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.
Themes
The Enduring Appeal of Halloween
The central question preoccupying the novel's young protagonists is whether this year’s Halloween will be a disaster. The prognosis on Halloween seems bleak: Not only has trick-or-treating been banned this year but Halloween is also set to be hosted at school, chaperoned by parents and teachers. Beth, the narrator, reflects that the excessive involvement of grown-ups means this year’s Halloween will be “safe and controlled […] and peaceful and boring” (40). “Peaceful” and “boring” are adjectives that go against the essence of Halloween for the children in the novel: The appeal of Halloween is precisely that it allows children to play with identities, assert their creativity, and go out on the streets trick-or-treating with parents remaining discreetly on the sidelines. Although a tightly chaperoned, candy-less Halloween appears a disaster, the appeal of Halloween is so powerful that as it approaches, the children’s interest in the festival begins to pick up. When the changes to the holiday are first announced, Beth notes that the children of Woodrow Wilson School are apathetic about their costumes, with many choosing to dress as the mascot of a hardware store. However, as time goes on, Beth decides to dress up as a belly dancer, Boomer wants to go as King Kong, and Charlie and Cecil plan to be two halves of a lion. On Halloween night itself, Alice Wendleken is an elaborate Christmas tree, complete with working lights.
The creative aspect of Halloween is further emphasized through the way the children devise their costumes. Charlie and Cecil use a mop head to construct a lion’s mane, while Boomer plans to use his grandmother’s fur coat as a pelt. The children’s joy in Halloween, despite all the restrictions placed on them by the grown-ups, shows the power of imagination and adventure. Halloween, which symbolizes these qualities, cannot be suppressed, despite all the sanitizing control of the grown-ups. Halloween’s appeal endures for children, and the child-like aspect of grown-ups as well, because it carves a space where people can play with different personas and the unknown aspects of reality. For children, the entire rite of trick-or-treating is steeped in adventure and growing independence since they go out on the streets by themselves (or minimally chaperoned) and conduct negotiations. Beth notes that the mechanism of a traditional Halloween is perfect: with kids on “one end of Halloween” (18), looking up scary themes and pictures, planning costumes, and going trick-or-treating with friends after dark, and grown-ups at the other end, purely in a supportive role. On Halloween, parents are supposed to “give you the old sheets and pad you with pillows […] and of course, supply the candy” (18). Parents are meant to facilitate the festivities but in as unobtrusive a way as possible. When parents take over Halloween this year, this traditional and correct equilibrium is disturbed. Children no longer have the same freedom and creativity as with other Halloweens.
In this scenario, it is left to the disruptive and wild Herdmans to restore the adventurous spirit of Halloween. Even when the Herdmans seem to have excused themselves from Halloween—giving the grown-ups what they want—their specter looms large. Louella McCluskey, for instance, spends all night looking over her shoulder, waiting for a Herdman to pop up—without realizing that they are all around her. The Herdmans provide a delicious, Halloween-appropriate thrill even in their alleged absence; the information that they were there the whole time in costume only adds to the excitement. In the climactic sequence of the novel, they deliver to the children the biggest delight of Halloween—access to unlimited candy. The children’s slide into an ocean of candy in the dark is a great metaphor for the adventure, suspense, and indulgence that is at the heart of Halloween. Thus, Halloween is saved at the end of the novel, showing that the spirit of the festival endures in all its joy despite attempts to maintain control of it.
Finding Joy in the Unexpected
At the end of the book, the young protagonists wonder why the dreaded Herdmans ended up engineering the “greatest trick or treat ever” (122). Beth observes that the answer to this question may never be known, since the Herdmans aren’t known for revealing their motivations. If the Herdmans want their classmates to keep wondering, Beth realizes, “you should just wonder about it and keep your mouth shut” (122). Beth’s reflection illustrates the novel’s key theme of the importance of embracing the unexpected. The novel often hints that everything in life cannot be known or controlled. Sometimes, by going with the flow and giving in to the unknown, delightful things can happen, such as a mysterious slide leading to a room filled with candy, and the worst Halloween turning into the greatest ever.
