The Key to All Baby-Sitterologies: A Vast Work of Meticulous Research: Part 2

#67 Dawn's Big Move Dawn finds herself aching for California, Dad, and Jeff, and she outbursts during a day of family fun that she wants to go home. Arrangements are gradually made; Dawn can go back to California for six months out of the year. Dawn makes a pro-con list, has a last-minute change of heart, but ends up going. Subplots involve a secret goodbye party (where have we seen that before?) and a Stoneybrook vs. Lawrenceville charity game competition event thing.

The major problem with this story is that it is unmotivated. It's foreshadowed, sure, in Maid Mary Anne, but there's no more reason there than there is here given for why the sudden ache, why now. The other problem with this story is that it rehashes a lot of the same-old, same-old from other Dawn and Stacey move stories; I don't know why the girls keep flitting hither and thither. But I don't mind getting rid of Dawn for awhile.

Lingering Questions: How come people keep ringing the doorbell to enter their own home in this book? It happens at least twice. Richard or Sharon ring the doorbell, and then let themselves in. It's weird.

Read as a kid: If I did, I have no memory of it.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Peter Lerangis

Timing: Early in the school year, probably September, of eighth grade (again!)
Revised Timeline: This is where my revised timeline basically becomes fanfic. The girls have graduated high school by now, so we have to assume that they all decided to go to college locally and continue living at home. Let's say there's a UConn Stoneybrook or something. Claudia did surprisingly well on the SAT Verbal or got an art department scholarship (ha!) or something.

Actually, this scenario has a lot to add to the question of motivation here; suppose all the girls were looking at different colleges, and Dawn was seriously weighing the option of going to college in California. She was accepted to a school there, visited, saw her old chums, her father, Jeff (who's like 15 now), saw herself living there. Then the entire rest of the BSC decided to go to college together, and she couldn't bring herself to be the only one who broke away--besides, she really did like the idea of staying with Mary Anne and the club, not having to worry about what kind of job to get, perhaps paying less tuition to go to school in-state. As the first semester starts, though, she realizes she has made the wrong choice, and she applies for transfer (or late admission) to a Cali school. Bam. Done.

[top]

#68 Jessi and the Bad Baby-sitter The BSC is having trouble keeping up with business as they launch a new year without Dawn, and things devolve further as Mallory develops a mysterious lingering fatigue which makes her unwilling to accept new jobs until she feels better. Jessi introduces the club to her new friend, Wendy, who's great with kids and has neighborhood babysitting experience. She seems perfect, and does well on her test job. However, Jessi begins to regret her choice when Wendy earns Kristy's wrath with her constant lateness, both to meetings and jobs. Once, she leaves Jessi alone at the Pikes' when a better job comes up. She's unwilling to turn over her previous regular clients to the club, which is against (possibly unwritten) club policy. She quits after a few weeks, stating that the club has too many rules, and Kristy is relieved that she doesn't have to fire her. Shannon swoops in at the last moment with a sudden gap in her schedule for a few months, allowing her to become a regular member until Dawn's return.

I like that this book doesn't villainize Wendy; she and Jessi stay friends even after she quits, and really, she isn't a bad baby-sitter. She just has understandable irreconcilable differences with the club. It would have been nice to see more of this main plot, which doesn't really get off the ground for about 100 pages, and less description of the complicated kid plot of a video the Barretts and other neighborhood children make for Dawn.

Lingering Questions: Why is the club so averse to taking on a new permament replacement for Dawn? Kristy simply states that "Seven main members is plenty. Eight would be too many," but she doesn't say why. It seems like they have plenty of work to go around, and they're more in danger of overextending themselves than of not getting enough hours. Is there not enough space in Claudia's room? Even if they didn't want a permanent replacement, surely it would be easier, not harder, to find a temp. Club membership is a big commitment, but I can see plenty of kids willing to put in the effort for a few months, bank some cash, and bail in favor of sports or general bumming around when the weather gets nice. Or couldn't they just recruit, like, an army of associate members? Wendy would do fine at that, I feel.

Slash Watch: "I think Wendy has a really pretty face," Jessi asserts before describing her.

Read as a kid: No, I missed it. I think I would have liked this one. I loved (and love) books about club policy and rules, rules, rules.

Timing: Fall of eighth grade (sixth for Jessi/Mal/Wendy), before Halloween; probably late September or early October.
Revised Timeline: I guess it would work a little better for my college theory if one of the older girls were making a new friend right now, but high school juniors can make friends just as easily as anyone else, I suppose.

[top]

#69 Get Well Soon, Mallory! Mallory comes down with mono. Her recovery is slow, and the doctor recommends that she stay in bed for several weeks and that, after that, she should only go to school and come back for several months--no extra activities, like the Baby-Sitters Club. Meanwhile, the club is planning a special Thanksgiving party for children and nursing home residents. Jessi comes up with a list of tasks Mallory can do to help without getting up from her bed, but, for a couple of chapters in the middle, Mallory has decided that the club will be better off if they kick her out and replace her than if they try to be nice and let her stay in the club as an "honorary member," so she refuses to help them. (Mallory always seems to have complex feelings about duty and worthiness as a club member--remember when she wanted to be demoted because she had a story to write?) Somehow the club figures out what she is doing and tells her to knock it off. At the last minute, Mallory comes through, making calls for donations, and the club raises enough money to make gift baskets for the old people. Mallory's illness spoils a family Thanksgiving trip, but they all have a nice low-key holiday at home.

I can see how this was a tough book to put together because Mallory has to be sick the whole time, so she can't witness any of the action, and what she is doing--lying around in bed, sleeping--is not exciting to describe. The usual narrative device of opening with a club notebook entry and describing what happened on a job to another club member is useful, as are several visits which Mallory gets from club members (and her brothers and sisters explain to her what happened at the Thanksgiving party). The Thanksgiving project is sickeningly wholesome but nice. The best lesson that comes out of this book is that being sick really is no fun, especially when it's for such a long time. I like the descriptions of Mallory being simultaneously bored and too tired to do anything, and hating her pajamas.

Read as a Kid: Despite my interest in medical problems, no.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Jahnna Beecham and Malcolm Hillgartner

Lingering Question: Why does everyone seem to think the club has to make a choice between letting Mallory remain an official member on the assumption that she'll be back to taking jobs in a few months, and recruiting a new member to pick up the slack? Can't they do both? They were considering taking on another permament member in the last book. Just because it didn't work out with Wendy doesn't mean it wouldn't work out with someone else. I know Kristy thinks eight members is too many, and all, but with people moving back and forth and getting sick and getting well, it seems like they can cross the eight-member bridge when and if they actually come to it. Maybe they could start rotating people out. I know if I'd been a regular BSC member for over six years, I'd be willing to step down to associate for a month or two and catch my breath.

Medical Mishaps: Most of the medical information is sound, but you really shouldn't take Tylenol when you have mono because acetaminophen isn't spleen-friendly. I'd also be interested to know the epidemiology of Mallory's virus. They keep describing mono as "highly contagious," but they don't explain how it's transmitted (it leaves you with the impression that it's airborn, although nobody gets it from spending time with Mallory). Nobody else seems to have mono. Who did Mallory kiss or share drinks with? Nobody seems to even care.

Read as a kid: No.

Timing: Covers October 30th thru the Saturday after Thanksgiving.
Revised Timeline: November of junior year of high school for Mallory (mid-first semester of college for the older girls). This makes total sense, actually--most people come down with mono around age 16. (As I write this, *I* have mono at age 25, but that's neither here nor there.)

[top]

#70 Stacey and the Cheerleaders On a mediocre date with a basketball player named RJ, Stacey meets a bunch of his teammates, including the dreamy Robert, who likes to talk about how unfair it is that basketball players get unfair treatment not that he does anything about it. As Stacey and Robert begin dating, Nice Cheerleader Sheila encourages Stacey to try out for the squad. With Jessi's training, Stacey comes up with totally the best routine ever you guys, no question hands down she aced the tryout. But another girl gets the spot. Mean Cheerleader Corinne tells Stacey that she was TOO good and TOO pretty and TOO talented and would have made the rest of the squad look bad! (!) In protest of this and other abuses, Robert quits the basketball team. The last chapter has Stacey turning down a second chance at the squad, helping set up an investigative committee to look into team abuses (RUINING THE BASKETBALL TEAM), and co-penning a self-congratulatory school newspaper editorial with Robert.

Meanwhile, Shannon's sister Tiffany tries different extracurriculars looking for something to beat her sisters with, and only finds happiness when she chooses a hobby--gardening--which she actually likes for its own sake.

Overall, this book is a huge Mary Sue fantasy. Stacey isn't so perfect and wonderful in other books, is she? I know she's smart, sophisticated, pretty, good at math, good at school in general, but she's always managed to seem flawed and humble and funny. In this book, she sort of comes off as conceited, but only because her correct assessment of herself is so unbelievably positive.

The story seems to be trying to make two points: (1) The sports people are corrupt, and (2) Stacey was trying out for the cheerleading squad for the wrong reasons. (This is stated at the end, when she turns down her chance, and it's backed up by the Tiffany subplot.) These points manage to muddy each other in this story, even though they could easily go together quite well. Suppose Stacey made the team, even though she clearly wasn't the best, because the cheerleaders liked her and gave her preferential treatment. Ultimately, she would look noble for turning down the spot, instead of whiny for protesting that she didn't get it. But that would require the writer to admit early on in the book that Stacey wasn't good at something, and that is just unacceptable.

Lingering Questions: One of the measures instituted at the end to help combat the basketball players' grade inflation is instituting a minimum grade needed to play. Wouldn't that have precisely the opposite of the intended effect?

Slash Watch: Fellow cheerleader Sheila (notably boyfriendless) remarks when she finds out that Robert is dating Stacey, "I don't blame him. He has good taste."

Read as a kid: No, but I did read it in the period after I started getting into them again when I was in college and before I started collecting them again. My sister-in-law, the aforementioned Candy, owned this one.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Peter Lerangis

Timing: Snow on the ground.
Revised Timeline: Freshman year is a time for new boyfriends and new interests in new school clubs. Even though cheerleading and sports teams are often thought of as high school phenomena, they certainly exist in college and it makes sense that a new interest in sports might be fostered in a student coming to a college with a good basketball team. Also, second semester freshman year is when you really start getting full of yourself.

[top]

#71 Claudia and the Perfect Boy Claudia wants a boyfriend, but since the newspaper personals are all full of grown-ups, Stacey encourages her to pitch a personals column idea to the school paper. They love it, and Claudia quickly ends up running the most popular column in the paper, which expands to include a section where Claudia pairs up ads from past columns and advises the placers to contact each other, which is totally what you always want to do with personals. Claudia gets a few blind dates out of it, but none of them are quite what she wants. In the end, she's a little disappointed that she didn't find true love, but she now enjoys working on the column for its own sake.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Barrett places ads to find a good home for their dog, Pow, since Marnie has developed an allergy. The subplot deals with Buddy and Suzi's resentment of their little sister and ends happily when the Pikes just down the street convince their parents they can take care of Pow.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Suzanne Weyn

Lingering Questions: Claudia offhandly mentions how Mary Anne went to a therapist earlier this year when she was having some problems. WHEN WAS THIS AND WHY HAVEN'T I READ IT?

Methodology Nitpick: Claudia doesn't think about how she's going to handle the responses to the ads, and the newspaper editor doesn't want to deal with it at all so she just has the students publish their actual addresses and phone numbers RIGHT IN THE PAPER. WHAT. There's a reason no real personals column does that, and in a middle school setting, it's even worse! It destroys any semblance of anonymity from the codenames, and it allows doofuses free access to all the prank call opportunities they want. Here's how to do it, kids: print instructions in each column telling ad-placers to provide real contact info which won't be printed, just for Claudia, and telling ad-readers to place all response letters in the ad submissions box, clearly marked on the outside with the pseud of the ad-placer and the date of the issue in which it appeared; advise respondents to include their real name and contact info in their letter if they want to start a correspondence; have Claudia give each ad placer all the responses to their letter without reading them. DONE.

Sign of the Times: The book is full of charming details about putting together a school paper before layout software. Xacto knives are involved. Claudia does use a computer to write her column, and it's the first time she's used one; it seems to be a DOS machine, as she talks about having to learn commands. She loves the spellchecker even though it must be a pretty bad one.

Slash Watch: In the climactic conflict, Claudia searches desperately for the writer of a pair of unsigned responses to her ad, a guy who sounds totally perfect and already seems to admire her. Finally, seeing that the guy's unattainability is driving Claudia crazy, Stacey confesses that she needs to "set things straight": she wrote the letters, hoping to make Claudia feel better that SOMEONE IS OUT THERE FOR HER. Yes... someone right in front of her.

Read as a kid: No.

Timing: During the school year.
Revised Timeline: Again, freshman year is a good time to randomly get involved in campus activities, and it's more likely that a college would have a professionally-run weekly, and that they would consider a personals column to be appropriate for their demographic. Freshman year is also a classic time to take stock of one's love life and decide that one needs to make a boyfriend stat. And/or experiment with lesbianism.

[top]

#72 Dawn and the We ♥ Kids Club In California, Dawn's a member of the We ♥ Kids Club, founded by Dawn's friend Sunny based on the descriptions Dawn sent her of the Baby-sitters Club, but run more casually, with fewer rules. This is perfect for Dawn and her laid-back friends, but when a local paper does a human interest article on the club, followed closely by a local news station spot, the club gets more attention and more work than they know what to do with. Dawn takes over and insists on instituting more strict BSC-style structure. Meanwhile in Stoneybrook, there's a minor subplot about Kristy being jealous that a cheap BSC knockoff was "discovered" before the original, and on the home front, Dawn gets bratty when her father announces his engagement to Carol, a girlfriend Dawn dislikes. Right in the middle of the We ♥ Kids Club fiasco (when they need her most!), Dawn steals her father's credit card, buys a plane ticket, takes a cab to the airport, and flies to Stoneybrook.

