‘Pageant’ author visits Brookwood

Published 11:47 pm Sunday, December 18, 2005

Fleming Farrow played the role of Beverly in the Artistic Civic Theatre’s recent stage production of “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” based on the classic children’s book by Barbara Robinson.

Last week, Farrow, along with friends Susannah Tighe, who played Doris, and Emily Sherrill, who played Roberta, endured a long line at Brookwood Elementary School to have their copies of “Christmas Pageant” signed by Robinson herself. Farrow, 10, passed a playbill from the recent ACT production for Robinson to sign.

“It was fun to do the play,” Farrow said, “because we already knew a lot about the characters from reading the book in school.”

Robinson wrote “Christmas Pageant” in 1972 and also the play, which is produced annually in theaters, schools and churches across the country. She translated the book into a popular television movie for ABC in 1983.

“I studied theater in college, but making the jump to a film script was difficult for me,” Robinson said during her visit to Dalton. “The process is not about words but pictures. You have to see with the eye of the camera.”

“The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” follows the Herdman children, terrors of their town, who take over the annual Christmas Pageant with surprising results — for both the town and the Herdmans. It was followed by “The Best School Year Ever,” which also features the escapades of the Herdman kids, and “The Best Halloween Ever.” Robinson’s fourth book still in print is “My Brother Louis Measures Worms,” which she described as her most autobiographical story.

“When I open the floor to questions, the children always want to know if I knew the Herdmans,” Robinson said. “I explain to them that some of my writing is based on real life, and some comes from my imagination.”

Brookwood media center specialist Janice Hammontree said she organized Robinson’s visit, made possible by the school’s PTA, through a contact with a book fair company in Atlanta.

“When I saw her name on the list and that she was available in December, I jumped at it immediately. She’s so personable, the children have responded just great,” Hammontree said. “We want our kids to see that these successful authors are real people, their job just happens to be writing books. We want to inspire our students to become writers and artists themselves.”

Brookwood usually sponsors one author visit each year. Those visits have included illustrators Gail Haley and David Wisniewski, winners of the Caldecott Medal, awarded annually to the artist of the best American picture book for children.

Robinson, whose books have been translated into at least eight languages, was recently asked to light the Homberg Christmas tree in Germany, where “Christmas Pageant” is quite popular.

“It’s become a tradition there that an actor reads the book over the radio during the holiday, and families gather around to hear it,” said Robinson. “When I joined in, they said it didn’t matter that I can’t speak German.”

Robinson grew up in Portsmouth, Ohio, where her mother, widowed when Robinson was 3, taught school for 49 years. Robinson said she began writing in the fourth grade and eventually wrote short stories for magazines such as McCall’s, Ladies Home Journal and Redbook. She said one of those stories, “Across from Indian Shore,” caught the eye of her mother, who suggested it be expanded into a book for children.

Whether it’s soup or stories, Robinson said, good things take time.

“The children were astonished when I told them it could take me five to six years to write one book,” Robinson said. “They envision me in front of paper and pencil or a typewriter that whole time, but so much of it is written in your head while you’re doing other things.”

Robinson said she is currently working on a story based around summer camp that would be her ninth book. She said the students at Brookwood gave her plenty of good advice.

“Children can be a demanding audience. If they don’t care about your characters by Page 2, they won’t read about them. But when they love a book, they really embrace it,” Robinson said.

“That’s why I’m here today. How can I write for them if I don’t go to see them? I got a lot of great ideas today about things to do in my next book.”