47 pages • 1-hour read
The Best School Year Ever
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Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of bullying, child abuse, and animal cruelty.
Chapter 7 Summary
Louella and Howard’s mother takes a part-time job at the phone company. When Howard’s babysitter quits, Mrs. McCluskey gets special permission for Louella to bring young Howard with her to school for a few days while she finds a new sitter. Louella is worried about trying to supervise Howard, especially with Imogene in the same class, so she brings the toddler to school on a leash. Miss Kemp objects to this arrangement, but eventually gives in. Imogene mentions that they kept Claude on a leash for a while because the family had no dog. Alice says that she imagines Claude eventually got tired of it. She makes it clear that she does not think Howard has the same independent spirit and imagines that he will be perfectly happy on a leash. Alice thinks that Howard is stupid because he has not yet learned to read, but Louella points out that he is a toddler and is not yet even toilet trained.
Most of the sixth-grade students grow fond of Howard and help to keep him occupied, but Alice continues to criticize him. She mocks the security blanket that Howard carries. Beth agrees that the blanket is tattered and dirty, but Louella assures them that it is necessary: Howard will throw a tantrum if he does not have it. When Louella mentions that Howard will hold his breath and turn purple, Boomer grabs the blanket away from the toddler. The other sixth-grader students gather around, hoping to see Howard turn purple. As Howard screams and then begins to hold his breath, Beth tells Louella to do something, but Louella simply assures Beth that no permanent harm will come to Howard from holding his breath. Imogene rushes up and begins hitting Louella. She says that she does not have all day to wait for Howard to turn purple, grabs the blanket, and tosses it to Howard.
After this incident, Imogene keeps a close eye on Howard. When anyone tries to take his blanket, she is quick to intervene. Louella is suspicious of Imogene’s motives. She does not think Imogene can possibly like Howard, because she herself does not even like Howard. Beth points out that this is because Howard is her brother and she is responsible for him; Beth does not like Charlie, either, but she likes Howard just fine. Louella worries that Imogene is going to steal Howard and make him be the family’s new dog.
Eventually, Mrs. McCluskey quits her job, and Howard does not come to school anymore. The only problem is that when he comes home from school on his last day, he arrives without his blanket. The McCluskeys are desperate to have it back so that Howard will stop crying and holding his breath. Miss Kemp asks the class about it on the following day, but Beth knows that even if someone knows where it is, they will not say, because they are all afraid of how Imogene will react. The next day, Imogene shows up with what she says is Howard’s blanket, which she claims to have found under a bush near the bus stop. Everyone thinks that one of the Herdmans must have stolen the blanket, but the day after that, the art teacher confesses to having accidentally thrown Howard’s blanket away because she thought it was an old rag. When Louella closely examines the blanket that Howard is now using, she realizes that it is very similar to Howard’s blanket, but not identical. The faint remains of initials suggest that it is actually Imogene’s own baby blanket. Louella refuses to believe that Imogene could be so generous, but Beth is sure that she has finally found a compliment for Imogene: “Imogene Herdman—sympathetic” (87).
Chapter 8 Summary
The Herdman children are all absent from school two or three times each school year, and the school community enjoys their absence. No one cares why they are gone, and the school does not make them bring a note to explain. During one such absence, there is a school fire drill, and for the first time the Woodrow Wilson School wins the Fire Department Speed and Safety Award. The fire chief asks how the school was able to improve its evacuation time so dramatically and learns that it is because the Herdmans were not at school to cause chaos. The school is scheduled to receive their award at a special assembly on Fire Prevention Day. Beth wishes the Herdmans would not find out about the assembly and the award, but the whole school has special activities to celebrate, making it very obvious.
Someone vandalizes a Smokey Bear display by festooning the bear with firecrackers, cigarette lighters, and other flammable items. Everyone assumes one of the Herdmans did it. When a meeting of the Fire Safety Team is announced, Imogene asks Beth what this is. Beth explains that it is a group of students who, at the upcoming assembly, will demonstrate what to do in case of a fire. When Imogene asks which students are on the team, Beth wants to shrug the question off to shut down Imogene’s interest—but Alice starts bragging about being part of this group. She explains that there are 10 students on the team and two alternates in case of illness. Imogene seems very interested when Alice adds that all of these students are going to get special matching t-shirts for a photo that will be in the newspaper. Beth has a feeling that several students on the Fire Safety Team are about to mysteriously get sick and have to drop out.