You may wish to reread that last sentence. I was sure it was going to be dream sequence, but it wasn't! This actually happens! From here on, the book is hijacked by this plotline--Dawn having to go back, and apologize to everyone, and promise to pay back both plane tickets out of future babysitting money, and learn an Important Lesson about Dealing With Problems Instead of Running Away From Them, while the We ♥ Kids Club's problem is never realy dealt with in a satisfying way.

This isn't one of the ones I remember reading as a kid, so I only have my adult reaction to go with, but: what? I mean, besides the fact that you're reading along and you think the book will be about one storyline and then it switches to another, I'm just so shocked and appalled by Dawn's behavior here. I mean, it's impressive, in a way--I didn't think Dawn had it in her to be so, well, effective, I guess? To actually do things? And it required some bravery, which seems OOC for her, but of course it's all in the service of running away. I really don't understand Dawn at all. The person I sympathize with here is her mother, who of course lectures her when she touches down--she was reckless, selfish, she could have been hurt, what was she thinking, etc.--and must be thinking in her head, "Oh my god, I've birthed a bad seed."

Read as a kid: I don't think so, but it wouldn't be the first time I was shocked by the selfish behavior of an adolescent character who I totally identified with as a kid. SIGNIFICANCE...?

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Peter Lerangis

Lingering Questions: The way the We ♥ Kids Club is run doesn't seem to make sense. They don't have specific meeting times (they just meet whenever they feel like), and yet, at a meeting, they appear to take job calls. How do people know when to call? It's true that all of their phone numbers are written on the flyer, not a specific headquarters number, so it could just be that someone happened to call for Sunny during a meeting at Sunny's house, for example, but it seems then that holding meetings would just be inconvenient for the clients, since so many of the girls wouldn't be home during the meeting. Also, how exactly does this club solve the original problem that the BSC was intended to solve, that is, parents need to call around to all different places before they find a sitter? W♥KL doesn't offer the "one call, several sitters" solution.

(Of course, I've always thought the way the BSC is run is sort of problematic too; it must be awkward for the clients to have to call during a tiny half-hour window, especially one during rush hour. I've always felt they need a more routine way to deal with non-meeting calls. Actually, they could do away with meetings altogether, except for check-in/scheduling/new business purposes as desired, if Claudia just got an answering machine. But this is neither here nor there.)

Interesting Orthographical Convention: Whenever "We ♥ Kids Club" is written down or described in internal monologue, the ♥ is rendered as a small heart symbol. When it's spoken aloud, the word "love" is written out: "We Love Kids Club."

Timing: During the school year. Cold weather in Stoneybrook.
Revised Timeline: If Dawn is an 18-year-old freshman in college, we can pretend she used her own credit card to come home impulsively. "I'll just transfer back!" she would have told her mom. "It will be no problem!" Then her mom would have had to lay on the tough love and say something along the lines of, "Well, of course, you're an adult and you can do what you want, but if you don't do things the right way, finish out the semester you started, make your school arrangements before you go off into debt taking all kinds of plane trips--which, by the way, I'm not going to reimburse you for--then you can find your own place to live, because you can't live here." And Dawn would pout and go back home. And still throw mini-tantrums about her dad's girlfriend, because sometimes freshmen regress.

[top]

#73 Mary Anne and Miss Priss When Jenny becomes more than usually concerned about keeping her clothes neat and perfect, and begins washing her hands several times per baby-sitting session, Mary Anne asks her father what could be wrong, and receives the same amateur diagnosis I reached of OCD. Before Mary Anne can figure out how to suggest this to the Prezziosos, Jenny does and about-face and becomes interested in messy activities. Mary Anne realizes that she is trying to get her parents' attention and compete with her baby sister Andrea, who is receiving minor fame as a perfect infant model for photo shoots and commercials. The plot turns to showbiz as Mary Anne helps Jenny work on her own modeling; Jenny lands a job and does well, but decides after getting a taste of the work that she'd rather be a normal kid. She joins the Pike triplets' neighborhood kickball team.

This is one of the rare cases where I prefer the subplot to the main plot, perhaps because both (rather than just the subplot) are baby-sitting related. Byron, Adam, and Jordan's efforts to assert themselves as leaders in their own right, and not the baby-sat, are understandable considering they're only a little younger than Mallory, and despite some road bumps, they turn out to be quite good at working with younger children, sharing power, and being fair to everyone.

It would have been more interesting if Jenny had OCD.

Read as a kid: No.

Timing: Um, kickball season. Uh... Spring? I don't know from sports.
Revised Timeline: Probably we can assume that Mary Anne came to her own OCD conclusion after a particularly enlightening session of Intro Psych. I'm already mentally adding a scene where Mary Anne armchair diagnoses all of the BSC members with their particular DSM conditions: Claudia--ADHD; Kristy--gender dysphoria; Stacey--narcisstic personality disorder; Dawn--sociopath.

[top]

#74 Kristy and Copycat This is another one of the books where the title refers to what is, at best, a B-plot. Karen's desire to be and act like she's thirteen takes an extreme backseat to the main plot where Kristy, longing to play and be coached rather than coach softball, tries out for and makes the girls' softball team. (In an amusing subplot, Stacey and Claudia bumblingly take over Krusher coaching duty.) The existing softball team members order Kristy and the other new girls to spraypaint an old shed as "initiation." Kristy resists, her resolve is shaken when her teammates refuse to work with her, making her look like a bad player in front of the coach. Refusing a post-spraypainting cigarette, Kristy goes home to bed, only to wake up to the news that the shed has burn down and a man who attempted to contain the fire is in the hospital in critical condition. Milestone, everyone: the closest a BSC member has ever come to MURDER. (The man doesn't die, but it's touch and go for awhile.)

Tense guilt and angst mounts. The rest of the team inform the haze-ees that they will deny knowledge of their actions should the truth come out. The administration blames the boys' softball team, including Logan, and prepares to disband them. Kristy snaps at Karen for looking up to her too much (doesn't she realize Kristy is a rogue and peasant slave?) Finally, she tells the Baby-Sitters Club, who are shocked but understanding. Kristy resolves to confess in the morning. Then, a deus ex machina saves her; some other kids confess to the arson; it wasn't her group after all; because heaven forbid Kristy be prevented from playing on the softball team, which will be SO IMPORTANT and come up SO OFTEN in future books. Kristy and her fellow haze-ees agree not to confess since it wouldn't help anything, which is the only smart decision they make all book, but they resolve never to be peer pressured again. Good luck with that.

This is a freaking weird entry in the BSC oeuvre.

Dumb Statement of the Book: "Why don't we just confess? I mean, who knows what kind of evidence they have?"

Read as a kid: No.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Nola Thacker

Timing: Beginning of softball season. Spring? Again, sports, not my forte.
Revised Timeline: Hazing is a classic college conflict, and it makes more sense that Kristy-the-freshman would be put in the position of feeling pressured by older girls than Kristy-the-member-of-the-oldest-grade-in-the-school. It seems reasonable that Kristy would be prompted to join sports by the serious, professional, collegiate level of teaching and playing, although, since she didn't play in high school, I'm not sure how realistic it is that she would even make the team. (Maybe the previous team was disbanded as a result of a hazing scandal.) As previously noted, freshman year is a time for trying new things and joining new clubs. And for higher stakes, like MURDER! Just ask Leopold and Loeb.

[top]

#75 Jessi's Horrible Prank Jessi feels bad for Mr. Trout, the nervous, awkward, nerdy, conflict-avoidant teacher of her short-term computer science class, but when the whole class pulls pranks--like everyone dropping their books on the floor at the same time--she doesn't feel strongly or strong enough to oppose them. Though uncomfortable, she's talked into playing Mr. Trout for the "Sixth Grade Follies," a sketch-comedy/talent show which includes playful fun-poking at the teachers. Mr. Trout disappears the next day, leaving Jessi to freak out that she drove him away. Her feelings are assuaged when some BSC charges inspired by Becca's account of the follies perform the "BSC Follies," a skit about the baby-sitters, and she realizes it's much more fun to be spoofed than left out. She also writes an apology letter which Mr. Trout answers, assuring her it wasn't her, he's just not cut out to be a teacher and he's going back to grad school.

This is one of the harder books to read; it's not bad, but Mr. Trout's failure to stand up for himself and keep discipline in the class really makes me as uncomfortable as it makes Jessi.

Read as a kid: Yes! I definitely did. This was one of the newfangled "ones just coming out" which I ordered from the TROLL catalogue.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Peter Lerangis

Lingering Questions: Why was Jessi cast to play a white male teacher of whom she had never hitherto performed an impression? The guy had a speech impediment; surely someone in the class had a spot-on mockery up their sleeve.

Signs of the Times: BASIC programming; Wayne's World; Coneheads.

Signs of the Times of the Grown-ups Writing the Book: Dolly Parton; I Love Lucy (this is at least the second time in this series someone has done the "Vitameatavegamin" sketch for a talent show. ENOUGH.)

Timing: Springtime, near the end of the schoolyear.
Revised Timeline: Spring of junior year high school for Jessi and Mallory. Spring of freshman college for the others. If the "Short Takes" program had been introduced by one of the older girls, I'd swear it was code for college classes, but I guess we'll have to take Jessi at her word that it's just a rotating class with a variety of topics far broader than the normal school options.

[top]

Special Edition Readers' Request: Shannon's Story Shannon is annoyed with her mother's constant criticism, and when her mother volunteers to chaperone Shannon's French class trip to Paris, so Shannon fails French so she won't have to go. While holding down the fort in her mother's absence, Shannon realizes how boring it must be to be a housewife, and that's why her mom is always pestering her. A subplot has the BSC planning various kids' events for Mother's Day, including a post-Mother's Day moms-vs.-kids softball game.

Like Logan, Shannon has a distinctive voice that is clearly separate from the other baby-sitters. She uses more big, pretentious words and phrases. The pacing is also quite different--slower, more subtle. A lot of repetition and minor, character-building events. It's the Mad Men of Baby-sitters Club, by which I mean it's old-fashioned, concerns the stultifying effect of suburbia and excess success, possibly better than any of the other crap that's out there, and dead boring.

Read as a kid: Yes. I thought it was boring.

Timing: Just before Mother's Day through mid-June (after school lets out).
Revised Timeline: End of freshman year and that summer. Actually, this makes a huge amount of sense--coming back from school, Shannon's mother would likely go into refilled-nest-overdrive, and Shannon would be extra sensitive to the constriction of the freedom she'd grown accustomed to and to having her mother THERE all the time. I'm not sure how the timing would work such that she would be able to fail her class in time to skip out of the trip, though. Maybe we can pretend there's a special entry exam for the trip, like in that one Nancy Drew book.

[top]

#76 Stacey's Lie Stacey's bummed out because her boyfriend, Robert, is going to be working on the ferry between Long Island and Fire Island all summer; when her father offers to take her and a friend anywhere she wants for a two-week vacation, she naturally chooses Fire Island. She doesn't tell her father the real reason; nor does she tell Claudia that Robert will be there, fearing she won't come along. Claudia finds out quickly, and gets used to amusing herself while Stacey hangs out with Robert, but she's not happy about it. The fight blows up on Fourth of July when several of the other baby-sitters come stay for the weekend. Claudia leaves with them. Stacey also discovers that her father's girlfriend has come to Fire Island too and is staying in a neighboring cottage; her father didn't want her to know he was spending quality time with his girlfriend as well as his daughter.

There is some decent emotional/family development in this with Stacey realizing she is just like her father--she would rather tell an easy lie than have a difficult conversation or tell someone she loves something they don't want to hear, a contributing factor in the divorce according to her mother--but it all comes out so matter-of-factly in conversation early on that you don't get the enjoyment of making a surprising connection. (Besides, unlike in Stacey McGill, Super-Sitter, in which Stacey realizes she's a workaholic like her father, the lying thing isn't really an established part of her father's character.)

Specific Information Watch: Stacey states that she used to lives at 89 Elm and used to live at 612 Fawcett Avenue. Someone has been infodumping from the "Guide to Stoneybrook."

Interesting Orthographical Convention: "Cheetos" is spelled with a bullet point, "Chee•tos." I have no proof of this, but I believe in other books it is simply spelled "Cheetos."

Lingering Questions: When Kristy request treasury money for a new club notebook, Stacey "[digs] into the envelope and [comes] up with a five dollar bill." Why is there a five dollar bill in the treasury if their dues are two dollars per club member per week? It should all be in singles.

Slash Watch: Stacey's dad is absent for most of the narrative (spending time, unbeknownst to us, with his girlfriend), generally giving the excuse that he spending time with his friend Stu Majors. Once when Stacey and Claudia come back to the house to find "a note from Dad saying he'd gone out to dinner with Mr. Majors," Claudia comments, "He sure loves Mr. Majors."

Read as a kid: No.

Timing: June/July
Revised Timeline: Summer between freshman and sophomore years of college.

[top]

#77 Dawn and Whitney, Friends Forever Dawn gets a long-term baby-sitting job for Whitney, a twelve-year-old girl with Down's syndrome, who doesn't realize her "new friend" is being paid to be with her. Predictably, this blows up in Dawn's face. Whitney kidnaps Dawn's baby-sitting charges and cares for them herself, proving she can be responsible, sort of.

