This book starts out with Mary Anne watching Roman Holiday and bawling her eyes out. Yeah. I'm wondering if I should add a generic Old Movie tag, but that would basically be as helpful as a Baby-Sitters Club tag. She tells us she doesn't just like old movies, but also likes the latest music and TV shows, but I am unconvinced.
On page 3, we get a Wizard of Oz reference. Mary Anne tells us that the downside of being sensitive is that much like at the end of the film when the Tin Man says, "Now I know I have a heart, because it's breaking," being sensitive leaves her open to not just wonderful feelings but also unpleasant ones. I guess. She misses Dawn who is in California and Logan who is very busy at school with a big volleyball tournament coming up. Logan likes sports, you see, so that means he is on every single sports team at the middle school. Except maybe the basketball team.
Mary Anne reads the whole newspaper because she's bored and lonely. She says she likes to read the birth announcements to see if any babies have been given especially nice or especially weird names. I do that too! Unfortunately she says the names that day are all boring and normal, because I would like to see a ghostwriter example of a weird Stoneybrook name.
Meeting time! Mary Anne goes early, because she's bored. At the end of the chapter, Claudia's mom wants to hire someone to help out with the Readathon they're going to have at the public library, and Mary Anne leaps at the chance. It will be perfect because she loves books and kids. Mary Anne meets the two librarians. Ms. Feld is the main children's librarian. Miss Ellway is new, and Mary Anne takes an instant dislike to her. She says she knows she shouldn't judge people so quickly, but she does, and again I really can't blame her because I do that. Plus, Mary Anne is totally insulted when Miss Ellway assumes she'll have to show MA how to use the card catalog. Bitch, Mary Anne has been able to do that since she was eight years old.
The readathon is going to raise money, because the kids have solicited sponsors who will pay them for each book read. So after each book, the kids have to answer a few questions on it to make sure they actually read it.I would have raked in cash for the library, I tell you what. Mary Anne has a busy first day and sees a lot of the regular BSC clients, which is nice, because usually the mysteries introduce a character or family and use them in exactly one book. Mary Anne helps kids pick out books and use the card catalog. This book is getting pretty dated in that respect, because card catalogs are going the way of the cassette player. Of course a bunch of the Pike kids are hanging around the Readathon, because the Pike Parents are not going to turn down an opportunity to get some of their spawn out of their hair for a while. Byron is excited about checking out books but Nicky is apathetic. In other books all the Pike kids love to read, so I'm not sure what his deal is in this book.
There is a part in this book where Jessi goes over to bring Nicky Pike to the library and Claire and Margo are playing dress-up. Margo is wearing a long nightshirt that "must have belonged to her father." I do not want to picture Father Pike in a nightshirt. I do not know if you can even still buy nightshirts for men anymore. Could you when this book was published? Do you know any men who wear nightshirts? Maybe I am just misinformed.
There are protesters outside the library. They want to ban books. This is a Very Bad Thing. Mary Anne tells us that she reads books with bad words in them, but it doesn't make her want to say the words. Mary Anne also tells us that her dad lets her read whatever she wants. For some reason I can imagine Mary Anne being really into V.C. Andrews.
Kristy gets a job helping Rosie Wilder with the Readathon. She's supposed to help her sign up sponsors and take her to the library because her parents are so busy. There's a really weird part where Rosie doesn't want to talk to the neighbors because she doesn't know what to say, so Kristy helps her write a script and then Rosie dresses up in a sailor dress and pinches her cheeks to put color in them and goes around the neighborhood. Kristy says the neighbors can't resist her, but I am assuming they are just willing to spend any amount because they are afraid for their lives when a creepy little sailor suited child comes to their door with dead eyes and rosy cheeks. Anyway this means Kristy is at the library a lot too so she can help Mary Anne investigate.
Investigate? Oh, right, this is a mystery. There is a fire at the library! It is in one of the bathrooms, and gets put out before the kids can even all be evacuated. A week later, there is a second fire, in a trash can. This fire is bigger, and they have to evacuate all the kids. The BSC decide that they need to solve the mystery. Claudia's mom gives them some information. They find out that books were burned in both fires. They suspect Miss Ellway, because the land the library is on was donated by her ancestors with the provision that if the library is ever destroyed or shut down, the land goes back to the Ellway family. They also suspect the book burning protesters. Then one day at the library, some matches fall out of Nicky Pike's jacket. He swears they aren't his, and Mary Anne and Kristy believe him, so they don't bother to tell an adult or anything. Well, they do tell Mallory, who is basically his mother, and she interrogates him for an hour, but in the end she believes him too. Nicky becomes a junior investigator on their arson case. Rosie Wilder also wants to help solve the mystery. Now that I think about it, that might be her on the book cover, because she is supposed to have thick red hair and glasses.
There's another fire at the library, in a trash can. Mary Anne sees Miss Ellway running toward it with a fire extinguisher so she crosses her off the suspect list. The BSC investigate the other members of the Ellway family and discover that they are all nice people. Miss Ellway's brother owns a hardware store and his grown daughter runs a dog kennel and his grown son has a huge mansion. Nice people are incapable of setting fires, clearly. Then they investigate the protesters by pretending to be doing an article for the school paper and by following them around. Claudia announces that the protesters all have no fashion sense. When Claudia is making fun of your fashion choices, you have crossed a line that you can never un-cross.
Mary Anne realizes that the books that have been burned are all on the fifth grade reading list, so they decide to stake out the library since all the other fires have been on Wednesdays. Kristy is mad that Claudia and Stacey are not blending in to their surroundings as well as she would like.
Claudia was wearing a big white shirt over a bright pink jumpsuit. Her earrings, also bright pink, were in the shape of flamingos. On her feet were pink high-tops. Stacey was wearing a red miniskirt, a red-and-white striped top, red heart-shaped earrings, and short black boots.Mary Anne points out that Claudia and Stacey would look more conspicuous if they were trying to blend in. I really don't see what Kristy is so upset about, because those were really reasonable outfits as far as Claudia and Stacey are concerned.
At the library, they catch Sean Addison in the act of burning a book in another trash can. He explains that he doesn't want to read and feels like his parents don't care about him and just shove him into every activity they can think of. Mary Anne says she doesn't agree and that the Addisons seem like good parents. I guess she didn't read the book where the Addisons pushing their kids into fifty million activities so they could go do their own thing was basically the entire subplot. At any rate, I think burning books is a bit of an overreaction to not wanting to be in a readathon. Why couldn't he just look for pictures of naked people in National Geographic and look up dirty words in the dictionary like any normal bored ten-year old in a library?
The mystery is solved and Mary Anne decides she might keep volunteering at the library on occasion. There's an award ceremony for the readathon. Nicky Pike wins for the third grade. Apparently he has been faking boredom at the library and doing all of his reading at home to surprise Mary Anne because she got him interested in reading. Aww.
This one isn't too bad, as far as the mysteries go. At least they aren't out chasing adult criminals. Now if you'll excuse me I have to go drink until the image of Papa Pike in a nightshirt is gone.
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