The Last Holiday Concert. by Andrew Clements. 2004. Simon & Schuster. 176 pages. ISBN: 9780689845253
The Last Holiday Concert is a heartwarming holiday tale by Andrew Clements. Like his other books, this is a school story, and the focus is on that yearly tradition well known to so many families with elementary school kids: the holiday concert. Mr. Meinert, the music teacher at Palmer Intermediate School has lost his job due to budget cuts. His students, including popular sixth grader, Hart Evans, aren't aware that they'll be losing their choral director, however, so for them it's business as usual. They don't take chorus - or their upcoming holiday concert - seriously at all. Hart even goes so far as to amuse himself during rehearsal by shooting a rubber band at the ceiling. When he hits Mr. Meinert, however, things take a surprising turn. Next thing he knows, Hart is in charge of the holiday concert, and it's up to him whether the sixth grade chorus will sink or swim in front of its audience.
Before this year, the only Andrew Clements book I had read was
Frindle. This year, I added
No Talking,
Troublemaker,
The Landry News, and
About Average to my list, and it has been a real pleasure getting to know an author who writes such wonderful realistic school stories. The Last Holiday Concert combines a lot of the signature elements I have come to associate with Clements's work. The story provides the point of view of the main child character as well as of some of the key adults in his life. Family scenes appear now and then, when necessary to the plot, but most of the action takes place within the school setting and focuses on Hart's relationship with Mr. Meinert. Though putting a student completely in charge of a holiday concert seems like an unlikely thing for a teacher to do, Clements makes it really plausible by putting so much realism into the book. Hart and his classmates behave as real kids do, and Mr. Meinert's thoughts and actions humanize him as something more than just that strict chorus teacher the kids don't really like. As in his other books, Clements promotes change in his main character by taking him out of his comfort zone and presenting him with a true challenge.
The ending of the story is definitely heartfelt, and the way Clements describes the kids' concert is dramatic enough to bring a few tears to the eyes of the reader, especially if that reader is an adult who works with kids. This is a bit of a spoiler, only in the sense that I'm telling you something that
doesn't happen, but I was pleased to see that the story's happy ending didn't tie up every loose end. Mr. Meinert never gets his job back. Hart makes a difference, for himself, and for Mr. Meinert, but Clements keeps us grounded in reality by avoiding that
It's a Wonderful Life - esque ending, and the book is stronger for it.
The Last Holiday Concert is not just a Christmas story, and the events of the story closely mirror holiday celebrations at many public elementary schools, so this would be a good non-denominational read-aloud for diverse elementary school classes. Those who have also read Clements's
The Landry News will note some parallels between Hart's experiences with Mr. Meinert and Cara's with Mr. Larson - it might be interesting to compare and contrast the two relationships to understand better how Clements builds his stories. Whatever the time of year, and whatever the subject matter, you truly can't wrong with a novel by Andrew Clements. I look forward to exploring more of his backlist in 2013, and I can't wait to read more of his future school stories as well.
I borrowed The Last Holiday Concert from my local public library.
The Landry News. by Andrew Clements. 1999. Simon and Schuster. 144 pages. ISBN: 9780689828683Cara Landry’s teacher, Mr. Larson, was once named teacher of the year. These days, though, he is burned out and spends most of his days sitting at a desk with the newspaper and a cup of coffee, letting the kids in his class teach themselves whatever they might want to know. During one such unstructured school day Cara writes the first edition of The Landry News, her personal newspaper, in which she writes a scathing editorial about the lack of teaching in her classroom. The newspaper lights a fire under Mr. Larson, and eventually grows to become a class project that changes his outlook on teaching.
As he does in
No Talking,
Frindle, and
Troublemaker, Andrew Clements creates a very vivid image of the school he writes about in this book. Within a very few pages, I could picture the messy, chaotic environment of Mr. Larson’s classroom, and his casual, bored demeanor as he sits at his desk. By including the principal’s point of view along with Mr. Larson’s and Cara’s, Clements gives the reader a complete view of the school and a great sense of where everyone fits in the grand scheme of things. I like that Clements is able to keep the school story genre fresh by spending time on these details in each of his books.
The plot itself is pretty predictable, though there are some twists and turns on the way to the obvious ending. There is a bit of emotional mushiness that might make adult readers - especially teachers - a bit misty-eyed, but this is balanced out pretty well by the lessons the kids learn about freedom of the press, and by Cara’s own journey toward getting over her parents’ divorce. This book isn’t as funny as some of Clements’s other books, but it has a lot of heart, and it encourages kids to consider their teachers as people, not just authority figures.
Recommend this book to Clements fans, and to readers who have enjoyed
The Secret Life of Ms. Finkleman by Ben H. Winters,
Because of Mr. Terupt by Rob Buyea,
Nothing But the Truth by Avi, and
Clementine’s Letter by Sara Pennypacker.
I borrowed The Landry News from my local public library.
For more about this book, visit Goodreads and Worldcat.
No Talking. by Andrew Clements. June 1, 2007. Simon & Schuster. 160 pages. ISBN: 9781416909835No Talking is a school story about a particularly chatty fifth grade class. Their teachers have been trying since kindergarten to get these kids to stop talking so much during the school day, and they have never been able to do it. This is why they are so surprised when, one afternoon, the entire class falls silent. Little do they know that Dave Packer and Lynsey Burgess have made a bet to see which group - the boys or the girls - can say the fewest words in two days. And little do Dave and Lynsey realize what this experience will teach them about communication, language, and each other.
Clements is a really perceptive author. His observations of school-aged kids are very insightful, and his stories are both realistic and imaginative at the same time. Though his characters are interesting, far more interesting in this book is the school environment itself. By including the points of view of students and teachers, he provides a full, clear portrait of how the school operates, and how the kids' experiment in silence affects that entire system. Too few authors use omniscient narrators in contemporary realistic fiction - Clements's style is a welcome change from the typical first-person or third person limited perspectives. I especially like the way the omniscient third-person narration is able to comment generally on certain characteristics of the individual characters as well as the class as a whole.
Here is my favorite example, from page 19, where the narrator explains about "cooties:"
However, some groups of kids cling to those cooties a little too long. The boys avoid the girls, and the girls avoid the boys, and everyone keeps seeing cooties everywhere. And, sadly, that's the way it was with most of the fifth-grade kids at Laketon Elementary School.
Of course, the fifth graders didn't actually use the word "cooties" anymore - that would have sounded like baby talk. They used words like "dumb" or "gross" or "immature" or "annoying." But a cootie by any other name is still a cootie.
Statements like this couldn't necessarily be understood or articulated by the kids in the story, but readers certainly understand them, and the entire story becomes richer by their addition.
This book can appeal to both boys and girls and would work well as a classroom read-aloud or book club pick. Readers who enjoyed
Frindle and other Clements titles will be drawn to this one, as will fans of books like
Regarding the Fountain by Kate and Sarah Klise, and the Secrets of a Lab Rat series by Trudy Trueit.
I borrowed No Talking from my local public library.
For more about this book, visit Goodreads and