The treatment of Down's syndrome has the typical BSC early-90s combination of earnest, well-meaning educatorlyness and vaguely uncomfortable descriptive language. Dawn keeps describing her as "expressionless."

Meanwhile, Dawn's father introduces one woman after another to his kids, until Dawn explodes in a fire of self-righteous judgmentalness--or, rather, begs him to take Carol back. Which he does. Because he has no personality.

Read as a kid: Yes. I remember getting it shiny and new toward the end of my interest in BSC. Pretty much the only thing I remember about reading it the first time is that Whitney's room is decorated in peach and lime green. The fact would have had zero impact on me reading it as an adult.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Nola Thacker

Continuity Error: Dawn's father's date refers to him as "Richard," confusingly (although Carol later correctly identifies him as "Jack.")

Timing: Summer in California.
Revised Timeline: Summer between freshman and sophomore years of college.

[top]

Mystery #16 Claudia and the Clue in the Photograph
Mystery: Who stole money from the bank?
Solution: Someone in Claudia's photos.

Claudia becomes enamored of photography during a summer class, and suggests a kids' project of making a photo book for Dawn. While photographing for the book, Claudia ends up taking a lot of pictures of the bank during what turns out to be the time a robbery was taking place. Claudia and the other BSC members study the photos and follow up clues to identify the killer in what is actually a pretty clever solution. The book is full of fun descriptions of how to develop photographs that I don't entirely understand--I love lengthy descriptions of things that the author evidently understands and which I don't--and the moment when Claudia decides to take photos of her enlarged photos in order to create superenlarged insets ranks right up there, for me, with the moment Nancy Drew overlays the tracings of the maps in Clue of the Black Keys.

Sign of the Times: Disposable cameras are described as "those new disposable cameras."

Slash Watch: Claudia and Stacey annoy Kristy at the start of a meeting by dancing and singing love songs, and then, during the meeting, by grinning at each other and silently mouthing the words to a song called "Your Sweet Kiss."

Read as a kid: Yes! One of two mysteries I actually got. I was wary of all the mysteries, so much so that I didn't get most of them, even though the only two I owned (this and The Mystery at Claudia's House) were among my favorite BSC books of all time.

Timing: Summer.
Revised Timeline: Summer between freshman and sophomore years of college. Claudia's deal with her parents--that she gets to take one summer class she wants as long as she also retakes math--seems to make a whole lot more sense if she's in college.

[top]

Super Special #11: The Baby-sitters Remember At a sleepover, the BSC girls discuss the lame SMS-wide "What I Did On My Summer Vacation" assignment, and Jessi asks, "What is your most vivid memory?" Each sitter then gets 1-3 chapters (in a row, unlike other Super Specials) to tell the story of their most vivid memory. While I'm not sure "most vivid memory" is something people have (wouldn't it just be, like, yesterday?), the conceit gives the narrators an excuse to describe a sometimes-old memory in careful detail; and it allows a nice variety of memories in age, detail, and degree to which it is related to baby-sitting.

Kristy tells the story of her first baby-sitting job, taking care of David Michael after school when she was ten and he was four. She was careful to make sure everything went right, sure that if she did the slightest wrong thing, her mother would never trust her again. It's a charming conflictless story.

Stacey remembers optimistically starting sixth grade and setting up a sleepover with old and new friends. She wets the bed, alienating her friends, and prompting her mother to set up a meeting with a child psychologist who refers her to a doctor who diagnoses her with diabetes. The story gets a little summarize-y here, but actually, it's kind of neat how it takes a sudden turn from moment-by-moment inter-girl drama to widely summarized medical issues, very unexpected if you (for some reason) didn't predict what was going to happen.

Jessi remembers when Squirt was born, when she was nine back in Oakley, NJ. She and Becca didn't want a baby in the house to begin with, and when Squirt came home, he was colicky, and screamed all the time. But when Jessi discovered she could quiet him down by rocking and singing to him, she began to adore him.

Claudia recalls her first homework in first grade--drawing a self-portrait for art class. She works hard on a drawing of a beautiful butterfly, but everyone else submits a literal drawing of themselves, and Claudia's by-the-book art teacher yells at her for not following directions. When Mimi hears about this, she gives the art teacher a gentle but firm talking-to, interpreting the metaphor for her. Claudia feels it was all worth it to see that Mimi understood. This is probably my favorite story in the book, neat and simple, and relatable--I mean, first grade art class IS like that.

Logan basically re-tells the first half of Logan Likes Mary Anne from his point of view. It's a neat concept, and (amazingly, for this series) jibes perfectly with the other book while still being different enough to interestingly distinguish the details Logan vs. Mary Anne found important. Logan's voice is fresh and funny as ever, and his story is immediately marked as the funniest in the book with some choice one-liners describing his family's drive from Louisville to Stoneybrook.

Dawn completes the hat trick of "things that happened just before I moved to Stoneybrook and met those wonderful baby-sitters" stories (although I guess Logan's was mostly what happened after). She discusses the tense months of her parents' marital breakdown. This is the most summarize-y story of all; Dawn doesn't seem to interpret the word "memory" as narrowly as the others do. It is kind of interesting to see the adults keep slipping up and ALMOST saying they're sexually incompatible, something I definitely didn't pick up on as a kid.

Mallory remembers a time last year when she wrote to, and subsequently went to a signing for, her favorite author. She plans on making a good impression, chatting with the writer, but when she gets to the front of the signing line, she's so starstruck she bursts into tears. I wonder if this is based on something the writer experienced from the other side.

Shannon has another fairly recent memory; shortly before Kristy moved to her neighborhood, it seems there was another new girl who went through her group of friends one by one, picking one girl to be her super-best-friend and then dropping her. Shannon falls briefly under her spell, but then decides studying is more important. The lesbian undertones are nice, here, but the lack of anything actually happening in this story is a drawback. I mean, I'm all for stories with no conflict (like Kristy's), but Shannon's seems to have the feelings of conflict with no actual real-world reason for them. Shannon is all about what's below the surface.

Mary Anne describes a slumber party she had for Kristy and Claudia when they were eight. Mary Anne doesn't like all the old-lady baby-sitters her father hires, but the sitter in charge that night turns out to have a sense of humor, and a small-scale prank war reigns between the adult and children.

The backstories provide a welcome change from the normal BSC fare, and it's neat to finally have an excuse to move back and forth in the timeline, as if we're not in a frozen-time world. (Although it does require some careful vagueness not to draw attention to the fact that the currently ending summer vacation separates eighth grade and eighth grade.)

Read as a kid: I adored this one as a kid, I have to say. I had the gold-plated one dotted with embossed signatures (subsequent printings, including the one I have now, were just yellow with the signatures printed in orange), and I read it so much that the spine creased and all the gold flaked off, leaving the silver backing. Particular favorites were Claudia's, Logan's, and Mary Anne's stories, and on re-reading I think those are indeed the best ones. Unless I'm just biased.

Timing: End of summer vacation.
Revised Timeline: End of break between freshman and sophomore years of college. I think for the most part, we can assume these memories took place at the times and ages given in the book, and just that they are for the most part less recent than claimed.

[top]

#78 Claudia and Crazy Peaches Claudia's famed aunt and uncle, Peaches and Russ, move in with the Kishis for a month while their house is being renovated. Peaches is pregnant. She and Claudia have some fun hijinks together, but Peaches gets her in trouble by distracting her from her homework and keeping her out until 1 in the morning. Shortly after Claudia and Peaches fight, Peaches loses the baby, because whenever Claudia fights with a member of her family, something horrible happens to them. A stupid subplot involves the Baby-sitters campaigning to help a little girl nobody likes make friends; horrifyingly, it works.

I was spoiled for this, so Peaches's miscarriage didn't come as a surprise; it was foreshadowed and/or jinxed only by Peaches's excitement about buying a lot of baby stuff, which as we all know, you should never do until the baby is born. (As we all learned in Dan Savage's The Kid, anything you need for the first few days you can buy on the way home from the hospital. Except a carseat, they won't let you take the baby home without one.) It's a pretty weighty topic and a good one, I think, for this series to address, what with all the emphasis on children and family. Frustratingly, the story never quite brings together Peaches's happy-go-lucky personality and the gravity of her loss, even though all it would take would be a chapter or two showing how those things interact. (Does she get more depressed than normal, because her worldview doesn't allow for grief? Less, because she's so resilient? Show us!)

Read as a kid: No.

Timing: No specific temporal markers; school's in.
Revised Timeline: Fall of sophomore year.

[top]

#79 Mary Anne Breaks the Rules I have to warn you right off the top that Mary Anne doesn't break the rules in any kind of satisfying way in this book. Not only does she not break the spirit of any rule, she also doesn't break the letter, because there isn't one, not until Mary Anne appears to transgress, which--okay, let me start from the beginning.

Mary Anne becomes concerned about Jake Kuhn, who's unhappy that his father has moved to Texas. She asks Logan to come play sports and have guy time with him, which he does; both Jake and Logan enjoy this, and for several baby-sitting sessions, everything is idyllic. Then one day Mrs. Kuhn comes home early and finds Logan there. The sexual subtext of just what entertaining your boyfriend entails and why this is so much worse than inviting over any other BSC member is never quite addressed, but I guess we're supposed to assume that Mrs. Kuhn thought there was hanky panky going on, or the extreme reactions (both hers and the rest of the BSC's later) don't make sense. Logan bails, figuring his presence is unhelpful, and Mary Anne is too wimpy to provide the innocent explanation, so Mrs. Kuhn yells at Mary Anne and Mary Anne is weepy and broods over her non-conflict and gets yelled at by Kristy later and boo hoo hoo until several days later when, thanks to no action on Mary Anne's part, Mrs. Kuhn comes over and apologizes, saying Jake explained everything and he misses Logan.

This book would have been improved by some slightest shadow of less-than-pure motives on Mary Anne's part--perhaps she could have really enjoyed having Logan around, playing house; perhaps they could have actually kissed in front of the kids once or twice--but really, more content of any kind would have helped. The normal format of a Baby-sitters Club book, if you don't know, is this:
Chapter 1 - Set-up, introduction to the main character and the aspect(s) of her life that will dominate this story.
Chapter 2 - Introduction to the rest of the BSC, usually at a meeting, and how the club works.
Chapter 3-13 - Plot events and increasing tension interspersed with one-off or B-plot baby-sitting chapters.
Chapter 14 - Climax.
Chapter 15 - Resolution/conclusion.
This book resolves the plot unprecedentedly early in chapter 11, leaving us four full chapters to lavish on the B-plot where neighborhood boys and girls are creating competing haunted houses for Halloween.

Read as a kid: No.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Peter Lerangis

Timing: Halloween
Revised Timeline: Halloween of sophomore year of college. Incidentally, Logan and Mary Anne got together around Halloween (yes, yes, by the "real" timeline, of this same year), making this their six-year anniversary (not counting the few months they were broken up).

[top]

Super Special #12: Here Come the Bridesmaids In what Kristy christens an "east-west marriage fest," Dawn's father in California and Mrs. Barrett in Stoneybrook are both getting married. Mrs. Barrett asks Stacey to be a bridesmaid (why? she's clearly closest to Dawn, who admittedly is not there, but still) and Mallory and Shannon get the job of taking care of her kids during the ceremony. Meanwhile, Mary Anne, Kristy, and Claudia fly to California, where Dawn assures Mary Anne she will be a bridesmaid (forgetting to consult her father); Claudia helps fetch and carry and do wedding tasks to pay off her plane ticket; and Kristy helps whip the We ♥ Kids Club into shape and organize a farewell party for Dawn, who is returning to Stoneybrook for good on Christmas. In a sprinkling of seasonal subplots, Jessi is a department store Santa, Mallory feels bad for taking the wedding job instead of going caroling with Ben, and Suzi Barrett is worried Santa won't find her at her new house.

One of the more disparately connected and uninteresting Super Specials, as nobody's plot is particularly useful or dramatic, and I am sick to death of BSC weddings. It was good in Kristy's Big Day, but that doesn't mean it will continue to be good. Dawn is not particularly loathesome but that is only because she doesn't do much. Jeff's chapters are best of all (he's such a little grump).

Highlights: Kristy IDs the central problems of the We ♥ Kids Club; when his dad opens an unattractive wedding gift, a clown lamp, Jeff comments, "Dad looked as if the clown were made of buggers." That is one salacious lamp.

Read as a kid: No.

Timing: December, including Christmas. Dawn was supposedly gone for six months, which I guess is fine if you consider it was summer then and it's December now, except that an entire fall, winter, spring, summer, and fall happened in between. I make some judgment calls in placing the Super Specials, but I really didn't have much choice on this one--Dawn is in California before and in Stoneybrook after.
Revised Timeline: Winter break of sophomore year college. Say Dawn planned to go to college for just one semester or one year in California, then transfer back to Stoneybrook for a bicoastal college experience. She's a little late, but she finally managed to get the paperwork through.

[top]

#81 Kristy and Mr. Mom Watson has a heart attack and makes some life changes, shifting from a big company president to a part-time work-from-home figurehead. He takes over so many of the housekeeping duties that Kristy's grandmother, Nannie, decides she's not needed anymore and moves out, much to everyone's dismay. But then she comes back for a big happy reuniting family-appreciating gooey conclusion.

