{"id":376,"date":"2011-02-12T23:16:50","date_gmt":"2011-02-12T23:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/"},"modified":"2011-02-12T23:33:00","modified_gmt":"2011-02-12T23:33:00","slug":"jeremy%e2%80%99s-christmas-wish-%e2%80%93-synopsis-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/books\/jeremy%e2%80%99s-christmas-wish-%e2%80%93-synopsis-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeremy\u2019s Christmas Wish \u2013 Synopsis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Books<\/a><\/strong> <\/strong>| About the Book<\/a> | Synopsis | Questions & Activities<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>When Jeremy Pimlico\u2019s grade three class is given a Christmas letter-to-Mr.-C. writing project, the richest eight-year-old in the country can\u2019t think of anything to write except \u201cI wish I wasn\u2019t so bored.\u201d Jeremy dreads the upcoming Christmas vacation. Fourteen days with no one around except Barrows the butler (who has been assigned the task of being Jeremy\u2019s companion), the servants, and a few minutes a day with his parents — a dad busy with his business empire and a mother caught up in her social whirl.<\/p>\n

On Christmas Eve, a totally-depressed Jeremy is lying on his playroom floor watching a video, The Return of the Slime Monster, when he becomes aware that there\u2019s someone else in the room, a bearded somewhat-overweight man in a faded red parka and pants sitting in an easy chair. Jeremy is convinced not to push an alarm button when the man withdraws his school letter from a pocket and reads it aloud.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot the easiest of requests,\u201d the man declares \u2013 but he has a plan. Barrows is snoozing after sampling a fair amount of a Christmas Eve gift, a bottle of brandy, from \u201cMr. C.,\u201d and soon the Christmas visitor and Jeremy are in a reindeer-propelled sleigh flying over the city\u2019s buildings to a condominium complex in the suburbs. Belinda Smudgins, in a Halloween skeleton outfit, answers the doorbell when Mr. C. rings. \u201cI\u2019m practicing being the ghost of Christmas-yet-to-come,\u201d she declares as her siblings and family pets tumble around her. Jeremy isn\u2019t sure that being left with a harum-scarum family here will serve to answer the plea in his letter but he agrees to stay for a few hours.<\/p>\n

The hours turn out to be the most wonderful he has ever experienced. Mrs. Smudgins quickly has him rolling out gingerbread and making a tree ornament with the others. While these are baking, Belinda leads them on a carol-singing excursion around the condominium square which ends up in a snowball battle with the Pyker kids. Back inside, tree-decorating commences \u2013 with homemade ornaments and garlands so different from the decorations on the designer trees in the Pimlico mansion. Finally, before Mr. Smudgins gets home, Jeremy (in Belinda\u2019s skeleton costume), with the rest of the Smudgins kids, gets to practice the skit of A Christmas Carol to be performed as a grand finale to the evening. The play is a great success. Waiting for Mr. C. to return, Jeremy nods off with Maggie, the youngest Smudgins on his lap.<\/p>\n

Jeremy wakes up in his own room. At first he thinks what he remembers of Christmas Eve is probably just a dream, but an odd raggle-taggle bunch of envelopes and packages \u2013 filled with notes and gifts from the Smudgins (and a book from Mr. C.) \u2013 convinces him otherwise. He spends the morning choosing and wrapping a return set of gifts for his new friends, and writes a letter of thanks to Mr. C. As the day wears on, he plays board games with Barrows, allowing the butler to win. And, at the end of the day, tired and happy, Jeremy climbs into bed and sinks into chapter two of The Hobbit, munching, as he reads, on the tail of a gingerbread triceratops, Albert Smudgins\u2019 gift to him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Books | About the Book | Synopsis | Questions & Activities When Jeremy Pimlico\u2019s grade three class is given a Christmas letter-to-Mr.-C. writing project, the richest eight-year-old in the country can\u2019t think of anything to write except \u201cI wish I wasn\u2019t so bored.\u201d Jeremy dreads the upcoming Christmas vacation. Fourteen days with no one around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":10,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-376","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":392,"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/376\/revisions\/392"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/10"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}