The Best School Year Ever

Beth Bradley recalls Miss Kemp’s class assignment to write about figures from the “Old West” (1). Her Woodrow Wilson Elementary School classmate Boomer wanted to report on the James gang, but the school library did not have any resources. As an alternative, he wrote about another family of outlaws—the Herdmans. The Herdmans are a local family with six children who range in age from kindergarten through sixth grade. Beth notes that “Boomer’s paper was the best one, three whole pages of one crime after another,” but Miss Kemp scolded Boomer and made him redo the paper (2).

On her first day of sixth grade, Beth recalls a time when her little brother, Charlie, told their mother that Leroy Herdman, who is in Charlie’s grade, said that on half days the teachers lock the school’s doors and order in pizza and beer. Beth’s mother replied that if they lock the doors, it is only to keep Leroy out. Beth says that the Herdmans are the worst children “in the history of the world” and explains that they do things like smoke cigars, set fires, and bully little kids (4). Imogene Herdman is in Beth’s class, and on the first day of school, Imogene grabs Beth and tries to get her to buy a box with a mouse in it as a purported science project.