In the baby-sitting subplot, Mrs. Marshall makes a habit of letting her friend drop her several young children off with the baby-sitter, leaving the BSC members the choice of getting frazzled or calling in a second sitter for reinforcements. Mrs. Marshall is upset when additional sitters are called in and refuses to pay them. Kristy finally straightens things out with a frank talk. She decides the club needs to make their rules (maximum kids per sitter, etc.) official and send out a mailer for their regulars so everything is clear. (We don't get to see the document, but you can just ask me what it probably says. I've spent a lot of time on public transit mentally writing brochures for the BSC.)

The main problem with this book is that it tries to cover too much ground; it reads like a summary. The subplot is well done, and each individual part of the main plot is pretty good, but they're all rushed through: first the worry when Watson is in the hospital, okay now we're in recovery time, okay wait now it's about Nannie? And Kristy doesn't have much to do. She's basically just a witness, which from a character standpoint isn't that interesting. It is nice to see, though, how much her big, blended family has gelled since the beginning of the series. They all love each other so darn much.

Nicest Moment: When she frantically calls 911, Kristy refers to Watson as "my father."

Timing: Winter (snow).

Read as a kid: Yes! This is another one I ordered from the TROLL catalogue and it was so late in my collection of BSC books that I have no memory of this looking anything but shiny and unread. (Although I did read it at least once.)
Revised Timeline: January of sophomore year of college. Kristy's at home a lot here, but that doesn't affect the college analysis. She might be living at home (even though her family has a lot of money, they also have a big house), or she may have moved back or simply decided to stay there most of the time to help out while Watson is sick.

[top]

#82 Jessi and the Troublemaker Danielle Roberts, the fourth-grader with leukemia introduced in #48 Jessi's Wish, is in remission, back in school and feeling better than ever. She's feeling so good that she's full of energy and ideas and seems to be hurrying to make up for lost mischief-making time. Her stunts--sledding down the basement steps on a mattress and trying to make a diving pool in the standing shower are highlights--grow increasingly dangerous until she accidentally injures Vanessa Pike while attempting to drive a car. Finally, both BSC and Roberts parents agree it's time to start reining in Danielle and stop giving her special treatment because she was sick so long.

Meanwhile, Stacey has been showing up late to meetings and calling for last-minute replacements at last minute, and we never quite find out what's up with her, but she does step in in a blaze of responsible, pro-friend-togetherness glory at the end, convincing Danielle's friends to reconcile with her after the accident.

In a stupid subplot, Jessi and Becca overhear Aunt Cecelia discussing weddings and jump to the conclusion that she's getting secret married. Of course, she is just going to be in someone else's wedding.

Read as a kid: Yes. I remember getting it all shiny and new. Possibly I read it before I'd read Jessi's Wish.

Timing: Winter (snow on the ground).
Revised Timeline: February of Jessi's senior year of high school.

[top]

#83 Stacey vs the BSC Stacey finds herself with less and less time and inclination to hang out with the BSC as she enjoys hanging out with Robert and his friends, who all seem more mature and fun. Kristy responds by yelling at Stacey, making her feel more defiant. Stacey invites Claudia, but none of the others, to a party, leading to a big fight. In the aftermath, Stacey decides to skip a talent show the BSC has arranged for neighborhood kids, inadvertently upsetting Charlotte Johanssen, who wanted to dedicate her piano tune to Stacey. At the next meeting, Kristy fires Stacey, and Stacey simultaneously quits. The book ends with Stacey going to Charlotte's piano recital, feeling odd because it's 5:30 on a Friday and she's not at a BSC meeting (although I daresay she would have skipped for the recital anyway).

Stacey's embarrassment is pretty sympathetic as we see the BSC's antics (Kristy's loud, strict, den-mother/sheepdog attitude; Mary Anne's cutesiness; Dawn's melodramatic Hercule Poirot-ing of Stacey's misdeeds) through her eyes, but it's also plain that from the BSC's point of view, it's Stacey who's becoming bad. I'm surprised it's taken this long for one of the girls to get sick of all the procedure, all the time, and all the damn baby-sitting.

Read as a kid: No, and, unlike Mary Anne's haircut--which I recognized as a event which had happened later in the continuity than I, generally, read--I don't even remember my conception of the BSC including a Stacey breakup. It looks like I didn't read any books later than this, so I'll just drop the "Read as a Kid" feature now. Let it be known that February 1995 was when I stopped reading BSC books. Prime ages for enjoying BSC books are therefore 7-10 and 18+, BUT NOT 10-18.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Peter Lerangis

Cover Art Oddity: This is one of the few covers (along with Mary Anne Misses Logan) that doesn't actually depict a scene in the book, showing the whole club at the movie theatre together. Stacey is laughing with Claudia, not looking embarrassed, so I'm guessing this was a stock cover that Hodges Soileau threw on up against a late deadline.

Timing: Stacey and Robert are throwing an "End of Winter" party, so I guess it's late winter/early spring, maybe early March.
Revised Timeline: March of sophomore year of college. The theme of this book seems to sit right with this timing. It's not uncommon for sophomores to drift into new groups of friends, abandoning the high school or orientation buddies they made in freshman year; sophomore year, once you've gotten used to the college routine and you're not scared anymore, is a classic time for changing, resisting old ways, spreading your wings, and becoming an asshole.

[top]

#84 Dawn and the School Spirit War The BSC splits on opinions of School Spirit Month: Kristy, Claudia, and Jessi are pro; Dawn, Mary Anne, and Mallory are anti (Dawn for reasons of individualism and because she likes to have a cause, Mary Anne because she's too shy to participate in Pajama Day, Mallory because she is a misanthropic grump.) The harsh backlash against kids who refuse to participate fuels Dawn's desire to stand up for the underdog, and she spearheads and anti-Spirit movement which culminates in a heated PTO meeting which raises some actually interesting ideas about people who value independence vs. people who value cohesion. Spirit Month is cancelled. Dawn, rather awesomely, actually, then goes to the principal and speaks on Spirit Month's behalf, urging him to reinstate as it was really meaningful to some people and she never wanted it cancelled, she just wanted people to be able to choose whether or not to participate.

Timing: It's not quite mentioned, but it seems to be medium-warm weather by the dress code, and football season is going on, since all this stuff is, as Logan stresses, really about the BIG GAME, you guys.
Revised Timeline: March or April of sophomore year of college. It does seem like "Spirit Week" is more of a high school thing than a college thing--especially with all the emphasis and pressure to do it, I mean, you would see a lot more people failing to care in college. But even in a high school or middle school setting, you need to suspend some disbelief that there are really so few people who aren't participating. And the activism and rallying that the anti-spirit crowd does feels pretty college-sophomore-y. It will turn out that this is Dawn's only non-move-related book about this period of her time in Stoneybrook, and in my timeline it's her only semester at UConn Stoneybrook, maybe she is coming to realize her that this large, local state school is much more uptight and high-schoolish than the small, cool, laid-back, PC California college she undoubtedly left.

[top]

#85 Claudia Kishi, Live from WSTO Claudia wins a contest and gets to host a radio show for kids on a local station. (A "contest" can explain anything, huh? Amusingly, it's explained that the station is near bankruptcy really hurting for cheap content.) Claudia is alarmed to discover that the first runner-up, assigned to be her assistant, is Ashley Wyeth. She and Ashley butt heads over what content to include, but end up putting together what sounds like a pretty fun program--think part talent show, part This American Life. An impromptu advice segment Claudia does ends up helping a child whose mother donates a lot of money to the station for the obligatory tacked-on happy ending.

The terms of the contest are completely ludicrous, of course. I can see, maybe, MAYBE basing a "host a radio show for a month!" contest on an audition tape, but it was based on an essay! How do you know if the person has any radio charisma? Claudia and Ashley's bonding storyline is cute but odd. I don't see why diehard visual artist Ashley would suddenly decide to branch out into radio, and I'm not sure why it was necessary for the writer to make it seem like Claudia and Ashley are old enemies, or at least that their friendship ended on poor terms. I thought it was made clear at the end of #12 Claudia and the New Girl that she and Ashley remained friends, and Ashley appeared briefly in some of the follow-up books as Claudia's friend (e.g., Claudia wrote a postcard to her from Camp Mohawk). A maniacal Kristy tries to get her babysitting charges interested in putting together an audition for Claudia's show in a subplot which shows her in a very poor light.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Peter Lerangis

Timing: April
Revised Timeline: ...of sophomore year of college. College radio club or class. Credit for "Media Studies" major. Bam. No more suspension of disbelief required.

[top]

#87 Stacey and the Bad Girls It's summer vacation and with no BSC, and her main new friends off at jobs or vacations, Stacey finds herself with a lot of free time, which she fills by entertaining friends-of-friends and working part-time at the daycare center of her mother's department store. Stacey likes her new group of gal pals, but she becomes uncomfortable when they shoplift from her store, and she drops them after they plant a flask on her at a concert, getting her in trouble with security and with her mom. She attends the next BSC meeting, and Kristy allows her to return on a probationary basis.

This book has almost exactly the same plot as Logan Bruno, Boy Baby-sitter, and yet I gave that one four stars and I'm giving this one two, which just goes to show either that the plot of a BSC book is irrelevant or that I, like Hallowell, have an irrationally inflated view of the stories I was introduced to as a kid vs. an adult. I'm not sold on the BSC/general high school book cliche that shoplifters = bad and bad = shoplifters to begin with; I think the Logan book hit some key elements that made it tolerable, while this book missed the very tenuous mark.

1. The lameness of an actual bad kid's badness can be saved if the bad kid has an essential bad-kid allure. Logan's T-Jam had that cool, laid-back, dangerous persona that made it plausible that Logan would want to please him and overlook the differences between them. None of Stacey's bad girl friends are particularly interesting or charming, or even differentiable (with the slight exception of Mia, only because she is goth while the others are grunge. But her personality is the same.)

2. An exploration of the difference between "bad" and "good", or what makes bad bad and good good, would be nice. In the Logan story, Logan starts off with a charitable view of T-Jam, feeling a sense of kinship and pity because the other kids avoid/look down on/fear him just because he's different; he realizes by the end of the book that T-Jam actually does things which directly make other people unhappy, like stealing a girl's concert tickets. Logan comes off as a nice person concerned for everyone. Meanwhile, Stacey's friends' rule-breaking--stealing from a large department store, drinking underage--is less directly linked to an obvious victim, so Stacey's negative reaction makes her seem square and judgmental, and kind of irrational--like she thinks being "bad" is unfashionable, rather than actually wrong.

3. While both books suffer from a distinct lack of teenagers following the Teenager Code--come on, ratting on a friend is the last thing most kids would think of, but all the lamers in the BSC think of it first-off and have to be given some complicated narrative reason why they can't, so the "bad kids" all turn into these lame blackmailers (cf. LB:BB, Kristy and the Copycat, and probably others)--I think it's more character-believable that all-American gentleman jock Logan errs on the side of goody-two-shoes parentally-approved geeky than Stacey, who's supposedly all cool and popular.

Both books also suffer from a lack of a distinction between rule-breakers and jerks. That is, everyone who breaks rules also turns out to be a user. There's no gray area, no characters who are nice rule-breakers or law-abiding users. Nobody who thinks nothing of stealing a lipstick from CVS yet would be too considerate to leave a friend in a lurch, which is most of my friends from high school. It's not only an unrealisic way to portray kids, it's narratively uninteresting.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Peter Lerangis, who is interestingly also the author of LB:RB. (I didn't check this until after I'd written the above.)

Lingering Questions: Why did Stacey feel she had to quit her day care job to rejoin the BSC? I don't think they would begrudge that demand on her time. It was like 4 hours a day. I'm sure Claudia spends longer than that in art classes during the summer. The money's probably better and, although the work and level of responsibility is really about the same as baby-sitting, it would definitely look better on a resume.

Sign of the Times: Grunge!

Timing: Summer vacation
Revised Timeline: June or July between sophomore and junior years of college. Actually, I think the girls actually being old enough to drink makes this book make more sense and not less. You can pretend that Stacey no longer thinks their drinking is unpleasant only because it's against an arbitrary rule, but because she just doesn't like being around drunk people when she's sober (her diabetes, the point is made in this book, prevents her from drinking for health reasons, which is actually another reason why she is probably the least interesting candidate for this story). Perhaps she even finds their shoplifting and sneaking drinks into concerts childish and boring instead of just z0mg THAT'S WHAT BAD KIDS DO. Around junior year of college is a good time, I think, for kids to stop being thrilled at the wonder of what they can get away with and start thinking, "I'm getting too old for this shit."

[top]

#88 Farewell, Dawn Oh, is Dawn back?

Dawn does the "I wanna go to CALIFORNIA" shuffle that's so familiar to her mother by now, and the parents set the wheels in motion, figuring, I guess, that she always wants to go to Cali and rarely really wants to come back, so this is probably her last move. Dawn tells Kristy first, wanting to give her plenty of time to think through club logistical stuff, but asks her to keep it a secret, since she doesn't know yet how she'll break it to Mary Anne. But the secret finds its way to Mary Anne before Dawn has told her, and Mary Anne is furious. She's cold to Dawn up until the last moment, when they manage to find some nice words to say goodbye to each other.

Meanwhile, James Hobart has broken his leg playing American football with the Pikes, so the BSC organizes the neighborhood kids to give him "Christmas in summer," making decorations, baking, and buying small gifts for him. They do all this without even realizing until they get to his house and talk to his mom that Australians are used to having Christmas in the summer.

It's getting old, Dawn. This book does very little to distinguish itself from earlier move books, such as Goodbye, Stacey, Goodbye and Dawn's Big Move, the first time Dawn moved to California, which was just 20 books ago. In fact, Dawn got back from that "six-month" stay only a few books ago. And I guess that's really what creates the motivation, although this book, like the previous Dawn move, suffers from a lack of motivation. The yearning for California is there; the question is just, why now? But I guess that's what my family and friends thought when I moved away from them all those times, so we'll move on.