All six Herdmans show up for the after-school meeting. The school principal tries to send the Herdmans home, but they say they want to sign up for the team. He is powerless to stop them, because he has made it a school rule that anyone can sign up for anything they want to participate in. Immediately, several students quit the Fire Safety Team, “before anything [can] happen to them” (95). Charlie tells Beth that during the practice sessions, when the principal tells the students to drop and roll, the Herdmans are dropping on top of other students on purpose. Several more students quit the team. The principal is skeptical about Lonnie Hutchison’s excuse for quitting. Lonnie’s mother calls to say he has a rash, but the principal is sure that he is faking. Lonnie is not faking, however—he has chicken pox, and soon most of the students in school are absent with the illness.
The assembly is canceled, and the fire chief tells the principal to bring the Fire Safety Team to the firehouse for the presentation of the school’s award. On the day of the presentation, there is a small fire at Mr. Santoro’s pizza parlor. He closes the restaurant and brings leftover pizza to the fire station. The newspaper headlines about this event make the erroneous claim that the fire was a clever PR stunt to draw attention to fire safety. The photo that accompanies the story shows the only remaining members of the Fire Safety Team: the six Herdmans, in their matching Fire Safety t-shirts. Many community members call to complain about the focus of this story, so the paper prints a follow-up story about the school winning the Fire Department Speed and Safety Award. During a classroom conversation, Imogene hints that her family also had chicken pox, but no one is able to pin down when this might have happened. Everyone wonders if the Herdmans were the ones who started the outbreak in the first place.
Chapter 9 Summary
The last day of school arrives. Beth explains that the school used to celebrate the last day of school with a pet parade, but one year Claude brought the Herdmans’ cat. The Herdman children had whitewashed and hair sprayed the cat, hoping to win a prize for “Most Unusual Pet,” but the angry cat attacked the other pets in the parade, causing chaos. That was the last pet parade at the Woodrow Wilson School. One activity the teachers tried to substitute was a time for students to show off their collections, but this, too, was canceled, after Imogene Herdman brought her collection of belly-button lint. This year, of course, the scheduled activity in Beth’s classroom is Compliments for Classmates.
Beth is dreading this, because she has drawn Imogene’s name and will have to give Imogene several compliments. She has seen other classmates’ lists, and each contains many compliments for whomever they are supposed to talk about. Beth has written down “patriotic” and “brave” about Imogene, although she is troubled because she does not really believe these things are true (106). For days, she has been watching Imogene closely to try to come up with ideas. One day, Imogene helps Boyd Liggett get his head unstuck from the bike rack. Beth thinks that this is a good thing to do, but Boyd’s mother says that Imogene is partially at fault for Boyd’s predicament, because it was Imogene’s siblings—Claude and Gladys—who got Boyd stuck in the first place. When she tells her parents about the incident, Mr. Bradley calls Imogene “resourceful,” and Beth writes this down on her compliments list (110).
When it is time for the students to give their compliments, Laverne goes first, and she reads the compliments she has come up with for Boomer. After a few more students go, Miss Kemp announces that Joanne will now give Beth compliments. Beth is surprised to learn that the list she has already seen Joanne making—“Cheerful, good sport, graceful, fair to everybody”—is about her (111). Beth feels buoyed by the compliments, and she is still thinking about it a few turns later, when Miss Kemp says that it is time for Beth to give Imogene compliments. Beth begins to read her list. She has padded it with several synonyms for “resourceful,” which Alice notices and protests.
