Here is the cover. It's one of my grungy ex-library books, sorry for the creases and all. Karen and Hannie are sticking their tongues out at what is presumably Pamela and either Leslie or Jannie. Leslie and Jannie aren't pictured often enough for me to have any idea who it's meant to be. I actually am also not sure which one is Pamela. In the books she usually wears trendy clothing, so I'll guess she's the girl with the yellow tights and striped skirt, but I don't know, because the other girl is making a much better "I am far superior to you" face. I don't know what the hell Karen is wearing. A medieval tunic of some sort?
Okay, so this book takes place in October. It's after Karen and Andrew's custody arrangement switches to alternating months at each house, and this particular month they are at their mother's house. Karen spends a bunch of the early book trying to decide what to be for Halloween, and her mom hires Kristy to help her and Andrew with their costumes. Karen ends up being one of the Wild Things from the book Where the Wild Things Are and Andrew is the Little Engine That Could.
Ms. Colman makes one of her announcements. The candy store in town is selling candy with part of the proceeds going to help rebuild a library in Stamford that burned down. All the kids have to do is sell candy and collect money, and the candy will be delivered to the buyers the week before Halloween. The person who sells the most candy also gets a gift certificate to Polly's Fine Candy. Karen is of course absolutely positive that either she, Hannie, or Nancy will sell the most candy. If they were smart they'd all share one order sheet and put it under one name, because there's basically no way that any one of them will sell the most candy if they all go out together and take turns getting credit for the sale. But they didn't think of that.
Pamela, Leslie, and Jannie are going to sell candy too, and Pamela is being kind of a snot about it. She first makes a bet with Karen that she and her friends will sell more than Karen and her friends, and then she brings her buddies over to hawk their wares in Karen's mother's neighborhood, enraging Karen, who feels that it should be her territory. Then Karen wants to sell candy to the teachers at school, but Pamela and her friends beat them to that, too, by minutes. On like the fifth day of the candy sale, which was announced to the whole school. So probably any teachers who wanted candy would have gotten hit up for it by kids in their classes a lot earlier. But whatever. Karen is pissed off. So after school, she and her friends walk over to Pamela's neighborhood to sell candy. Pamela sees them and gets annoyed, of course.
The next day at recess, Hannie wants to swing, but Pamela and her friends are already swinging. She asks for a turn but Pamela says she'll have to wait. Ten minutes later, she asks again, and Pamela laughs and tells her again to wait. Karen is furious. She walks in front of Pamela's swing (smart move; I see why she skipped a grade) and grabs Pamela's legs and tries to pull her off the swing, but Pamela's not budging. So Karen punches Pamela in the face. All the other kids are staring at them and Pamela runs off.
Here is the picture of Karen trying to pull Pamela off her swing. Sadly there is not a picture of Karen punching Pamela in the face, cause I would frame that shit. Pamela's hair looks very dark in this drawing, so maybe she's the one in the Peter Pan collar on the front of the book.
Ms. Colman sees that someone hit Pamela, but Pamela won't tell her what happened, and nobody else will tell either, so she takes away recess for the whole class until someone tells her who punched Pamela. The next day, all the boys stand up and tell on Karen. It is a personal annoyance of mine when books have large groups speak in unison. I had a teacher when I was young who told us it was lazy writing, and asked us to pay attention to people talking in everyday life, and make note of the times when any group of people spoke together. It very rarely happens in non-rehearsed situations. Also the book says they said together, "Karen Brewer did it." which makes me wonder how many other Karens are in their class, and also makes me ponder the improbability of all the boys in the class saying that little phrase in unison. The BSC series in general also does this with the Pike triplets a lot.
Ms. Colman sends Karen and Pamela to the principal's office. The principal says they both have a lot to learn about manners, courtesy, and working out disagreements, and announces that they will both be punished by not being in the school's costume parade. That's right, Karen gets the exact same punishment for punching someone in the face as Pamela does for not sharing her swing with Hannie. The principal calls their parents, so Karen gets punished at home, too. She doesn't get to watch TV for three nights. I assume she also gets a lecture or something offscreen. Taking away TV is apparently Mommy's go-to punishment, because that's what she did when Karen was cheating off Ricky's tests, too.
Karen and Pamela are pretty bummed about the punishment, because the costume parade is srs bzns. They talk about it on the playground one day while their friends are off playing elsewhere. They agree that they both should have been nicer, and they come up with a plan to sneak into the costume parade. Pamela brings a sheet so they can disguise themselves as a ghost, and they join the class as they march past around the gym. It's kind of a cute idea, but it only works if you don't think about the logistics of it at all. Where did Pamela hide the sheet before and after the costume parade? Why didn't anyone notice a ghost jumping into the middle of the class as they paraded? But if you ignore that it's nice that Karen and Pamela work together.
Mommy hires Kristy to take Karen and her friends trick-or-treating. Kristy is surprised that every house is giving out the same candy, but Karen explains that it's the kind they were selling, and all the neighbors bought it. Kristy hopes they like it, and Karen says, "Candy is candy." This may be the dumbest thing Karen says in any Little Sister book ever, because anyone who's discovered a vile Bit O Honey when dumping out their candy bag knows that not all candy is created equal.
They go to the candy store to find out the results of the sales, and someone we've never heard of wins the gift certificate. Adding up shows that Karen and her friends sold exactly the same number of bags of candy as Pamela and her friends, although Pamela personally sold one more bag of candy than Karen. Pamela and Karen smile at each other in a friendly fashion, but don't worry, because by the start of the next book, they'll be over trying to be nice.
The subplot in this book is puzzling and stupid. I'll explain it to you, but you might just want to go reread the bit where Karen punches Pamela instead. See, Ms. Colman's class of second graders has a project for the month of October wherein they are helping a kindergarten class make Halloween costumes to wear in the costume parade. Even though all the other grades bring their costumes from home. The kindergarten makes theirs at school. With help from second graders. I bet they look fantastic. Each second grader is assigned a kindergarten buddy to help. This takes up quite a bit of class time. Karen's buddy, Leah, is really shy. She doesn't want to march in the parade with her class. Karen suggests she could just walk and not wear a costume, but Leah says everyone will stare at her if she's the only one without a costume. Finally Karen offers to march with her and hold her hand. So when Karen gets punished, the principal says that even though Karen can't march with her class, she can still march and hold Leah's hand, but Karen can't wear a costume. Leah wants to dress as an elf, and the costume she and Karen makes wins third prize for her class. Don't bother remembering Leah's name, because she will not appear in any more Little Sister books.
No comments:
Post a Comment