keep your mouth shut” (122). Here, the Herdmans represent adventure and the unknown. One never knows what they might do, but if one just accepts that the unknown is as necessary to life as the known, they might have fun with the Herdmans. The Herdmans’ decision to make Halloween fun is linked with the themes of The Enduring Appeal of Halloween as well as The Importance of Inclusivity in Communities. Whether the grown-ups want to include the Herdmans or not, the Herdmans include the children in their fun. The fact that the children only enjoy Halloween because the Herdmans are a part of it shows the significance of including all the elements of a community in its celebrations.