Mary Anne and Dawn make some amusingly astute points about each other during their fight. Mary Anne accuses Dawn of only caring about herself and her "selfish, selfish feelings," while Dawn criticizes Mary Anne, "You react, you never act," which, while true, seems like more like it come straight from a writers' room assessment of her central character flaw rather than anything an eighth-grader would notice, care about, or articulate. Then again, Dawn is super-secretly a pretentious college sophomore, so maybe it works.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Suzanne Weyn

Cover Art Hilarity: Mary Anne and Dawn look sad as they wave goodbye at the airport, but Claudia and Kristy look frankly THRILLED to be seeing the back of Dawn.

Where is Palo City? Palo City is described, probably not for the first time, as "a suburb of Anaheim." Isn't Anaheim a suburb of LA? It's like saying you live in a suburb of Westchester.

Timing: End of summer, shortly before the start of the school year
Revised Timeline: August, shortly before junior year of college. Dawn thought she'd finish out her college years at UConn Stoneybrook with Mary Anne, but she couldn't bring herself to. We'll pretend, again, that it's earlier or that she submitted the paperwork earlier, intending to "see what happened!" An acceptance letter from the school she wants to return to could give this some solid timing motivation.

[top]

#91 Claudia and the First Thanksgiving For a "Short Takes" project, Claudia, Stacey, Abby, and some classmates write and organize a third-grade play about the first Thanksgiving. Instead of the usual first Thanksgiving story, though, they emphasize the differences between reality and the myth, using a character from the modern day to insert commentary about the future of the Native Americans and the differences then and now in the treatment of women. When the content leaks out, many parents protest the play, forcing them to put on a "traditional" first Thanksgiving play. They perform under obvious protest and put on a special performance of their own play with middle schoolers.

Meanwhile, in an alarming coincidence, every single BSC member has her families' Thanksgiving plans fall through, and the BSC plans a multifamily potluck dinner at Kristy's in a traditional BSC, major-conflict-free, "planning and executing an event" storyline.

Many of the facts given about the real first Thanksgiving are legitimately interesting and not widely known, and the author does a relatively good job (for this series) of sneaking them into the storyline instead of presenting them as exposition--using them as the content of lines in a scene about a child forgetting his lines, for example. It's still pamphlet-y, but I've definitely seen worse.

Nitpick: The description of the censored performance focuses mostly on the righteous protest element, which is exciting and reminds one of one's favorite middle and high school antics and all, but I feel fails to adequately explain how they taught the third-graders all new lines in just a few days.

Surprising Moment of Quality: I like that Claudia has a moment watching the controversial version of the play as performed by her peers when she realizes it's not really a well-written play. It's a surprising moment that complicates the general uncensored-version-is-great arc without undermining it.

Timing: Late October through Thanksgiving, again
Revised Timeline: Thanksgiving of junior year of college. This storyline makes more sense if it's college students arranging a play for elementary, middle, or even high school students; I don't think the parents of public elementary and middle school students would really be that different in terms of their likelihood of objecting to an unAmerican, hippy-drippy, liberal agenda school play. And college students would be totally into that shit. College is exactly when you are into bashing the propoganda you have been fed as a child.

[top]

#93 Mary Anne and the Memory Garden Mary Anne enjoys getting closer to Amelia Freeman, a girl she knew slightly, through a group English project. When Amelia is suddenly killed by a drunk driver, everyone is shocked. Kristy is paralyzed by the senselessness of it, but recovers her old aplomb when she throws herself into forming a S.A.D.D. chapter for the school. Mary Anne becomes depressed, and returns to her old counselor Dr. Reese. After reading letters where Dawn describes cleaning up an old vacant lot with neighborhood kids, Mary Anne decides to plant a garden in Amelia's memory. While the grief and permanence of her friend's death remain insoluble problems, by the end of the book, Mary Anne's world is starting to look a little brighter. This is no Claudia and the Sad Goodbye, but it has its tear-jerky moments. I like that the authors spent some time building up a low-key future-oriented school plot for Amelia before suddenly killing her off, which would have created a nice slap in the face if you didn't already know from the title, the back cover summary, and the fact that Amelia is the only new character, that she is dead by chapter 5. The description of the unreal feeling in the school following the death of a girl everyone knew seems realistic. Kristy's arc is especially interesting: at first, she seems even more upset by the death than Mary Anne, although she didn't know Amelia as well. She keeps repeating things like, "She was so young. She had her whole life ahead of her." As Dr. Reese aptly notes, forming S.A.D.D. helps Kristy more than it helps Mary Anne because it addresses the roots of her grief--shock, injustice, powerlessness--but not of Mary Anne's, which is more about the specific loss of Amelia.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Jahnna Beecham and Malcolm Hillgartner

Rant: The fact that Amelia was only introduced in this book is a problem. Even the other minor characters in the book (such as the other two members of Mary Anne's study group) are reused stock characters. With only one new character in a "somebody dies!" book, there's no suspense. I know it's a PSA about drunk driving, not a ratings stunt, and they couldn't very well kill off one of the baby-sitters (nor would I have liked that), but couldn't they have used one of the poorly-developed background characters? Someone whose name we've seen again and again, just so we feel like it's someone we know, someone who couldn't possibly die because they're a fixture in the world. Would it really have been so bad to kill off Erica Blumberg or Trevor Sandbourne?

Lingering Questions: Seriously, WHEN was Dr. Reese introduced? She's been mentioned twice now--here and in #71 Claudia and the Perfect Boy--and I've read all the Mary Anne books before that and there is none, none about her going to therapy. Surely it wasn't in "Mary Anne and the Zoo Mystery" or something.

Weirdest Moment: On her first day back to school after break, Mary Anne temporarily forgets how to open her locker, and Alan Gray helps her. A weirdly long amount of time is spent on this sequence, such that it feels like it's setting you up for a moment later when Alan is accused of either taking something or planting something in Mary Anne's locker. This does not happen. In fact, Alan Gray doesn't appear in the rest of the book at all. I know we're part of a larger universe here, but, call me old-fashioned, I feel like it's weird to elaborately introduce members of the ensemble that you don't plan on using in this volume.

Timing: January, immediately after winter break
Revised Timeline: Beginning of the second semester of junior year of college

[top]

#94 Stacey McGill, Super Sitter Looking to save up for an expensive birthday present for Robert, Stacey jumps at the chance for an indefinite, five-afternoon-a-week job with light housekeeping. Stacey excels, efficiently knocking all of her tasks out of the park, so each day, the mother keeps assigning her more chores. When Stacey finally complains, she gets a raise. Instead of bailing when she has enough cash, Stacey, lured by the siren song of money, keeps upping the grandiosity of the thing she wants to buy. She never has time to spend with Robert, the ostensible reason for the work. Stacey sees what she's become when her mother accuses her of being a workaholic like her father.

In some ways, this is a rehash of Dawn and the Impossible Three, but there are some key differences. The mother in this story isn't a helpless damsel in distress like Mrs. Barrett. She seems aware that she is taking advantage of Stacey's desire to impress her. Where Dawn become too involved emotionally, Stacey's inability to back off is mostly because of the money (she likes the kids, certainly, but doesn't take on a surrogate parent role, and she doesn't do chores for the good of the kids and their environment, but because she is assigned to do them for money.) For a series about a business, money doesn't come up all that often in the BSC books, and it's interesting and realistic to see a club member come under its power--especially Stacey, with her family's weird relationship to the stuff.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Suzanne Weyn

Timing: Autumn/early winter
Revised Timeline: Late November and early December of junior year of college

[top]

#95 Kristy + Bart = ? Bart is beginning to push the hitherto-ambiguously romantic Kristy/Bart relationship, attempting to start a makeout session during a movie, and casually calling Kristy his girlfriend. Kristy's not sure how she feels about this. Bart drops by unannounced to watch a ball game with Kristy, and even though her brothers aren't allowed to have girlfriends over unsupervised, it doesn't occur to Kristy to turn Bart away because, you know, he's her friend! Watching the game! Kristy's mother comes home and catches them kissing, and she punishes Kristy with a particularly draconian grounding in which she is not allowed to leave her room. Kristy is furious at Bart for getting her in this mess, and when she is free, she breaks up with him. She's then annoyed when he avoids her and invites another girl to a dance. Mary Anne assures her that it's okay not to be ready for a relationship, but reminds her that she probably hurt Bart's feelings and she should give him some space.

There's a kid plot where the various charges are trying to make it into Kristy's book of world records.

This was a much-needed book! Kristy's relationship with Bart has been in "maybe" status for so long. These things can't stay ambiguous forever; pretty soon one or the other party wants more, and it's frankly alarming that it didn't happen sooner. It seems realistic to me that Bart would want more and Kristy would not be comfortable with that, because she's gay precocious when it comes to certain aspects of adulthood like responsibility and organization, but she's still basically a kid socially and she's always been uncomfortable with sexuality. I like that Kristy's confusion about what she wanted was never really resolved, but that it had to end with her letting Bart go anyway because he did know what he wanted and he wasn't going to get it from Kristy.

The whole grounding arc is both a highlight and a lowlight. Kristy's unjustly-imprisoned righteous indignation is funnily and cleverly written, but so much time is spent on this sequence, and it really throws a curveball in an otherwise straightforward emotional plot. It's bizarre (and OOC) that Elizabeth would punish Kristy with over two full days alone in her room, not talking to anybody; I mean, that's inhuman! Sure, don't let her see Bart for awhile--even keep her from visiting other friends, or leaving the house, for the weekend--but to be confined to her room? Elizabeth continually restricts the rules when Kristy finds way around them, removing the phone and adding clauses like "You may not shout through the window" and "You may not be seen through the window." It's really crazy. It's also nuts that this causes Kristy to become angry at Bart, rather than her mother for being INSANE.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Peter Lerangis. This is a Lerangis, all right. You'd know it anywhere. Moment to moment hilarious, but with a seriously flawed plot construction that leaves you going, "Huh? Really? Are you sure?" for much of the book.

Slash Watch: I think what makes this book feel so pervadingly gay despite it being about a heterosexual relationship is not necessarily Kristy's discomfort with dating a boy, because she does seem basically attracted to him if not totally comfortable with commitment or physical displays of affection, but the very real sense that Kristy and Bart's relationship itself is gay. They have kind of a guy-ish, sporty, teasey rapport, and the basic problem of not knowing whether to treat your friend-who-you-now-kiss as the friend he's always been, or the way your traditionally-relationshippy friends treat their partners, is one that I think resonates with a lot of us gays.

Timing: March; early spring training season
Revised Timeline: March of junior year of college. For once, this is a book that works better emotionally for a thirteen-year-old than for an adult. Even a sixteen-year-old would be fine, but you'd think by twenty Kristy would have worked out her sexuality. Still, some people start dating later than others, certainly, and there's nothing about the plot that necessarily requires limited or no previous relationship experience. Anyone of any age can be uncomfortable at being the object of affection they can't return as strongly. The grounding for kissing thing does cause a problem for a twenty-year-old character, but as stated I have issues with that particular plot element anyway.

[top]

#101 Claudia Kishi, Middle School Dropout Claudia continues to get failing grades even after her parents hire a tutor, and finally she is sent back to seventh grade. While her grades improve, she misses her friends (especially at lunch) and she's upset when she's not allowed to go to the eighth grade dance. The only good thing in her life is a mixed-age art class in which she prepares a piece for a show, and wins first prize. The teacher tells her that she, too, was held back in school.

Lingering Questions: Can you really be sent back a year? I mean, I know you can be held back, but hasn't Claudia already passed seventh grade? As long as she's going to be a year behind her class anyway, what, exactly, would be the down side of letting her keep working at her grades until the end of the year, and then holding her in eighth grade if she doesn't manage to pass? Also, do you really win prizes at an art show?

Timing: October, leading up to Halloween. I know it's been said many times many ways, but at this point, it's getting really ludicrous that we're still/again way at the beginning of eighth grade.
Revised Timeline: Okay, so I guess we're in senior year of college now? Only ten books ago it was Thanksgiving.

It's not trivial to figure out what the college analogue of being held back a year is, since it's only through high school that it means leaving your old group of friends and classmates and becoming part of a new one--one which, until now, you thought of as lame and worse than you. Even if Claudia failed a bunch of required classes and is no longer on track to graduate with her friends, every class she took would still be filled with a mix of years and ages, and she'd already be used to having a different academic schedule and academic life than her friends (none of whom, presumably, are visual art majors). Still, the simultaneous plot about the art classes does suggest a courseload which includes traditional academic classes she hates and fails mixed in with art classes she loves and aces.

It's mid-semester, even for college, so it's hard to figure out the timine of this, but let's just say Claudia tried to get into a senior capstone class and register for graduation gowns and whatnot with her friends, and they were making all these plans, but then she got the news that she wasn't qualified because of some core classes she failed as a freshman. Now, instead of celebrating with her friends, she's going to be spending her senior (year? second semester?) in classes with eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds, and she'll graduate a semester to a year late. That's enough to bum her out, and I feel like the age difference of 21 to 18 is analagous to the age difference of 13 to 12.

