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 9-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
Mr. Crabtree’s voice booms on the PA system, announcing that several children seem to have gone missing. He lists the names of most of the first-grade class, along with a couple of fifth graders, before a “loud clunk” ends the announcement. The fifth graders who aren’t missing speculate about what all this means, assuming it has to be connected to the Herdmans. Beth notices that Alice and the scarecrow are nowhere in sight. The remaining fifth graders resolve to stick together and stay near the cider and donuts—in case the Herdmans’ next move involves stealing those. Just as Beth discovers Charlie and Cecil’s abandoned lion costume just as the lights go out.
Chapter 10 Summary
Beth explains that later on she and her classmates learn that the lights went out because of a blown fuse when Alice tried to plug in her Christmas lights. When it happened, though, they had no idea what was going on. Everyone is spooked, and Louella suddenly can’t find her baby brother’s stroller (though her brother, at least, is safe with her). When she wonders aloud who took it, and a voice creepily answers, “not me-e-e.” The fifth-graders make their way down a hall. They can hear Mr. Crabtree yelling, and a mysterious flash of light bouncing off the walls. Beth hears her mother scream that her witch’s cauldron is filled with worms.
Chapter 11 Summary
By the time Beth gets to her mother, people have found flashlights, and Mrs. Bradley has realized the worms were made out of spaghetti. Mrs. Bradley was in charge of the Mystery Maze, but it was torn down by what seemed to have been a feral cat painted black. The fifth graders go back to the hall near the teachers’ room where the discarded lion costume had been found. None of them have ever been inside, though Imogene once told Beth the teachers imprison kids inside. Leroy Herdman, on the other hand, told Louella that the teachers use the room to watch television, eat pizza, and drink beer. They hesitantly step into the mysterious room. Boomer goes in first, and it suddenly sounds like he’s fallen down a hole. Alice had been right all along: There really is a hole in the floor of the teachers’ room. Beth can hear Charlie and Cecil, who tell her that they’re in the boiler room. At that moment, the lights came on, revealing the hole in the floor, the missing kindergarten slide, and a boiler room full of candy.
Chapters 9-11 Analysis
This section ratchets up the drama and tension of the plot, beginning with Mr. Crabtree’s announcement asking certain children—who can’t be found—to return to their parents. Beth notices that this is the “only interesting thing that had happened all evening” (83), suggesting that the rest of the night will become even more intriguing. The sudden and unexpected dramatic events mark a resurgence of The Enduring Appeal of Halloween, despite the parents’ best efforts to make sure nothing is scary. The fifth graders begin to come together to investigate the situation, and when the lights go out, they exemplify the process of Finding Joy in the Unexpected. The power outage makes the school feel genuinely spooky, even as it has more amusing results as well, such as Mrs. Bradley mistaking the spaghetti thrown in her cauldron for “squirmy worms.” Beth and her classmates take advantage of the cover of darkness to explore parts of the school that they are unfamiliar with—particularly, the mysterious world of the teachers’ room, which none of them have entered before.
The empty teachers’ room represents the lure of the forbidden and the unknown—it’s probably the scariest place in the entire building. Imogene once told Charlie that the teachers use this room to imprison students, giving them “little bowls of water and old bologna sandwiches” (97). Other Herdman siblings have spread rumors about the lounge being a place for teachers to engage in hedonistic behaviors, such as watching television, eating pizza, and drinking beers. Even the Herdmans, it turns out, have a limited sense of what adults do when children are not around. To confront their fears, the fifth graders must band together, representing The Importance of Inclusivity in Communities. When they do so, they are able to make the exciting discovery of the slide into the boiler room. Where the teachers’ lounge represents the confusion of adulthood, the slide provides a physical escape into a childhood fantasy. To complete the image, the slide ends in a room packed “with all the candy in the world” (104). The climactic image of the slide leading to a sea of candy shows that Halloween has been saved. It is fittingly accompanied by the reassuring realization that all the missing children, including Charlie, were never missing in the first place. They were simply lost in the delights of the boiler room. The discovery of the slide marks the climax of the novel and signals the plot is on its way to a happy resolution.
