LS #50, Karen's Lucky Penny

This book is not all that interesting, but I liked a lot of the illustrations, so there is that. It starts out with Karen and Andrew playing with some of their neighborhood friends at Mommy's house. They are discussing a story Sam told Karen about cats using the sewers as a way to travel around town. Apparently Sam is more original than just telling the kids that alligators live in the sewers. I find the idea of a network of underground cats to be somewhat charming. Then Karen and Nancy go over to Bobby's house to deliver his homework to him and Karen finds a lucky penny on the sidewalk. When I was a kid, any penny we found was a lucky penny, but in the BSC books, only heads-up pennies are good luck. This crops up in Mary Anne and the Bad Luck Mystery and possibly more places in the series. I think it may be another regional variation, but I wasn't willing to put more than five minutes of effort into a Google search. I did use the scientific method of asking my coworkers. Different more better K., who grew up in the same state I did, agreed that any penny is lucky. A., who has also lived in Colorado and Alaska, said it must be a heads-up penny. R. who grew up in New Hampshire was unfortunately not at work to be the tiebreaker. At any rate, the penny Karen finds is heads-up, and she gleefully puts it in her pocket.

You don't really see that style of dress anymore. You don't really see kids rocking the side ponytail either. Also the membership form to join Karen's Clubhouse must be filled out and returned by December 31, 1994, so I have apparently just missed the cutoff date.

After Karen finds the penny, a few minor lucky things happen for her, either as a result of confirmation bias or a result of finding a lucky penny. She and Nancy and Bobby go to a little brook (a brook is smaller than a creek, and the bed is made mostly of rocks, according to wikipedia) near their houses and Karen finds a wallet under a bush. She looks in the wallet and there is $800, but no ID. Bobby and Nancy tell her that such things fall under the Finders Keepers act of 1873, so she takes the wallet home, although she does give Bobby and Nancy each $5. Once Karen gets the wallet home, she is a little worried that her parents won't understand about finders keepers, so she hides the wallet in her room, but after a couple of days she gets nervous and is afraid she'll get arrested for stealing. This leads to the following awesome paragraph and illustration:

I looked at the spot where I had hidden the wallet. The wallet was stuffed behind some books on my shelf. Then I thought, what would happen if Mommy and Seth found the wallet all hidden away in my room? Maybe they would think I had stolen it. And if they did maybe I would have to go to jail. Jail. How could I go to jail when I also had to go to second grade? What would Mommy say to Ms. Colman? "I am sorry, Ms. Colman, but Karen cannot come to school today because she is in the pokey."

 You can't really see it in the picture, but the heart on the wall of Karen's imaginary jail cell says MOTHER inside it. Karen decides to show the wallet to Mommy and Seth. Mommy replaces the $10 Karen gave to her friends, and they take the wallet to the police station. The police officer gives them a date by which if the wallet is not claimed, Karen can keep it. But just before that date, they get a phone call saying that the wallet has been claimed and the owner wants to meet Karen. They go to the station and are met by a guy who is wearing old clothes, which Karen notices right away. He wants to give Karen a reward for finding his wallet, and gives her $100, or 12.5% of the money as a finder's fee. Mommy tries to turn him down but he insists. As they are driving home, Karen begs to be allowed to not put any of the reward money in the bank, and Mommy agrees.

Karen pretty much goes on a spending spree, even though she wanted to spend her money wisely.The first thing she does is to take Hannie and Nancy to the movies. Kristy goes along to supervise, but sits in the row behind them so they can feel very grown-up.

 Another time, Mr. Tastee's truck is going past, and Karen's the only one who wants to spend money, so she buys ice cream for everyone. The other kids are all saving up for a trip to Funland their parents have promised them. The deal is that the adults will pay for admission to Funland which includes all the rides and for lunch, but the kids need to have their own money for midway games and snacks and souvenirs. Karen's friends are trying to earn money by doing jobs for their parents.

