The Key to All Baby-Sitterologies: A Vast Work of Meticulous Research: Part 3

• Age 5: Stacey's parents give her a magical birthday at the Plaza Hotel, home of her heroine, Eloise. Brief and fine.
• Age 7: Stacey's mother, working at Macy's, gets her a spot on the Thanksgiving Parade float with her new heroine, Cinderella. Stacey tells everyone she will be televised, but when the video of the Cinderella float airs, Stacey is missing, and everyone thinks she was lying. Actually, she was ducking over the side at the time, rescuing Cinderella's crown, which had blown off, and which Cinderella gave her to keep.
• Age 9: Stacey and Laine blow off ballroom dancing classes and walk around the city instead, feeling powerful and independent. They eventually get caught and get in trouble. One of the better memories, this one has an overall feeling of mischief and fun and features some cute moments of Stacey and Laine planning a nine-year-old's dream apartment, with a gumball machine and a giant crayon.
• Age 10: Stacey's parents drag her on a "back to nature" trip to a small island off the coast of Maine. Stacey hates it at first and is mean to the island girl, Mara, but Mara earns her respect by being cool in an emergency (Stacey's father breaks his ankle) and knowing how to drive. The girls become close friends by the end of the vacation although they never contact each other afterward.

Stacey's memories are all fun and in-character, and highlight her luxurious wealthy-New Yorker upbringing without making her seem unsympathetic or snobby (except possibly in the early days of her Maine trip, but even that is pretty funny). Notably absent are some milestones which you would think she would have included in an actual autobiography assignment, such as her diabetes diagnosis, her parents' divorce, and all her moves, but those have been described in the series already so maybe they were just omitted for our convenience. Although it's kind of funny if Stacey didn't include them at all.

Read as a kid: Yes. Although the Portrait Collections started quite late in my original BSC phase--I remember when this one was new; I basically held on until the Claudia one came out, and none of the others had been released by the time I stopped reading--I got to this one soon enough to read it several times. I enjoyed it a lot.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Jeanne Betancourt

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• Age 6: Claudia, with lion tamer aspirations, is excited about her circus-themed birthday party, but she has a July birthday, and none of the kids from her class remember to come except Kristy and Mary Anne. She's too sad to continue the party, but a few hours later Mimi brings her to the Spiers', where her family and friends have gathered an impromptu party of everyone who happens to be in the neighborhood.
• Age 7: Claudia is afraid of the tooth fairy and hides in the closet after her parents encourage her to put her first lost tooth under her pillow. She sees her mother come in and exchange the tooth for a coin, and she makes the leap that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny don't exist either. I'm not sure that would actually happen. This is the weakest and least in-character of the stories (why does this story need to be Claudia's?)
• Age 9: Claudia's parents enroll her in an alternative learning academy in Stamford. Isolated from her friends, Claudia gradually loses interest in everything she once enjoyed and begins sleeping all the time. Her parents get scared and let her return to SES, whereupon Claudia's sudden-onset depression is suddenly cured! While the cause and effect seems a little too neat for a complex psychological reaction, the description of how it feels to just be sad and disinterested in life is the most vivid and accessible I've ready in a children's book or perhaps anywhere. And the details of the touchy-feely school which sneak in around the edges are spot-on (without denigrating the school. If only the school didn't somehow induce chemical depression in Claudia, it seems like she totally would have done awesome there.) The story is sad and glum, but it's also the best one in the book.
• Age 11: Claudia goes on vacation with Kristy's family. She enjoys looking after David Michael with and without Kristy's help. When David Michael gets lost once when Kristy is in charge, and Kristy freaks out, Claudia sees her bold carefree friend for the first time as a girl with a lot of responsibility on her shoulders.

