Book Description

How is it that Louis has been driving his mother's car around town if he's only eight years old? Where did the cat go to have her kittens?Who won the free wedding? Whether it's costume parades, mysterious paint allergies, or bicycle disasters, there's never a dull moment when the Lawson family is around!

With all the humor of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, these hilarious stories by Barbara Robinson are sure to please.

Card catalog description
Young Mary Elizabeth relates the humorous misadventures of her brother Louis and the other wacky members of her unpredictable, very odd family.

ANNOTATION

Young Mary Elizabeth relates the humorous misadventures of her brother Louis and the other wacky members of her unpredictable, very odd family.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The Lawsons are one very unusual family. Eight-year-old Louis drives the family car all over town. His sister, eleven-year-old Mary Elizabeth, finds out that she’s lived her whole life under an assumed name. And everyone’s talking about the new baby—but no one seems to know who the mother is! With the Lawsons around, there’s never a dull moment.‘Will leave readers in stitches.’ —Booklist

Author Biography: Barbara Robinson has written many popular books for children, including The Best School Year Ever and My Brother Louis Measures Worms and Other Louis Stories. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is an ALA Notable Children's Book and was filmed as a television movie.

In Her Own Words ...

I grew up in a small southern Ohio town, and began writing when I was in the fourth or fifth grade, as a hobby and for fun. I'm happy to say it's still fun today, probably because every book I write has to be a book that I also want very much to read. I'm like the reader who turns the page to see what happens next - except, of course, that the page is blank. But I then get to fill it up with whatever seems exciting, funny, scary, happy or sad ... and with characters who become as real to me as my next-door-neighbors - so real, in fact, that sometimes they just step in and show me 'what happens next.'

Since I'm one of those writers whose story ideas spring more from people than from plot, I spend a lot of time with my characters, so they tend to be people I like to spend time with - even the wild and woolly Herdmans, who inhabit two of my books, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and The BestSchool Year Ever. I have a special fondness for the Herdman adventures, probably because boys and girls have told me that these are their favorites, and that's the most important thing to me.