To build up this theme, the plot introduces mysteries and questions, which are only resolved at the end. The kindergarten slide goes missing, and clothes disappear from the cleaners. Rather than resolve these mysteries, the text lets them linger for a while, hinting that they will lead to an unexpected and happy payoff. The Herdmans’ attitude too creates an atmosphere of suspense. Imogene is the only Herdman who features in the novel, which creates an air of mystery surrounding the activities of her less prominent siblings. Imogene is given to intriguing statements, such as when she states that “any place will be safer than Woodrow Wilson tonight” (59). This shows that the unpredictable Herdmans themselves symbolize the unknown and the unexpected.
The differing attitudes of the children and the grown-ups toward the Herdmans can also be read as their response to surprises and twists. Beth notes that a Herdman-free Halloween is what the grown-ups want because grown-ups like things to run in a controlled manner. The children, on the other hand, find themselves increasingly vexed by the safe Halloween, as it has little room for surprises. When Beth’s mother tries to get her excited about Halloween with the promise of “lots of surprises” (49), Beth wryly notes to herself, “what surprises? […] We already knew about the Mystery Swamp and the boiling cauldron and the monsters” (49). The PTA’s codified and structured approach to things means that even a boiling cauldron appears mundane and expected. However, because no one can control life, the unexpected does make a dramatic appearance at school on Halloween. The youngest and most adventurous children—the first-graders and Charlie and Cecil—embrace the unexpected and follow it down to a slide into a world of joy.
The Importance of Inclusivity in Communities
The central message of The Best Halloween Ever is about inclusion. A social group needs to be diverse and inclusive; in fact, diversity is what infuses life in any community. The novel explores this theme by first positioning the Herdmans as outsiders. Though they attend the same school as Beth and Charlie, Beth’s observations make it clear that the Herdmans are different—and not only because of their behavior. The Herdmans live in a ramshackle house, with the contents of their garage scattered on their lawn; their mother works two jobs and stays mostly out of home. Beth remarks that the Herdmans don’t need to dress up for Halloween because “they looked like Halloween all the time” (13). Although Beth doesn’t have the language to fully articulate it, the novel implies that the Herdmans are economically disadvantaged compared to their peers. Beth and Charlie’s life appears more solidly middle-class. When something goes wrong in the community, it is easy for both the children and the adults to blame the Herdmans for it.
Apart from these socioeconomic factors, the wildness and mischief of the Herdmans also others them. The novel presents many examples of the mayhem created by the Herdmans over the years, including jamming children in a revolving doorway, and writing dirty words on someone’s turtle. While the children of the town are afraid of the Herdmans and their antics, it is the grown-ups who view them as a true threat and nuisance. Though the grown-ups don’t actively exclude the Herdmans from the Halloween festivities, they do want to limit their sphere of influence. Some of the attitudes of the grown-ups rub off on the children, such as when Alice notes that the whole point of Halloween at school is to have a “Herdman-free Halloween” (51). However, as time goes on, Beth, and especially Charlie, begin to note that a Herdman-free Halloween is not all that it is cracked up to be. In a pivotal scene, Charlie tells his mother that Halloween cannot be safe and exclusive. To his mother’s question about why he would want to go through the complications of trick-or-treating only to have to defend his candy from the Herdmans, Charlie reflects that “All that…even the Herdmans […] That’s what Halloween is supposed to be” (107)—an answer that pleases his older sister.
In the end, the Herdmans saving Halloween and returning years of stolen candy to the children shows that there is far more to them than meets the eye. Unlike the adults and many of the children, the Herdmans approach the situation with grace and unexpected generosity. While, at the novel’s conclusion, the attitude of the grown-ups toward the Herdmans may not have changed much, the very fact that the Herdmans insert themselves into Halloween shows the novel’s stance on The Importance of Inclusivity in Communities.