[top]

#103 Happy Holidays, Jessi Jessi is in the middle of preparing for the holidays, including organizing a Kwanzaa festival for kids, when she's in a car accident and her baby brother Squirt suffers a head injury. The holidays are back-burnered and the family takes shifts at the hospital. The other baby-sitters pick up slack for the Kwanzaa festival. The stressed-out Ramseys begin arguing all the time, exacerbating each other's fears and guilt. After a lackluster Christmas, Squirt is allowed to come home, and his innocent childlike joy plus the spirit of Kwanzaa helps them all heal again.

I like the realism of a story where things go horribly wrong at the very time when you're trying to make everything magical and perfect. In this story, the lowest point--having spend a rushed Christmas at the hospital moments after hurriedly buying the presents--is further compounded by Becca coming down with the flu, so she can't even join in the family's terrible holiday. It's rare in these books that more than one child per family per time is having an unrelated problem.

Much of this book, particularly the "baby-sitting" interludes describing the preparations for the festival, serves as a pamphlet explaining Kwanzaa. I didn't know most of the information, but I still feel condescended to having everything explained. The device of explaining to the reader in the guise of explaining to the clueless white baby-sitters is used a bit, especially at the beginning, and I think that's fine--even if you've celebrated Kwanzaa from birth and know more than the writer does, you still might find it interesting to have explanations modeled--but, for the most part, Jessi explains directly to the reader. The offhand details about Christmas in the same book feel like an object lesson in how to describe a holiday without assuming a lack of prior knowledge on the part of the reader. It's not like someone who doesn't have prior knowledge wouldn't learn anything.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Peter Lerangis

Timing: December 1 through the last day of Kwanzaa (New Years)
Revised Timeline: Senior year of college for the older girls, sophomore for Jessi. Such an ambitious project as a festival at the Community Center certainly seems like something a twenty-year-old could potentially spearhead (although even she might be considered young), whereas an eleven-year-old would be patted nicely and laughed out of the activities director's office.

[top]

#104 Abby's Twin After a routine school screening, Abby and Anna are told to see a doctor for scoliosis testing. It turns out that Abby's spine curvature is within normal range, but Anna needs to start wearing a corrective brace. Abby can't stand it, and goes overboard trying to comfort her sister, exclusively in ways that she herself would like but Anna does not: challenging her to video games, buying her sportswear, signing her up for a BSC event. Predictably, Abby and Anna fight, and more predictably, they make up and overtly state the lessons of the book.

There is a subplot where Kristy organizes a Winter Carnival. Temporary panic sets in when there is almost no snow for the carnival, but then there is.

BSC's health and medical plotlines are always full of interesting details. Learning about various conditions, their treatment, and their effect on the lives of Fictional Girls Like You is interesting to people who don't have the condition and I imagine to people who do. At their best, medical details are woven in a larger, emotionally nuanced plot, but that is not the case here.

The problem is not with the outline or even the concept. On paper, I can see how this could be done quite well. Abby reacts to physical evidence of the difference between her and her twin by embracing, and overemphasizing, their similarities. A person with a big, loud personality accidentally steamrollers over, and exhausts, a quiet, naturally accommodating person in an attempt to comfort them. I can tell they're going for these storylines, but it's so clunky and hamhanded that instead of seeming like the natural conflicts that might easily happen between differently-temperamented twins in a crisis, the events of the story just feel like evidence that Abby is remarkably stupid. She seems to forget differences between herself and Anna that she has known about forever and indeed states in the chapter 2 infodump. And Anna isn't really passive at all--she plainly states what she wants, Abby just ignores it. It just feels like a boring slog from the first example of Abby obstinately ignoring the advice of everyone from Stacey to her mother to Anna herself, and consulting her own desires instead Anna's, through the next several million examples.

I criticize BSC books (especially these later ones) for being anvilicious a lot, and there's an argument to be made that that's an inappropriate charge to hurl at a children's book series. But I don't think it is. There are details of characterization and emotional arc that I didn't remember from the first time I read some of the early books in this series, but there was plenty of vivid procedural detail, such as the running of the club, that I enjoyed at age 7. Medical PSA books have procedural detail coming out the wazoo, so there's definitely room for subtlety in the emotional story. Unfortunately, this volume reads more like a picture book--turn the page, "Maybe Anna will like THIS!"--than a chapter book for middle grade readers.

Timing: Mid-winter, after the holidays
Revised Timeline: Early second semester of senior year of college. Of course, Abby acts more like a first-grader here.

[top]

#105 Stacey the Math Whiz Stacey initially declines her teacher's invitation to join the Mathletes, feeling that it's too nerdy, but the BSC encourages her, and she finds she has a lot of fun at the meetings. She's a last-minute sub before a big competition, and she happens to be better than anyone else on the team or even in the region (because all of the baby-sitters are world class at something). Complicating things, her father has just been laid off, and he suddenly has a lot of time to spend with her. Stacey likes it, but she feels overscheduled, especially when her father gets concert tickets which conflict with one of the competition finals. After some dithering, she picks with the competition, and leads her team to victory. Her father gets a new job and disappears again.

There are a decent number of math puzzles in this and they're good ones! More please. (I'm as good at math as an eighth grader!)

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Peter Lerangis

Timing: No temporal markers noted
Revised Timeline: I guess senior year of college is a reasonable time to both (a) join a new academic club and (b) feel awkward and reluctant about joining said club.

[top]

#106 Claudia, Queen of Seventh Grade Claudia's new seventh-grade friends--a pack of vaguely differentiated girls plus the jokey Josh, who appears to have a crush on her--nominate and campaign for Claudia as "Queen of Seventh Grade." Apparently, all this time, each grade has been electing a purely symbolic queen and king about a month before the end-of-the-year dance in order to generate excitement. Claudia wins queen, and handsome, popular, conceited Mark Jaffe wins king. Claudia doesn't want to be a figurehead, so she volunteers to spearhead all kinds of dance committees rather than letting the school administration plan the dance, in spite of her advisor's dubiousness and her king's whining that it's too much work. Claudia is discovering her "inner Kristyness," though, so her plan goes through. Mark is flaky but, when pressed, agreeably does his share of the work with an infuriating heart-melting bad-boy grin. Toward the end of the dance preparations, Claudia and Mark kiss. Claudia is both horrified and delighted, and by the dreaded first dance with her king, she is happy to be in his arms.

Meanwhile, the Baby-sitters have a tough time sitting for Addisons, because ten-year-old Sean thinks he's too old for a sitter. But he also has a history of arson, so I see why his parents think he shouldn't be left alone. Once it's clear that the probem is that all-purpose-use kid bully Mel Tucker has been making fun of him for having a sitter, Stacey reveals to Sean that Mel also has a sitter (although it's not a BSC member), so I guess... that's... fine? Personally, I think it's silly for any ten-year-old to have a sitter, especially in a world where eleven-year-olds are BSC members, plan town events, etc.

This is actually a solid, surprising soap-opera book with some good characterization and description related to the romance plot. What makes it most interesting is that, for most of the book, the reader recognizes two equally viable candidates for a romantic ending: the classic "ooh he makes me so MAD what a JERK oh wait he's hot" Mr. Darcy/bad boy archetype in Mark, and the "friend who's been there for her all along but she didn't see until now" archetype in Josh. The writer plants pretty much equal hints about both characters, so while Claudia is typically clueless about both options in that exasperating romantic-heroine way, the reader is genuinely unsure which way it will go. Is this going to be a Pretty in Pink plot or a Some Kind of Wonderful plot?

Lingering Questions: If the king and queen of each grade thing has been a tradition since the 1930s, how come we've never seen it before? I guess it appeals to a pretty narrow band of popularity--not so cool that you ignore it, i.e. original-seventh-grade Stacey and Claudia, and not so nerdy that it ignores you, i.e. all the baby-sitters now. This also explains why the current BSC members are generally totally disinterested in Claudia's queen news (although they're also pretty clearly alienated at Claudia's increasing bond to the seventh-grade class instead of them).

Slash Watch: Okay, not so much a slash watch as a gay watch, but Josh is so gay that I was pretty sure, when we first met him, that it was just text. He's hanging out with his friends (all girls) in one of their rooms. She mentions that she's not allowed to have boys over, and when Claudia says, "What about Josh?" she says "He doesn't count." During the same chapter, Josh bursts into Cowardly Lion songs twice. When Claudia asks why don't one of the others run for queen, Josh says, "Wrong gender," apparently forgetting or not caring that there is also a king slot open. I'd feel like the writer was on my side on this, except that Josh really does seem to like Claudia (a Josh-likes-Mark reading doesn't hold water, really; I tried). Then again, it's not totally out of left field for the character, as he's been (fairly well!) drawn to this point. Either he's one of those flamboyant straight dorks who don't understand how they keep shooting themselves in the foot by friend-zoning themselves in groups of girls, or he's the goofy, friendly, gay class clown who manages to keep himself in denial by nursing impossible crushes on unattainable girls. Josh is visibly upset when Claudia tells him she kissed Mark, but when he sees that she really seems to like him, he pushes her at him all, "Go for it, girl!" Oh Claudia, Josh already is Queen of the Seventh Grade.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Peter Lerangis

Timing: March. The seventh grade has to have their end-of-year dance several months early (jeez, it's like the beginning of quarter 3) due to the "afterschool use schedule" of the gym. Claudia themes it a "Lion and Lamb Seventh Grade Jam" and decorates half the gym in winter themes and half in spring.
Revised Timeline: It's mid-spring-semester senior year and the girls are all getting ready to graduate and enter the world... except Claudia, who's suddenly getting into this weird old college tradition that's usually only of interest to underclassmen, and having romances with freshmen. Why not? She's in their classes, and she'll be around next year. Still, the other girls' minds are already halfway in their jobs or grad school applications, so they don't get it.

[top]

#107 Mind Your Own Business, Kristy! Kristy organizes a daily spring training clinic for the Krushers over spring break, and she gets her brother Charlie to co-coach. At first she feels like second fiddle because Charlie is such a good coach, but then Charlie gets more interested in a girl, Angelica. Kristy thinks Angelica is no good for Charlie and tries to get him back together with his ex, Sarah, but her Parent Trap plan predictably blows up in her face. What to do when a plot is going nowhere? An out-of-left-field car accident worked for California Girls! Angelica crashes Watson's car, leading Charlie to reevaluate the relationship. Sarah gets her uncle, an ex-ball player, to give the Krushers a celebrity visit, and Charlie seems to be headed back to her at the end of the book.

This is a pretty weird one. I like a lot of the parts, particularly Charlie struggling to decide on a college, Kristy comparing Charlie to her dad when he flakes out, and then when Charlie takes that to heart, Kristy comforting him by reminiscing about the ways in which he was really responsible after the dad left. But the plot never really coalesces. Kristy's resentment that the kids seem to prefer Charlie to her gets a lot of play early on, but just kind of fizzles. For awhile the book looks like it's heading for a "don't prejudge people" plot, with Angelica turning out not as bad as Kristy assumes, but actually, the book seems to agree with Kristy's prejudgment (Sarah great, Angelica terrible). And while Kristy's butting in doesn't help anything, the fact that Charlie does ultimately end up going back to Sarah seems to detract from what is presumably the intended moral, that you can't control other people's love lives.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Peter Lerangis

Slash Watch: Is it just me or does Kristy seem to go from wanting Sarah back for Charlie to kind of wanting Sarah for herself?

Timing: Spring Break (whoooo)
Revised Timeline: Spring break of senior year of college. The specific stuff about Charlie choosing a college is awkward, since, at three years Kristy's senior, he'd be in his third year out of college by now. But since his real drama is the intense pressure of choosing What He Wants To Do With The Rest of His Life, we can port it to choosing a career. Perhaps he's been living at home since he graduated, working a just-for-now job. Maybe he did post-grad work, but dropped out, or is about to complete it. His mom is making noise about pushing him out of the nest, and he's got a deadline to make it happen. This could add weight to his fears about being a lifelong kid/screwup like his dad. It's one thing to be sixteen and not know what you want to do in college or even if you want to go, but it's another to be two or three years out in the Real World with no real idea what you're doing or where you're going. What? Stop looking at me.

[top]

#108 Don't Give Up, Mallory! Mallory is thrilled to be taking a "Short Takes" class in children's literature, her favorite topic, but to her surprise, the class quickly becomes her least favorite. The class is 100% in-class discussion and participation, and the teacher, a coach, doesn't call on her, even though she raises her hand for most of the class. When she finally does get a chance to talk, he doesn't give her time to think, and she sounds stupid. She theorizes that he is much more lenient with the boys. Meanwhile, she is also finding it difficult to voice her opinions in sixth-grade council meetings, since the president is so cute and the treasurer, a dopey girl, agrees with everything he says and asserts ridiculous opinions such as "Boys don't like pushy girls." Mallory discovers an injustice she just can't ignore in the school accounting of past sixth-grade school gifts, and she forces herself to speak up. She then screws up her courage and asks for a meeting with her teacher, where she tells him she's noticed him giving more attention to the boys. He denies being sexist, but she notices him making an effort to be more egalitarian in his next class.

Mallory's characterization is extremely problematic in this book; although she's a long-established nerd, admittedly, her problems asserting herself seem out-of-character for the practical, mature, eldest-of-eight we usually know. She seems to be representing The Generic Girl, like someone did a survey of the things girls don't like in school, and just dumped them all on Mallory for one book to make a Point About Sexism In School, which is probably actually how this book was written. The problem is, they DO have a shy, unassertive character who hates being the center of attention and would certainly do poorly in a class-participation centered class, and that is Mary Anne!

