Book Talk Thursday ~ My Absolute Favorite Christmas Book

Less than a week before Christmas!  I am so excited!  Only one more day until the BIG break!!  This week I have another edition of Book Talk Thursday with a linky for you!

This week I am highlighting my absolute favorite Christmas book of all time!  I absolutely LOVE The Best Christmas Pageant Ever!

I used to read this to my third and fourth graders EVERY year around Christmas time.  And every time I read it, I cry.  It is just a wonderful story about children and their innocence, even when there seems to be no innocence among them.

The story revolves around the Christmas pageant at the church and the Herdmans.  Every school has a family of "Herdmans".  They all have different names, but we know them!  Anyway, this story is so different than other Christmas stories.  The Herdmans find out about the Christmas pageant and bully their way into the lead roles.  Imogene and Ralph are Mary and Joseph, and Gladys is the angel.  Everyone in the church is appalled, but the show goes on.  Throughout the book, there is much chaos as the Herdmans continuously get into trouble.  In the end, the Christmas pageant turns out to not only be OK, but to exceed everyone's expectations.  Hence, why I cry each time I read it!

Such a great story of the innocence the Herdmans have and what they learned from the Christmas story.  From the beginning you would never expect them to be innocent about anything, but what they learn about God and love is beyond belief!  And what we can learn about students like the Herdmans is that they ARE innocent.  We just have to find it!

So, I leave you with this...

What can you do to find the innocence in those students who seem to have no innocence?

And don't forget to link up with a review of your absolute favorite Christmas book!  I would love to find some new Christmas books to add to my ever growing collection!  Next week you can link up your favorite winter book, which will be the last week of link-ups for a while!