Karen goes on a trip to the toy store and buys a bunch of stuff. Mommy tries to talk her into getting a smaller package of markers and not spending so much, but she insists on buying all the things she had picked out. Andrew is doing a lot of chores for cash, and he also starts a lemonade stand. Karen wants to help him out, so she finds a bunch of kids and gives them each a quarter to use to buy lemonade from Andrew. It's nice of her to want to help, but Andrew gets mad when he finds out, because he wanted to do it himself. There is also a cute picture of Andrew running the lemonade stand but I already scanned like half the book and, well, you understand. Lazy.  Bobby and Nancy have started a gardening business. The sign says they do weeding and watering, which is probably about the only things you could reliably let a pair of second-graders do in your garden. Karen hires them to do some gardening, but when she goes to pay them, she realizes that she has blown most of her money and is down to only $7.37. She is pissy about this and yells at Nancy and Bobby because she spent her money on her friends and now is not going to be able to buy one of each souvenir at Funland. Mommy  has a chat with her about how the money just slipped through her fingers due to poor record-keeping and overmuch generosity. It's a good lesson in money management skills for Karen, and it doesn't cost Lisa a dime. Win-win.

On the day of the trip to Funland, Karen apologizes and makes up with Bobby and Nancy, and then Karen, Nancy, and Hannie ride all the rides together, play a couple of games and win rubber snakes, and generally have a good time despite not having enough money to buy a ton of souvenirs. While they are there, Karen sees Mr. Beadle again. (The owner of the wallet.) This time he is at Funland with his wife and seven kids. He informs Karen that the money she found was his family's vacation fund, which they are using for one day at Funland and one day at the beach. Karen is appalled by this idea of a poor person vacation, because one day at an amusement park is a mere drop in the bucket of shit she has planned for the summer. She's going to camp later in the year, she's going to the beach for a couple of weeks, she's going to fly out and visit her step-grandparents, and she's recently spent a weekend in New York City. She feels a little guilty for taking his reward money. This to me is the stupidest part of the book, because why would a poor guy with seven kids give out $100 as a reward to a 7-year old in the first place? Seriously. I know poor people. I have some experience in the matter. And after asking around a few people, the MOST any of them said they'd give a kid as a reward for finding $800 was $20. I bet Mr. Beadle's seven kids have never had $100 unless they are old enough to have a job. If they had just made him another random upper-middle-class Stoneybrookite, I could buy giving the large reward, but to make it a guy with seven kids who can barely afford a 2-day vacation just makes the whole thing utterly asinine. But I'm probably overthinking this. Here, have a picture of Karen and her friends riding the T. Rex ride at Funland. Hannie looks way different than usual in this illustration. Also by the way, the curly haired girl next to Andrew in this picture and the ice cream picture is Bobby's little sister Alicia, who is good friends with Andrew.

#69, Get Well Soon, Mallory

This book starts out with the Pike kids picking their stupid Halloween costumes on the day before Halloween. That doesn't seem like a lot of time to create costumes. Because of course nobody in these books can go to the store and buy a costume. They have to make them at home. The triplets decide to be pirates, Vanessa is a gypsy, Nicky is Aladdin, Margo is a princess, and Claire is a ballerina. Mallory being one year older than the triplets is of course FAR too mature to dress up. Stupid Mallory. She decides not to take the kids out trick-or-treating either, because she has been very tired and run down lately. Then she sleeps through the whole night, not even being woken up by the doorbell.

There is more exciting news. Mallory's mom's cousin (thus, Mallory's first cousin once removed) calls and invites the Pike family to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from special bleacher seats. The Pike parents make reservations at a hotel in New York City and the kids are really excited. This particular plot element, of going to New York City to watch the parade, shows up a few more times in BSC books. I know for sure that it's in at least two Little Sister books.