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Jahnna Beecham and Malcolm Hillgartner

Lingering Questions: I don't understand how the "Short Takes" program works. I understand it's supposed to allow students to take short-term classes in addition to their normal courseload, but how? and when? During study hall? It doesn't seem to be optional, and Mallory says specifically that the topic is the same for everybody, which seems dumb. It would require less coincidence if Mallory had chosen to study children's literature because she likes it so much. And how much worse when she discovers the class she chose is so hateful, and she could have been in a different one. Also, do sixth graders really give school gifts? Since Mallory is super-secretly in college now, I guess it doesn't matter.

Timing: April and early May
Revised Timeline: If the older crowd is in their senior year of college now, that puts Mallory in her sophomore year of same, so in this case Short Takes really means a college class.

[top]

#109 Mary Anne to the Rescue After witnessing her stepmother saving a stranger's life with Heimlich maneuver, Mary Anne suggests that the entire club take a first aid class at the Stoneybook Community Center. Everyone is enthusiastic. Once they start the class, it's clear that everyone is enjoying it a lot more than Mary Anne, who becomes easily nauseated or faint around medical stuff, and who becomes teary about a lifelike unconscious-baby doll. When baby-sitting charge Timmy Hsu begins drowning in a pool, though, Mary Anne's training takes over and she rescues him.

Meanwhile, Logan's father is planning to send him to the boarding school that he (Lyman Bruno) went to as a kid. Logan isn't happy about it, but shrugs off Mary Anne's urging him to talk to his dad about it, saying it's no use. It turns out that Logan--while brave enough about things like hospitals and blood--is a coward when it comes to personal emergencies, and he is too scared to tell his dad how he feels. He finally gets it done with Mary Anne as moral support, and between him, Mary Anne, and Logan's mom, they talk the dad into letting him stay.

Although unnecessarily bogged down by not one but two separate safety fairs, the basic emergency training plot is solid. As Dawn pointed out, Mary Anne has a history of cool head in a crisis (#4), which her day-to-day medical squicks and neuroses can obscure. It's a good lesson--train yourself, even if it's hard, because it's training, not personal character, that separates freezers from rescuers in a real emergency. There are also good safety tips sprinkled throughout, except for the one time that Kristy says "stop drop and roll" is for avoiding smoke. It's for if you're on fire, Kristy. How would rolling out from a burning building be any better than crawling?

The Logan plot is mostly problematic because it feels, right up until the end, that Logan maybe really does want to go to the school and it's Mary Anne who is haranguing him into not going. That possibility isn't even addressed, but I feel like if your boyfriend has a vested interest in not hurting your feelings, but at the same time wants to do something that would take him away from you, blaming it on his dad while making no real effort to change his dad's mind would be his go-to move. Coincidentally reinforcing that reading: the cover art shows Mary Anne kissing Logan on the cheek while he rolls his eyes. Did Hodges only read half the book and guess at the ending?

Lingering Questions: In what universe would a hospital allow a group of teenaged looky-loos from the community center safety class observe medical procedures and history-taking?

Timing: Beginning of summer
Revised Timeline: It's a little sad that there's no fanfare about the end of the school year, but I know the creators hadn't worked out, as I have, the "real time" year. Accordingly, Logan's fears about being sent away don't make much sense if he's 21: he should be making his own decision. That said, the plotline is not about a decision that's forced on him so much as it's about his inability to face emotional pressure from his dad to follow in his footsteps. That could happen at any age, but particularly when one is just starting out. Perhaps his dad wants him to move cross-country to join a favored or family business; to join the military; or to go to his alma mater for postgrad work.

[top]

#110 Abby the Bad Sport Abby joins a Special Olympics Unified soccer team, in which intellectually disabled athletes and non-disabled "partners" play together on the same team. It's coached by Kristy's old hardass softball coach (74, Coach Wu, who earns Abby's wrath when she places on her defense instead of center forward. The center forward position goes to talented athlete Erin. Abby hates playing defense and looks forward opportunities to run off and score, leaving her side of the field unguarded. She and Erin ignore chances to pass to each other, and get into a physical fight after Abby angrily calls Erin stupid. The coach benches them. From the bench, Abby starts observing ways the defense could improve--her practice training kicking in--and she realizes that the coach is right that her experience in offense can help her in defense. She works hard in practice and plays good defense when the coach lets her in a game. She admits to Erin that she is an equally skilled player.

There are two subplots. One is a baby-sitting runner where the other baby-sitters get neighborhood kids excited about the team and form a Booster Club to help raise funds for new jerseys. (They also attend games, allowing the main plot to continue throughout the baby-sitting chapters.) The other involves Abby's feelings about her father's death. She begs out of visiting her father's grave on Long Island with her mother and sister, saying she has a game (she does, but she doesn't tell them she's benched). Later, she dreams about her father and wishes she'd gone. The book ends with her planning to visit the grave and leave her lucky cleats as a tribute.

I don't think I would have much liked this one as a kid--I never loved sports stories. But the soccer talk was feelingsy enough that I found it engaging enough as an adult. Abby acts like a real jerk throughout, but it's motivated by her established competitiveness, and I can certainly imagine being upset if I cared about the success of my team but felt like I was being misused within it.

Overall, the fact that the team is a Special Olympics Unified team and that Erin has an intellectual disability is largely irrelevant. Arguably, it slightly informs Abby's prejudgment that Erin can't possibly be as good as she is at sports, but really I think the same plot could have easily played out in any team. Abby would have been angry at anyone who "took" her position. (Actually, it would have been more condescending to tiptoe around Erin. Abby's anger showed she was taking her seriously.) I like this. From a storytelling perspective, it's an unnecessary bit of complication, but of all the BSC PSA books about diversity and special programs and so forth, this is the least pamphlety and therefore the most effective at making us truly believe that the othered group really is normal and just-like-the-rest-of-us.

What bugged me was the lack of connection between the soccer plot and the dad plot. There was really no reason for them to be together. Actually, there was no real reason for the dad plot at all. I know dealing with grief is a lifelong process, and all, but didn't we process a lot of dad issues in the first Abby book? Why is Abby especially upset about it now? And why and how does it get resolved when it does? A dream is a weak catalyst for resolution.

Sign of the Times: Undoubtedly in keeping with the Special Olympics terminology at the time, Erin and the other Special Ed teammates are described as having "mental retardation."

Timing: Mid-summer
Revised Timeline: Summer after college graduation. The Special Olympics are for all ages, so in theory we don't have to alter the program. Actually, it makes a lot of sense as something Abby would get involved in after graduation. In college, she probably played on school teams. Now she works a 9-5 job and misses the organized programs of school, especially sports. In looking around for a team which accepted adults players, she discovered the Special Olympics program and decided it seemed much cooler than a random adult weekend league.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Nola Thacker ***

[top]

#112 Kristy and the Sister War Ugh, is it just me, or do you find the Kilbournes to be the most boring family ever?

Tiffany and Maria are upset because Shannon is super busy with extracurricular activities after school (since when is she not?), their father is always working, and their mother is now taking a college class in the evenings. Really, their mother is the only one whose status quo has changed, but it's Shannon's absence that they take issue with. Kristy suggests they do some nice things to help her so she'll have more time to spend with them, but their efforts all hilariously backfire and end up costing Shannon more time. Angry that their efforts weren't noticed or appreciated, they begin pulling pranks on Shannon instead. I've never been a fan of the BSC's occasional forays into prank-war stories. Mercifully, this doesn't last long. Kristy explains to Shannon why the girls are upset, and also encourages the girls to write her a letter when the conversation doesn't seem to really do much. Shannon quits her least-favorite activity to have more time to spend with the girls.

In twin subplot-ish things, two dances are being planned: an "All-Stoneybrook Dance" for middle schoolers at all three Stoneybrook middle schools, and, suggested by the BSC to assuage the jealous younger sibs, an "All-Kids Dance" for the elementary school set. (How a ragtag group of kids gets the authority to book the community center for their thrown-together event is one of those questions that, if you answered it here, you'd just to have to answer it in practically every other book, especially these late-season ones where it seems they're planning a new event in every B-story.) The All-Kids dance gets some dumb planning scenes where the children are all nervous about asking each other out. As Kristy points out, they're all really too young to date anyway, so why are we pretending they're even interested?

My favorite subplot of the book, predictably, is the dating one. Claudia sets up Kristy on a blind double date with her boyfriend Mark's friend Steve. First, of course, she has to give Kristy a mini-makeover, clothes and makeup. (As in previous let's-put-makeup-on-Kristy scenes, Kristy grudgingly admits she looks nice in a way, but not like herself.) The date with Steve fizzles on the spot, because Kristy isn't into dudes can't respect a guy who's into sports as a collector rather than a player, and she tells Steve she'd rather go to the dance by herself. Ouch, Kristy.

The lesson of this one is that sometimes the only way to stop kids from courting negative attention is to give them positive attention--that when people are at their most obnoxious is perhaps when they need the most love (although I think I got that way of phrasing it from an Alice book). It's a lesson that was really better exemplified in, for example, Worst Kid Ever, which is about a genuinely hard-to-like kid who genuinely needs love. Tiffany and Maria are so privileged that it's hard to sympathize with their plight; not only are they wealthy and all that, but they do have parents and a sister, and they have each other (why are they acting like one person in this book, I wonder?) They don't come off as deprived so much as spoiled and entitled. They're just used to having a homemaker mom taking care of them all the time. Pardon me, but I don't think that's a prerequisite to a happy childhood. It's their mom I sympathize with--she was going to take a full courseload next semester, but instead she can only take two lousy classes because she has to spend time with her asshole kids.

Lingering Questions: I asked the same question in #70, but why isn't Tiffany baby-sitting Maria herself? (And why is Tiffany lumped in with the other kids who are "not old enough to date" when Mal and Jessi date constantly? And, come to think of it, why is she not invited to the middle school dance? All the Kilbourne girls attend Stoneybrook Day, which goes from kindergarten through high school; presumably, Tiffany is in sixth grade.) She's the same age as Mal and Jessi, and she was introduced in #11 Kristy and the Snobs as a baby-sitter. At eight and eleven, it just seems to me that Maria and Tiffany are old enough to be left alone together, regardless of their outside baby-sitting interests, and they are certainly old enough to understand and deal with the fact that their family members do things other than constantly entertain them. Tiffany should be getting old enough that she prefers it that way. Couldn't this had been about a family with younger children? Kristy herself, for example, has a number of younger siblings who might actually be too immature to understand that Kristy's busy life doesn't mean she loves them any less.

Most Bullshit Plot Element: The baby-sitters notice Tiffany and Maria jockeying for Jordan's favor during a planning meeting, and later they argue about which one should get to dance with him, calling him "So, so cute." I actually have no problem with both of them singling out one triplet as the cute one--sure, they're two more just like him, but they keep talking about how the triplets dress differently and are so, so differentiable. But then the "resolution" of this runner is that the baby-sitters spy Maria dancing with Adam and Tiffany dancing with Byron at the dance. It was all a case of mistaken identity! Except it wasn't, because it's not like this was all thirdhand and they just had the names wrong--this whole thing started because they both wanted Jordan, really Jordan, at the planning meeting. Did they just then get mixed up once they were at the dance? And what happened to the triplets being different? And wasn't there a storyline just like this in some other dumb dance book about kids too young to care?

Slash Watch: "Claudia agreed. 'Speaking of dates,' she said casually, 'how would you like one for the dance?'
     "'What?' I asked, shocked." **

[top]

#116 Abby and the Best Kid Ever Lou McNally, formerly the Worst Kid Ever, moves back to Stoneybrook with her family. (You'll recall at the end of her first book, she left the Papadakises' foster care when her aunt and uncle were located, and she was reunited with her brother there.) Abby's never met Lou, but she's heard reports, and she's alarmed when she meets an incredibly quiet, polite, docile child. Lou seems super-controlled. Even her brother Jay is weirded out.

Abby gets neighborhood kids involved in her school project, in which she's directing a video play about the Underground Railroad for Black History Month. Lou throws herself into helping, but her efforts generally backfire--she puts away books Abby still needs, for example, and she brings Abby a drink while she's filming, ruining the shot. Lou is highly-strung, freaking out with apologies when she inadvertently causes trouble. But when Abby tells her to lighten up, she seems to get pissed, and reverts to her "bad kid" ways temporarily, stirring up chaos with the kids in the video.

Eventually, with no real help from Abby, Jay gets Lou to admit that she's scared her aunt and uncle will send her away if she's not perfect. Lou is crying in Abby's arms when her family returns home and Abby leaves it to them to sort things out.

Abby's video gets a standing ovation when she presents it, and she pays lip service to learning not to be so controlling, because it wasn't as important for her video to turn out perfectly as it was to have fun, but really it seems like the lesson is that being controlling is awesome because your video turns out great.

There is also a subplot in which Corrie and Sean Addison are moving away, and Sean believes the BSC will be glad to see the back of him. They try to convince him that he's wrong, even though it's kind of true. We also get a few glimpses of the Nicholls family who will be moving into their house, including Mr. Nicholls, who yells at his kids a lot for minor infractions. I sort of feel like they sometimes work in elements from the next book in the series because they can, without thinking through the implications. For example, Mr. Nicholls' kids are pretty clearly nervous all the time because their father is mean, and if you've read the next book, you know he's abusive. Situated in this book, it plants the seed in your mind that Lou is being abused, which is the opposite of the point they're trying to make.

It's interesting to see Lou again and a story in which she is now super-careful because she believes that happy, apparently stable family situations are inevitably fleeting is a cool idea. I'm not sure why this was Abby's book (why not Kristy or Mary Anne, who have established emotional connections to her?) As I mentioned, Abby's plotline would have been more powerful if she actualy learned a relevant lesson about control, e.g. by having all her actors quit when she was too hard on them. Instead, she spends a huge amount of time dithering about what she wants her project to be, while Kristy warns her she needs to shape up and come up with a plan. All this seems to come to nothing and have little to do with the plot. It just feels like stalling, as if the writer were coming up with the story in realtime and then not editing...hey!