Read as a kid: Yes. Quite possibly this is one of the last new BSC books I ever purchased, but I still read it several times. I liked the alternative school story even before I ever went to such a school.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Nola Thacker

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• Age 5: Kristy's first great idea: she, Claudia, and Mary Anne build decorative snowmen for their neighbors in exchanges for donations to the Mimi birthday present fund. Brief and fine.
• Age 5 1/2: Kristy cons her way along on a movies trip with her big brothers, breaking rules and worrying her mother, who expects to find her home. Kristy's father, Patrick, laughs it off, saying she has "spunk," but her mother punishes her. Still, she manages to bond with her brothers.
• Age 6: After Kristy's father leaves and her mother gets a job, Kristy, Sam, and Charlie are left on their own after school for a few weeks. They get into scrapes, notably when Louie is sprayed by a skunk, until their mother imposes clear rules and expectations.
• Age 10: Kristy wins a scholarship to a girls' softball camp where she helps overcome the red team-vs-blue team infighting that threatens to ruin the team spirit of the all-camp team.
• Age 13(+?): Kristy's mysterious father returns in the wake of a break-up with his new wife; wreaks minor havor with Kristy's emotions; and then disappears again. This last entry happens after Watson is established as Kristy's stepfather, so it's actually during the continuity of the BSC books, raising the question: why wasn't it actually a book? True, Kristy's father is much more a presence in the entirety of this book than he has been in the entirety of the rest of the series, but it would have been nice to have an actual, more canonical story involving Patrick. More than enough material for the plot of a BSC book is jammed into these three chapters, which read like a summary for an actual story, perhaps because they were salvaged from one. It's so summarized that it is actually boring to read, despite the inherent interest value of the storyline.

Lingering Questions: WHY. WHY DID WE NOT GET A WHOLE BOOK ABOUT PATRICK. Also, why did Kristy only get a B+? The teacher wrote nothing but good comments. Where did she lose points?

Read as a kid: No.

Author Gratefully Acknowledges: Jeanne Betancourt

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• Kristy does CIT duty at Camp Mohawk with Abby, and reacts with over-the-top displeasure as Logan, Jessi, and Abby all break the news that they're dropping out of the club.
• Mary Anne decides not to go to camp as planned because her time would be better spent moping around the tiny rental house worrying about whether or not her father is going to take a job offer in Philadelphia, a decision over which she has no power. This is dumb but everyone treats it as normal. She also frets about whether or not to break up with Logan (for really real this time), but doesn't do anything about it.
• Stacey visits her father in New York and visits with her boyfriend Ethan, until her father disapproves, but then Ethan wins over Mr. McGill with his maturity, despite owning an earring.
• Claudia's family goes on a no-technology vacation to an island off the coast of Maine. This is basically the exact plot of the last section of Stacey's autobiography, but Stacey does not mention that this has happened to her, probably because nobody on the writing team remembered.

So, I mean, what really changed here? The BSC wasn't disbanded--the Original Four just agreed to continue it on their own, downgraded, with no new clients and fewer jobs and meetings. Mary Anne didn't break up with Logan--just decided, by the end, that it was time to start seriously considering it. (What?) Stacey's status quo with her father and Ethan changed and then went back to the way it was before. Claudia had a bad vacation which turned good and will have no bearing on any future books. The girls don't even get to continue on to high school, as one might expect from an author who pays lip service to making changes in the series; once they start school again, they'll be back in eighth grade for the nine millionth time.

It's worth noting that the epistolary nature of this special allows the baby-sitters to actually tell the stories more in their own words than ever before (though thankfully not in handwriting), so the voices have a distinctness that is usually lacking. Mary Anne is dull and boring, Claudia's misspellings make her seem dumber than in her normal books, and Stacey is fine, but Kristy shines. Her written voice is remarkably sharp and funny, with comedically unnecessary and inconsistent terseness reminiscent of Bridget Jones. That's about all that's really good about this book, but it's worth three stars, I think.

Read as a kid: No. I was in seventh grade when this came out, well into the period when all I wanted to read was S.J. Perelman and Robotech novelizations. You know, man stuff.

Timing: Summer between... sigh... eighth grade and eighth grade.
Revised Timeline: Get back to this

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