Suddenly, Beth realizes that her compliments are not actually insincere: She does believe that Imogene is “shrewd” and “inventive” and “enterprising” (114). She understands that it all depends on how she looks at Imogene’s behavior—although many things Imogene does create problems for other people, they also show that she is clever, creative, and persuasive. Beth sees that Imogene has as much potential as anyone else and could go on to have a great future. After school that day, Imogene asks Beth to write the word “resourceful” on her arm so that she can remember it, because she intends to get it tattooed on her permanently.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
The final chapters include the central conflict’s turning point and resolution. When Imogene gives up her own baby blanket to comfort young Howard in Chapter 7, Beth realizes for the first time that Imogene is capable of generous behavior that shows concern for others. She comes up with her first compliment for Imogene and is prepared, going forward, to see Imogene’s choices in a new light. When Imogene rescues Boyd from the bike rack, for instance, Beth does not automatically accept the judgment of Boyd’s mother—that Imogene is at fault for simply being a Herdman. Beth sees Imogene’s rescue as clever and determined, and she does not blame Imogene for Gladys’s or Claude’s choices. Significantly, when Alice—the novel’s antagonist and purest avatar of the community’s classism—attacks Beth’s list of compliments for Imogene in Chapter 9, Beth does not simply give in and conform to Alice’s perspective. Beth defends her compliments, and by extension, defends Imogene. This moment is an epiphany for Beth: she realizes that Imogene genuinely has good qualities and has as much potential for a bright future as any other child. This realization is an important part of the novel’s contentions about The Importance of Seeing Beyond the Surface.
The sequence of events that makes this epiphany possible also offers clear evidence of The Need For Communal Support Systems for Families. When Louella’s mother gets a job with the phone company, Louella is forced to bring her toddler brother, Howard, to school on a leash. Not only is this situation unsafe for Howard, but it also means that Louella briefly becomes as disruptive a presence in her classroom as the Herdman children are in theirs. This incident makes clear that the Herdman’s are not the only family negatively impacted by a lack of accessible childcare and other resources. Louella’s situation only resolves itself when the lack of childcare resources forces her mother to quit her new job—an option that the Herdman children’s mother does not have.
Chapter 7 is not the only chapter in this final section that hints that the Herdmans may get more criticism than they deserve while others get less. The school fails again in its duty of care when the Herdmans are absent in Chapter 8. No one follows up to find out whether the children are okay; indeed, it is later implied that they were all ill with chicken pox, at home unsupervised during their illness. Had anyone checked on the Herdmans, it is likely that the epidemic at school could have been prevented—but the school community receives no criticism. In Chapter 9, Beth comments on the “smelly” and “moldy” items students leave behind in their desks unless forced to clean them out (102). This is normal childhood behavior—but it is only the Herdmans who are repeatedly criticized for having supposedly dirty habits. Even when they are obviously trying to do good—as when Imogene defends Howard from the playground bullying of much-older children and when Imogene rescues Boyd from the bike rack—the Herdmans are still criticized, and people view their actions with suspicion. This public shunning is evidence of The Danger of Valuing Order Above Compassion. Once the town has decided that the Herdman children are a problem, everything they do is viewed as further evidence of the problem—an attitude that prevents them from ever being welcomed back into the community.
The isolation and exclusion the Herdmans experience is doubtless part of their motivation for intimidating and bullying other children into quitting the Fire Safety Team in Chapter 8. Beth makes it clear that they are uninterested until they see the matching t-shirts and learn about the planned newspaper article. When the day comes and the Herdman children are all that is left of the Fire Safety Team, they get their wish: The six siblings are pictured in the newspaper together, in matching new t-shirts—a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the impoverished and neglected Herdmans. Parents are outraged that their own children’s efforts on behalf of Fire Safety are not recognized in the newspaper article: They are insulted that the Herdmans seem to be “being honored instead of the school” (100). What the Herdmans have done is selfish and unethical, of course, but this aspect of their behavior is the community’s sole focus: no one recognizes that the community itself has created a situation where these six elementary-school children have no one to depend on but each other, little to look forward to, and little motivation to uphold community standards.
The Herdmans’ triumphant moment in the Fire Safety Team photograph, like the final image of Imogene, with “resourceful” written in marker “on her skinny arm,” points to a shift in the story’s tone that supports Beth’s epiphany regarding Imogene (116). Beth’s narration of anecdotes about the Herdmans throughout the text has been both disapproving and wryly humorous—and mainly focused on the exasperation she feels about the negative impacts the Herdmans have on their community. These final images of the children, by contrast, are hopeful in the way that Beth’s realization about Imogene’s future is hopeful. They point to the resourcefulness of not just Imogene, but all six Herdmans: In the face of neglect by both their mother and their community, there is something joyous and determined in their self-centered, boisterous, and ungovernable behavior. The Herdmans, it is suggested, will work together to find their own way into a better future.
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