The Best School Year Ever

Beth’s mother, Mrs. Bradley, is a flat and static character mentioned in passing in several chapters. In many ways she is the adult version of Beth. It is clear that, like Beth, she believes that children should be polite, clean, hard-working, and compliant and helps to reinforce the story’s theme of The Importance of Social Order. Like Beth, she has a sometimes-scathing wit and feels free to use it to criticize others, particularly the Herdmans and Mrs. Wendleken—just as Beth criticizes the Herdmans and Alice Wendleken. At times, she even turns her sarcasm against her own children: When they ask for a dog, she tells them they absolutely can have a dog, as soon as they find one that can “let itself in and out of the house and answer the phone” (82). Like Beth, she has good friends who are not particularly responsible with children—just as Beth’s friend Louella shows herself to be irresponsible with her younger brother, Mrs. Bradley’s friend Miss Philips is irresponsible in her duties as the Herdman children’s social worker.

Despite her sometimes pointed wit, Mrs. Bradley is an involved parent whom her children clearly trust with their concerns and feelings. Several times during the novel, Beth mentions advice and ideas that Mrs. Bradley has shared in response to Beth’s or Charlie’s descriptions of events at school. Mrs. Bradley is a part of the PTA and attends school events regularly, but she does not display the excessive love of order that characterizes Alice and her mother, Mrs. Wendleken, and Mrs. Bradley is as critical of their excessive rule-following as she is of the Herdman children’s unruliness.

Imogene Herdman is a student in Beth’s class at Woodrow Wilson Elementary School. Beth’s quest to find something good to say about Imogene forms the story’s central conflict, but Imogene herself is largely absent from much of the story. The search for something good to say about Imogene functions as a structuring device to hold together the series of anecdotes about the Herdman children that forms the majority of the text, but most of the anecdotes are not about Imogene herself.

She is first introduced in Chapter 1, thrusting a box with a mouse in it at Beth, urging Beth to buy it as an alleged science project. This characterizes Imogene as slightly unethical, but it also shows that she is enterprising and determined—something Beth will begin to recognize as the story progresses. A few pages later Imogene appears again, asking Beth what a compliment is. This incident characterizes Imogene as curious but also shows The Need for Communal Support Systems for Families: Imogene, whose single mother must work nearly all the time to support her and her siblings, is poorly educated and may not have received many compliments in her life. Later in the novel, Beth thinks that Imogene resists coming up in front of the class to hear compliments about herself because “Imogene probably never heard good things about herself” (113).

Imogene is mentioned as participating in the exhibition of Howard McCluskey as a tattooed baby, but it is not clear that she is the driver of this plan, and she is only mentioned in passing in the following three chapters. In Chapter 5, Imogene reappears as the source of rumors about the school’s teachers’ lounge. Her silly claims show her imagination and sense of humor, but her persistence in keeping the rumors going in order to frighten the other children illustrates the vicious cycle of alienation that the Herdman children experience at the school: As they lash out against the community that has ostracized them, they reinforce the negative opinions that led them to be ostracized in the first place. Imogene participates with her siblings in the game of pretending that there is something dangerous about Bus Six, but again, she does not appear to orchestrate this scheme. Throughout the adventures of the Herdman siblings in Chapters 1 through 6, Imogene does not engage in physical violence or vandalism; she is mostly depicted going along for the ride with her gang of siblings—the only companions she has, given the way the Herdman children are mocked and excluded by the rest of the community.

It is only in Chapter 7, when Howard McCluskey comes to school with Louella, that Imogene becomes a real focus of the narrative. She hits Louella while defending Howard from the much-older children who are bullying him by taking his blanket. While this incident appears to confirm the widespread belief that all Herdman children are violent, Beth notices that Imogene only becomes violent in defense of a vulnerable person who is being picked on. When she gives Howard her own blanket, Imogene shows herself capable of real compassion and generosity, helping Beth to see that Imogene has a mixture of good and bad qualities, just like everyone else.

Alice is a student in Beth’s class at Woodrow Wilson Elementary School. Beth considers Alice a friend, although she does not have much positive to say about Alice. Beth portrays Alice as a comically self-absorbed character: expecting compliments about her beauty, always wanting to be the center of attention, and highly motivated to please adults. Beth notes sarcastically that Alice has piled up “more good deeds and good grades and perfect attendance records than anybody else in the history of the Woodrow Wilson School” (34).

Alice does not play much of a role in the novel’s action. Instead, her character is revealed through her snide, arrogant dialogue and through others’ reactions to her. Alice looks down on the Herdmans, getting upset when Leroy wins the Good School Citizen award, mocking Imogene’s dirty appearance, and deliberately trying to shame Imogene for being part of a family not allowed on the school’s buses. When Beth offers Imogene compliments at the end of the story, Alice cannot believe they are sincere and cruelly says so in front of Imogene. An antagonist, Alice is portrayed as Imogene’s polar opposite—a privileged child who is fed a steady diet of praise by her parents, the town, and the school, and who lacks empathy as a result. Alice’s character supports The Danger of Valuing Order Above Compassion in several ways. Alice’s commentary makes clear how much she values rules and norms and how much she despises people who break them.