Clements, Andrew. The Last Holiday Concert. New York: Scholastic, Inc., 2004.

Hart Evans, the most popular student at Palmer Intermediate, somehow finds himself elected the director of the Holiday Concert when his teacher, Mr. Meinert, tells the class that it is their concert, therefore their responsibility. The teacher, hoping to regain control of his class through Hart’s failure, soon learns that Hart is more than just a rubber band wielding sixth grader. Hart manages to rally the other students of the Chorus into creating a memorable program. Although he still needs help from Mr. Meinert from time to time, he teaches the teacher about students, about control, and about management.

I enjoyed reading this book. The thing I liked the best was that it does not have a happy ending. I expected everything to be fixed by the end, but it was not. That was very refreshing since most children’s authors find a way to fix everything that is bad in the world and wrap it all up in a neat little package. Definitely a must-read for any Clements fans!

What others have to say…

“The popular Clements achieves a judicious balance of teacher-student conflict, school comedy, and seasonal pathos in this lively crowd-pleaser.”

Sutton, Roger. 2004. "The Last Holiday Concert." Horn Book Magazine 80, no. 6: 657-657. Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts with Full Text, EBSCOhost (accessed May 8, 2009).