"The Best Christmas Pageant Ever"

"Hey! Unto you a child is born!"
"The Worst  Best Christmas Pageant Ever" by Barbara Robinson is one of those books you pick up when you need some Christmas cheer and humor to brighten up your day. I read it for the first time last year, and from time to time my family could hear me laughing in my room at the comments and jokes made by the unforgettable characters. It starts with the Herdman children:
The worst six kids in the history of the world. Ralph, Imogene, Leroy, Claude, Ollie and Gladys. They do all sorts of bad things, and were never expected to be tangled up in any way with the church Christmas pageant. But thanks to Charlie, the brother of the girl who narrates the story, the Herdman kids show up at church one Sunday expecting cookies, cake and ice cream because of a lie he (Charlie) told. And because the usual director of the play, Mrs. McCarthy is stuck in the hospital, the story unfolds.  Imogene asks what the Christmas pageant is about, and when told that it's about Jesus, her reply is "Everything here is." So no one worries about it, assuming that the Herdmans won't want to stick around any longer. But they do. And pretty soon the Christmas pageant is starring the Herdman children as Joseph, Mary, the wise men and the angel of the Lord. Everyone expects it to be a total disaster... six kids who have never heard the Christmas story before starring in the Christmas pageant? But the performance makes everyone think about how the first Christmas really was. I love this book. It's an easy read, but I still enjoyed it and give it 5 stars! It would work wonderfully as a read-aloud. It has 108 pages, and 7 chapters. And it is very funny.
If this book ever enters your home library, it's sure to become a classic.

Natalia