Lingering Question: Jay is eleven, the same age as Mallory and Jessi, so why do the McNallys hire a baby-sitter? Jay doesn't need one himself, and you'd think he could look after his eight-year-old sister if he's not particularly interested in baby-sitting as a career choice. He seems perfectly responsible and he has a close, protective relationship with Lou. It's not like Lou is particularly rambunctious these days.

Cover Art Oddity: The cover shows Lou sitting primly in a white dress, which made me wary that (like the first book did, to a certain extent) this book was going to shore up the lame correlation of boys' clothes = bad kid and girls' clothes = good kid. However, Lou's "good kid" clothes in the book aren't particularly feminine. She wears headbands, but other than that it seems to be tidy rugby shirts and corduroys in matching colors. (Her "bad kid" clothes aren't described.) At one point, though, she's described as wearing Jenny Prezzioso's style, and then the outfit that follows isn't like Jenny at all, so maybe there were last-minute edits changing frilly dresses to clean playclothes, because some blessed soul in the writers' room had my exact concern.

Timing: February (Black History Month)
Revised Timeline: Because the presentations end up getting shown at the Community Center, there's no particular reason the video has to be a school project, but I'm not sure why else Abby would do a video. Maybe, in an effort to figure out her calling while working some lame job, Abby is taking a video production class. That would explain why she has access to a camera and editing equipment and knows how to use them, which facts are just assumed here.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Nola Thacker ***

[top]

#117 Claudia and the Terrible Truth Claudia begins sitting for the new kids in town, Joey and Nate Nicholls. They're sweet kids, but their father is creepy. He's all charm with Claudia, but he yells at the boys and calls them names. The boys seem overly nervous, freaking out about spills and expecting Claudia to pitch a fit about minor infractions, like getting a tiny tear in her book. Claudia can't convince them to relax and, after she sees the way their dad yells, she figures they know best. One day, Mr. Nicholls comes home in a bad mood and dismisses Claudia abruptly. She's in such a rush to leave that she forgets her coat, and when she goes back for it, she hears the sound of slapping.

Claudia calls an emergency meeting and the baby-sitters discuss what to do. Without hard evidence, they don't know if they have a case. Still, they strongly suspect child endangerment. Claudia decides to bring in her mother, who works with Mrs. Nicholls. The next day, Claudia's mother tells her that she tried to talk to Mrs. Nicholls, but Mrs. Nicholls denied everything. Kristy calls and reports that Mrs. Nicholls has cancelled all her sitting appointments. Nobody's sure what, if anything, to do next.

Later, minor classmate character Erica Blumberg calls Claudia in a panic, saying she's now sitting for the Nicholls boys and they're pretty beat up. They told her they had accidents, but she suspects the dad, and Claudia agrees. She calls her mom at work. This is the point where things suddenly get adventuresome. The mom says she'll be right over to the Nicholls house. Claudia goes over too, in case she can be of help. She arrives just in time to see the mom's car (with Mrs. Nicholls) and the dad's car both pull up! Mrs. Kishi and Mrs. Nicholls get the two boys and Erica out and rush them into the car. Claudia jumps in too. They drop off Erica and proceed directly to Mr. Kishi's office (where Mr. Nicholls probably won't know to look), where there is a tense planning session. Mrs. Nicholls decides to take the boys to her sister's house in upstate New York. They head out right away. And that is where we must leave them.

There is a subplot where the baby-sitters are planning a kids' act, or whatever, for the Stoneybrook St. Patricks Day parade. I don't know that a comic baby-sitting subplot is needed in a serious book about baby-sitting, but the parade planning sequences are actually rather nicely woven into the larger story, providing new environments for the various baby-sitters to witness Joey and Nate's strange tidiness. Joey also once yells at Andrew Brewer, imitating his dad, which freaks everyone out. I also like the moment when Claudia comes home, freaked, from the slap incident, and tries calling almost every baby-sitter before realizing they're at a planning session. In that moment, the St. Patrick's Day parade seems like the least important thing in the world. If the two plots are going to be so different in tone, it's nice to see it lampshaded.

Come to think of it, there's actually a sort of a C-plot, too, where Claudia is taking care of her baby cousin Lynn for a few weeks while Peaches and Russ are on vacation. Nothing really happens, and it's wrapped up by chapter 6. There are vague attempts to use Lynn as a symbol of child-innocence and highlight protective instinct in Claudia, but it's not really necessary, and the whole thing is really unnecessary. I'd like to have seen it developed more or dropped.

Still, I pretty much 100% enjoyed this book. Mr. and Mrs. Nicholls were pretty undeveloped characters, as were the little boys, but it didn't really matter; they were devices. Mr. Nicholls was suitably scary, the boys suitably sympathetic, and the mostly-absent wife suitably unable to be counted on. An atmosphere of gradually increasing foreboding and tension was effectively built, up until that horrifying, climactic slap. Events moved quickly after that and the escape from the house was exciting, with poignant moments of mundanity (Claudia playing with Mr. Kishi's office supplies with the boys) contrasting the world-upside-down situation everyone found themselves in. The ending was both satisfying and realistically up-in-the-air, with Mrs. Kishi reminding Claudia that it was the beginning of a long road for the family and that they'd probably never know how it ended. Still, the boys were safe for the time being.

Lingering Questions: There's no time for the kids to buckle their seatbelts, but Claudia has time to wrangle her bike into the trunk of the car? Unlikely. I read this years ago (though as an adult) and distinctly remembered Claudia abandoning her bike at Mr. Nicholls' house of hell. I guess that was just my mental edit.

Timing: Early March, through to just after St. Patricks Day.
Revised Timeline: March of the first year after college. Actually, I like this better as a kids' story. I think it realistically models what an actual thirteen-year-old could and should do in the situation. If this were a Nancy Drew or any YA thriller with an 18- to 21-year-old heroine, she probably would have been taking a more active role--calling DCYF herself, driving the getaway car. I like it coming from Mrs. Kishi, though. We don't see much of her, and she's a superhero in this book.

AGA: Ellen Miles

[top]

#119 Stacey's Ex-Boyfriend Stacey is worried about her ex, Robert, who's been down in the dumps since he was dumped by Andi, the girl he left Stacey for. (Got it?) Robert's been pulling away from all his friends. Stacey meets his sister Patti in the mall, and she accuses Stacey of abandoning him. Stacey is effectively guilted into hanging out with him. Robert keeps saying everything is hopeless and pointless, and that he isn't interested in any of the activities he once enjoyed. Stacey asks around and finds out that all his old friends have basically stopped hanging out with him because he is a self-absorbed bummer.

Realizing she's basically his only friend at this point, Stacey takes it upon herself to help Robert. She tries to tutor him to bring his grades up and invites him on outings. Her own grades suffer, and she gets the flu. After calling in and presenting the problem to a radio psychologist, Stacey is advised to encourage Robert to talk to a trusted adult. Robert laughs off this advice, but when he shows up at Stacey's house in the middle of the night sobbing, Stacey seizes the opportunity and gets him to call his old baseball coach. They make an appointment to talk. Robert seems in better spirits the next time Stacey sees him. Although there is no longer anything romantic between them (Stacey tells Robert she has a new boyfriend), they tell each other that they love each other as friends.

Unrelated kids' subplot: a U-Pick strawberry field has opened and the kids go strawberry crazy. Everyone can pick way more than they are capable of eating without getting sick. Kristy solicits donations of unwanted strawberries for a Strawberry Festival, turning the strawberries into desserts and smoothies.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. Stacey was relatable, funny, and compassionate--this is the hardworking caretaker Stacey we've seen in Stacey's Choice and Super Sitter. The disheartening, impossible nature of trying to help a depressed friend is effectively conveyed.

In what's turning out to be a trend, the ostensible lesson of this story--don't let helping a friend overwhelm you--is belied by the actual events. It seems like Robert wouldn't have reached out to Stacey in a vulnerable moment if she hadn't put in the work to gain his trust. If she'd been looking out for herself, she might also have turned him away when he showed up in the middle of the night, but that was basically the only moment she could have guided him to more help.

Suspense of Disbelief--Cracking: I don't believe that Robert's deep depression could be so quickly lifted by some talk therapy with a baseball coach. I mean, that must be some coach. I was sure they were going to say at the end that the coach had referred him to a licensed therapist or that he was taking medication, but they didn't, although maybe it's true and Robert just didn't mention it.

Most Unintentionally Meta Moment: In trying to explain why he believes life is so pointless, Robert asks, "Doesn't it bother you to do the same things day after day, year after year?" But Robert, it's only been one year.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Suzanne Weyn

Timing: School's in. Early strawberry season. May?
Revised Timeline: Spring of first year after graduation. Although school is the backdrop for this story, there's nothing about the conflict that is school-central. In fact, right after college is a prime time for depression to hit, especially for a sports star who was so popular in school. Up until now, everything seemed to be building to something; now he realizes he will be working at some lame job for the next forty years. His friends have all moved on, and he's stuck home in his podunk town. How can Stacey be happy mall-crawling and baby-sitting like she has been for the last ten years, and probably still will be when she's thirty-five? Everything is so pointless.

[top]

#121 Abby in Wonderland Abby and her family go to her grandparents' summer home in the Hamptons. Abby's grandmother is planning a ludicrously complex Alice in Wonderland themed party, and she seems overly upset that some friends and relatives can't make it. After various anvilicious she's-sick hints, Abby finds pamphlets on breast cancer. Fearing, as her grandmother apparently does, that this is secretly Gram's last healthy summer, Abby calls the RSVP no's and convinces them to come. In a weird turn of anticlimax, possibly brought about by equally heated writer's room debates about whether to make the ending happy or not, it turns out that Gram doesn't have her biopsy results back yet.

Meanwhile, the Pike family doesn't have enough money to go to Sea City this year because their dad's car needs an expensive repair. Mary Anne and Dawn (visiting for the summer) come up with the idea for a beach-themed staycation; the kids make a backyard beach with kiddie pools and sand castle sand and camp out overnight. (There is also a trip to meet the mayor, for some reason.) I can see kids really digging this, but not ones who were expecting to go to the real beach.

This book contains some of the clunkiest prose I've ever read in a kids' book. "And the absurd Wonderland setting magnified the unreal nature of Gram's situation." Show don't tell, dude.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Suzanne Weyn

Timing: Late August
Revised Timeline: I'm having trouble figuring out what to do now that the girls are graduated from college. Luckily, there's nothing in this book that particularly requires anybody to be at any particular stage of life (well, the Pikes not being kids anymore would be a problem I guess, but we can sub in any number of new kid-families). Even if she were working, Abby would undoubtedly take a week or so off for a family visit.

[top]

#124 Stacey McGill... Matchmaker? Stacey's delighted when mother begins dating Mr. Brooke, a new client of the BSC. Mr. Brooke's daughter Joni doesn't like the match, but just as Stacey convinces her (Joni) to give her (Stacey's) mother a chance, Mrs. McGill decides to break up with Mr. Brooke anyway.

Meanwhile, Mallory is having a bad time at school, and looks into the possibility of changing schools.

This is one of the more oddly- (badly-) written and interesting BSC books. I always like the parent plots, and this one had quite a lot of adults describing adults concerns, frequently in very sophisticated (stilted) language for a kids' book. For example, when she begins having doubts about Mr. Brooke, a writer, Mrs. McGill explains to Stacey that his books reveal "philosophical positions" that she "find[s] distasteful." More stilted language hinders (enriches) conversations between Stacey and her mother about Pride and Prejudice, which they are both reading (ie. Mrs. McGill argues that Elizabeth is strong to resist marrying only because it would be "socially and economically convenient.")

On the subject, it seems to me that Emma would have been a more thematic choice for a botched matchmaker story, but on the other hand the parallels they draw--while admittedly mostly relying on the 19th century milieu rather than the specifics of P&P--are apt, and really this is much less of a Parent Trap story than the cover marketing implies. It's actually not a simple story at all, and it's far less predictable and anvilicious than most BSC books. Mr. Brooke is neither a hero nor a villain; his faults are noticeable, but not overwhelming, and Stacey never really seems to understand why it didn't work out.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Suzanne Weyn

Backstory: Fascinating new backstory for the McGill relationship, which hitherto seemed like a pretty simple rich guy/trophy wife scenario. Apparently when they met, Mr. McGill was a public defender. Mrs. McGill began to lose respect for him when he took a corporate job.

Continuity Errors: Kristy is unfazed when Mr. Brooke returns from a date at 12:30 AM. If you believe the baby-sitters are still thirteen (as the exposition continues to state), it's ludicrous she was allowed to stay out that late; book #4 establishes Kristy's (recently extended) curfew at 10:00 on weekends, and I can't imagine it was extended over two hours in less than a year. On the other hand, if you assume the revised timeline, Kristy is well into adulthood by now, so of course it's no problem.

Timing: November to early December (Thanksgiving occurs in the middle of the story... AGAIN!)
Revised Timeline: Granted that it's problematic, but unavoidable, that in order for these to work in the new timeline, everyone has to continue living with their parents in Stoneybrook after college, this isn't really too bad. Stacey and her mother are struggling to create a new relationship between adults: hence the book club. This new dynamic also informs Stacey's desire to marry off her mom (she feels it's her place, as a friend, and perhaps also wants to see her mom settled before she leaves home).

[top]