Summary of Chapter 3

• Mother asks the narrator if she knows what Mrs. Armstrong means every year when she tells the children that there are no small parts and that instead, there are only “small actors” (25).

• The narrator admits that no one ever has any idea what Mrs. Armstrong means by this statement.

• During a particularly lengthy phone conversation with Mrs. Armstrong, Mother is desperate to escape from Mrs. Armstrong’s detailed and tedious instructions concerning the pageant.

• According to the narrator, Mrs. Armstrong, whose first name is Helen, calls Mother “at least every other day” and “always at suppertime” (25).

• She provides advice such as the fact that the role of Mary should be chosen first and that a lot of care and thought should go into the choice of actress for the role since after all, Mary had been the mother of Jesus.

• When Mother hears the doorbell ring, she is relieved and tells Mrs. Armstrong that she has to hang up so that she can answer the door.

• When Mother answers the door, Father is standing “out on the porch in his coat and hat, leaning on the doorbell” (26).

• Father laughingly pretends not to know Mother and asks if he may possibly have some supper, since he has not “had a square meal in three days” (26).

• The narrator chimes in, but is told by Mother not to “be so fresh” (26).

• Mother calls a meeting of those interested in participating in the pageant right after church service one Sunday.

• She says that there will be a total of five rehearsals and that they will all take place on Wednesdays.

• Mother moves through the process of choosing roles and explaining things expediently, causing the narrator to think about how mad Mrs. Armstrong would be if she knew how many of her instructions were being cast aside.

• The narrator states that Alice always plays the role of Mary, while the minister’s son Elmer always plays the role of Joseph, though Elmer is so unenthused about the role that he had previously offered 50 cents to any other boy would play the role of Joseph in his stead.

• Elmer had gotten no takers.

• Charlie claims that he will get sick if he has to play the part of a shepherd, but Mother tells him that he will not get sick.

• Mother moves through the process of awarding roles and is shocked when only the Herdman children express interest in playing major roles within the play.

• When Mother asks who wants to play Mary, for example, Imogene is the only one to respond, even after Mother asks Janet, Roberta, and Alice directly about their surprising lack of interest in the role.

• As Alice claims not to know why she has no desire to play the role of Mary this year, she has an angry expression on her face.

• Ralph gets the role of Joseph in the same mysterious manner.

• Leroy, Claude, and Ollie get the roles of the three Wise Men, while Gladys is awarded the role of the Angel of the Lord.

• Gladys asks what the Angel of the Lord does in the play and Mother tells her that the Angel of the Lord brings the good news of Jesus’s impending birth to the shepherds.

• Kids without major parts are assigned roles within the angel choir, roles as shepherds, or roles as guests at the inn where Mary gives birth to Jesus.

• At the mention of the Angel of the Lord in association with the shepherds, the kids with shepherd roles look nervous, as they are all scared of Gladys.

• Charlie’s friend Hobie tells Mother that he is unable to play the role of a shepherd since he will be going to Philadelphia with his family for the holidays.

• It turns out later that the Herdmans had threatened the other children so that they could have all of the major roles in the pageant for themselves.

• Imogene, for example, had told Alice that if she expressed interest in playing Mary, Imogene would hit her in the head, draw pictures on her homework, and put worms into Alice’s clothing.

• The other children believe the Herdmans’ threats wholeheartedly, knowing that Ollie had once had to have a pussy willow surgically removed from his ear after one of his siblings had put it there after threatening to do so.

• The narrator states that Alice’s mother Mrs. Wendleken had called Mother’s decision to let Imogene play Mary an act of sacrilege and that a church member named Mrs. McCarthy had suggested that the Herdmans be stripped of their roles in the pageant and be enlisted to hand out play programs instead.

• Mother becomes angry when Mrs. Armstrong tells her that no matter how disastrous the pageant turns out to be in her absence, she will accept the blame.

• When Reverend Hopkins becomes convinced that his congregation is not treating the Herdman children with the appropriate welcoming attitude, he reminds everyone "that when Jesus said 'Suffer the little children to come unto me,' Jesus meant all the little children, including the Herdmans" (36).