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.
Introduction-Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Introduction Summary
Beth Bradley’s younger brother Charlie is outraged that Halloween has been canceled this year. Though Charlie thinks this is the worst thing that could have happened, the next morning has something far worse in store.
Chapter 1 Summary
Beth’s mother blames the Herdmans for the change in the town’s Halloween traditions. The Herdmans are a family of six children—Ralph, Imogene, Leroy, Claude, Ollie, and Gladys—who live with their mother and their one-eyed cat in a house at the bottom of Sproul Hill. The Herdman siblings are notorious for causing trouble. They once put their cat in the washing machine, robbing it of whatever good nature it ever had. Beth notes that the neighbors would have complained about the Herdmans, except that all their neighbors moved away to avoid the mayhem. Even Mrs. Herdman prefers to stay at work instead of spending time with her children. Just this year, the Herdmans have stolen the flag on Flag Day, ruined school bake sales, and replaced the kindergarten’s pet mice with guinea pigs. However, the worst thing they did in recent memory was to stick eight children, including Charlie, into the revolving door at the bank. The door wouldn’t budge, the children couldn’t get out, and the fire department had to be called. That wasn’t all. The Herdmans also snuck into Mr. Santoro’s pizza parlor and replaced the sardines in his newly-launched sardine pizza with live guppies. One of the customers ended up with a guppy in his mustache. Fearing that the Herdmans would unleash disaster on Halloween, the mayor banned it altogether.
Chapter 2 Summary
Whatever her mother may say, Beth thinks it is natural for kids to blame Mr. Crabtree, the school principal, for the Halloween debacle. Everyone knows he hates Halloween. He has always discouraged children from putting up Halloween decorations and wearing costumes to school. So well-known is Mr. Crabtree’s hatred for Halloween that when Eugene Preston broke his ankle trick-or-treating, he was scared to come to school because Mr. Crabtree would blame him for letting Halloween break his bones.
According to Beth’s mom, there is nothing wrong with Mr. Crabtree’s opinion that kids shouldn’t go overboard on Halloween, but that’s a grown-up’s view. For a kid, Halloween is all about going overboard, eating lots of candy, and getting sick. Unfortunately, Beth, Charlie, and the other children never get to eat enough candy, because the Herdmans are always waiting around a tree or a corner to take their candy. The Herdmans don’t even need to go trick-or-treating because every year they get candy from the other kids. One year, they even made some children, including Charlie, buy back their own candy.
No one can say Mr. Crabtree’s fears about Halloween are unjustified, because last year on Halloween the Herdmans released all the cats and dogs from the cages at Animal Rescue till the animals were running amok all over town. Alice Wendleken had decided to dress up as a hot dog. For extra authenticity, she stuffed cut-up sausages in her pockets so she smelled like a hot dog too. The dogs all came to Alice, sniffing her costume. By the time, Mrs. Wendleken arrived at the scene, Alice had been pulled safely out of her costume, but the dogs had ripped up the discarded material. Mrs. Wendleken wanted not just the dogs, but also the Herdmans locked up. The fire chief and police chief chimed in, saying they were mortally afraid of what would happen next Halloween. At the Rotary Meeting, the fed-up Mayor announced there would be no trick-or-treating this year.
Introduction-Chapter 2 Analysis
The opening chapters introduce Beth, the first-person narrator, along with her family, her classmates, and, of course, the Herdmans. From early on, the narrative juxtaposes the competing views of adults and children, as seen through Beth’s eyes. The grown-ups view the Herdmans as trouble, and to some extent Beth and her peers take that view for granted, repeating the rumors and the stories about the family. At the same time, the novel lays the groundwork for the theme of The Importance of Inclusivity in Communities by showing how the grown-ups’ view of the Herdmans is incomplete. For many of the children, including Beth, these troublemakers are also a source of fascination and possibility. Beth notes that there is a Herdman in each grade of Woodrow Wilson School, and “if there would have been any more of them, they would have wiped out the school and everybody in it” (2). As this statement shows, Beth also often uses exaggeration and hyperbole to describe the antics of the Herdmans, adding to the humor in the plot.
Beth’s younger brother Charlie claims to be afraid of the Herdmans, but he finds himself in their company on a regular basis. He is one of the eight children who follows the Herdmans through the bank’s revolving door to get jammed in it. The Herdmans hold the lure of adventure and curiosity for Charlie, such as when he explains to his father that the reason he followed the Herdmans through the door was because “Ralph said ‘Let’s see how many kids will fit in the door,’ and so…” (6). Charlie’s attraction to the Herdmans aligns him with the theme of Finding Joy in the Unexpected. The Herdmans represent both the delight and anarchy of unbridled creativity. Charlie, who leads an otherwise regular life, senses this appeal and follows them into mayhem and discovery.
Beth’s straightforward narration establishes a contrast between the exaggerated reactions of grown-ups and more conventional children to the Herdmans’ pranks and the actual harm the Herdmans cause. Beth repeatedly notes that no one really ends up hurt by the Herdmans’ pranks, yet the grown-ups, like the fire chief, fear that this year the Herdmans just might set the entire town on fire. The paranoia that some of the town’s adult leaders show toward a group of somewhat neglected children says more about the adults than the Herdmans themselves; in reality, the community will be able to survive what the Herdmans throw at it. The children in the novel, with the exception of Alice, sense this fact, which is why their reaction to a Herdman-free Halloween is ambivalent. Without entirely being able to articulate why, the children understand on an instinctive level that part of The Enduring Appeal of Halloween is being surprised and even scared—and that certain freedoms, such as being able to trick-or-treat, are ultimately worth risking a run-in with the Herdmans.
The names of characters in the novel are often indicative of their personality. For example, “Herdman” evokes the idea of a herd or group, suggesting the six siblings work in tandem. “Crabtree,” the name of the principal of Beth and Charlie’s school, suggests someone crabby or irritable. “Wendleken,” with its precise pronunciation, brings to mind someone prim and proper. Many of the characters in the text also feature in Robinson’s previous Best…Ever novels. Though the novels are separated by decades, characters like Beth and the Herdmans roughly remain the same age. This gives the series an out-of-time, universal feel, a tone enhanced by the fact that the novel leaves out many specifics, such as Beth’s mother’s name, or the name of their hometown.
