Leroy Herdman

Leroy Herdman is one of the six Herdman children, known through a handful of sharply revealing incidents rather than a sustained individual storyline. His actions link the family’s reputation for intimidation and theft to two very different consequences: a fire caused by reckless experimentation and the family’s first visit to Sunday school, prompted by the promise of dessert.

Identity and Characterization

Leroy’s defining traits emerge through what he takes and what he wants from it. He steals a chemistry set from a hardware store, and later repeatedly takes dessert from Charlie’s lunch. In both episodes he acts without regard for the ordinary rules that govern other children’s property. The fire episode adds a more specific glimpse of his priorities: the destruction of a building troubles him less, in the telling, than the loss of the set and the chance to use it for making bombs.

The account offers little about Leroy’s private life or thoughts. Instead, he is characterized by concrete acts and blunt priorities, often as part of the larger image of the Herdman family. His individuality is clearest when the narrative contrasts the scale of what has happened with the narrowness of his concern: after the set and the toolhouse have burned, he is angry that he has not had time to make even one or two bombs.

The Chemistry-Set Fire

After Fred Shoemaker’s toolhouse catches fire, a fireman collars Claude Herdman and asks whether the children started it while smoking cigars. Claude denies the cigar-smoking accusation. The actual cause is different: the children were playing with Leroy’s stolen Young Einstein chemistry set. Leroy explains that they mixed its powders, poured lighter fluid around them, and set the fluid alight to test whether the set worked.

The detail that the set was worth $4.95 sharpens the episode’s contrast between the seriousness of the damage and Leroy’s response. The set burns along with the building, ending the experiment before he can try to make bombs. The object that might have served as a child’s educational toy becomes the means of a dangerous experiment—and, once destroyed, the focus of Leroy’s anger. The narrative does not present him as concerned about the consequences for the building; it makes his lost opportunity the revealing final note of the incident.

School Conflict and the Route to Sunday School

Leroy’s conduct toward Charlie is less spectacular but has an important plot consequence. For three days in a row, he steals the dessert from Charlie’s lunch. Charlie eventually gives up trying to stop him and tells him that he can get all the dessert he wants in Sunday school. Leroy asks what kind of dessert is served there. The narrator identifies this exchange as the reason the Herdman children show up at Church: a routine act of taking food inadvertently directs their attention toward a religious gathering.

That consequence depends on the same material logic visible in the chemistry-set episode. Leroy’s immediate interest is practical and appetitive, not religious; the promised dessert is what makes Sunday school worth asking about. When all six Herdman children go to request library cards, the family’s interest in reading about Jesus and Herod is expressed by Imogene and Ralph, not Leroy. The distinction matters: Leroy helps set the family’s church visit in motion, but the available account does not assign him a separate religious inquiry.

Family Context and Narrative Role

The book also presents the Herdman household collectively in an episode involving a Christmas food basket. The narrator recognizes the ham as the family’s basket ham, still bearing its Christmas ribbon, and is impressed that the family appears to have given it away. This incident complicates the assumption that the children only take from others, but it is attributed to the family as a whole; the narrative does not identify Leroy as the person who gave up the ham.

Leroy’s role is therefore small but consequential. The fire exposes the recklessness behind the Herdmans’ feared reputation, while his theft of Charlie’s dessert unexpectedly draws the family toward Sunday school. Across both episodes, objects and food motivate action: the chemistry set fuels a hazardous experiment, and a promised dessert opens a path into Church. Leroy is not given a developed change or resolution of his own, but his practical impulses help propel events beyond the schoolyard.