Okay so the Tuesday after Halloween, Mallory wakes up feeling like shit, and her mom takes her to the doctor and Mallory is diagnosed with mononucleosis. AKA glandular fever, in some parts of the world. One of the things I remember about this book is that Mallory's siblings find out that mono is also called "kissing disease" and they tease that Ben Hobart gave it to her, and she loudly protests that she has never kissed Ben. So if you ever wondered just how steamy Mallory and Ben's hot nerd dates were, now you know. On the cover, you see that she is being tended to by her sister and a midget. The pajamas she is wearing are actually described in the book. They are flannel pajamas with lace around the cuffs and collar. In the book it says Mallory's mom described them as "practical, yet feminine." It does not say whether she added, "You know, if you happen to be 900 years old." Because those are old lady pajamas if I ever saw them. Oh also the other thing about this book is that half the shit Mallory says is phrased as "murmured." By the end of this stupid thing, the word murmured had lost all meaning.

This whole book is boring as hell because it's Mallory. Feeling like shit. And being in bed. She'll try to do some math homework and fall asleep, or she'll watch a soap opera and then fall asleep. Or she'll bitch about how boring it is to be stuck in bed, then fall asleep. Don't worry, though, Mallory being confined to bed doesn't stop her parents from asking her to babysit. This is the scene pictured on the cover. I guess that's actually supposed to be Claire and Margo, not Claire and a midget. Anyway even though Mallory is supposed to stay in bed in her old lady pajamas, her mom is like "hey, watch Claire and Margo while I take the other kids to the mall lol," and Mallory's like "woo hoo!" And her mom leaves cheese sandwiches and celery sticks for the girls, and Mallory tells them that all the great nurses ate celery sticks. Clara Barton, Florence Nightingale, and Hot Lips Hoolihan. Yes, those are the three nurses she comes up with. It is the other thing I remember about this book. Then after Mallory's mom gets home with the other kids, Mallory falls asleep.

Meanwhile the Baby Sitters Club has decided they need to have a shindig for the old folks at the old folks' home. For Thanksgiving. They are going to have a carnival and also give each resident a goodie basket. They are having a hard time getting ready for this, because this is one of the books where Dawn is in California and of course Mallory spends most of this book drooling into her pillow. If they're so damn busy with baby-sitting and school and everything else, why did they need to plan something else on top of it? Nobody knows. But the club wants Mallory to help them out by making phone calls for fundraisers and baking and sewing beanbags and shit. Is everyone in this book fucking stupid? Mallory is supposed to stay in bed. Just doing three math problems or reading two chapters of a book exhausts her. And now she's supposed to organize a fundraiser and bake damn cookies? FUCK OFF. SHE IS SICK.

Mallory's parents sit her down for a talk. Or maybe she lies in bed and they talk. Anyway, talking is done. The doctor says that mono hits some people harder than others, and Mallory is one of the unlucky ones, which anyone who has ever read one of these books could tell you. So after Mallory is better, they are going to allow her to go to school, and that's it. No extracurricular activities, no baby-sitting, no BSC. Mallory has to call Kristy and tell her she has to quit the club. She is devastated, in the way only 11-year old girls can be. She says, "This is the worse [sic] thing that has ever happened to me." I almost threw the book in the trash at that point, because misuse of worse/worst is one of my biggest grammatical pet peeves. I restrained myself only because I knew I'd have to rebuy it in the future, for a complete collection and also for the most angsty paragraph of Mallory angst ever:

It was hard to imagine my life without the BSC. No more meetings. No more baby-sitting, or talent shows, or backyard circuses, or group hikes. No more pizza parties. No more fun.

Mallory is a huge drama queen (who by the way does not feel the need to describe a single Claudia outfit)  and she feels a ton of guilt that the club is working so hard and she is stuck in bed, so she decides to try and get kicked out of the club. She is nasty to Jessi and Claudia when they make her a list of shit to do for the fundraiser, and she is rude to Kristy and Mary Anne when they come by to "visit". Which really it seems like their visit is just them checking how she is doing on her assigned list of tasks. And again, FUCK OFF. Oh also when Kristy and Mary Anne come, Mallory has not combed her hair for two days. With her curly hair, I bet that's lovely. 

The club figures out that Mallory is just trying to get kicked out of the club so instead of giving her what she wants, they call and reassure her that they love her and don't want to replace her. They'll muddle through somehow. Mallory is totes inspired by this and decides to get to work on the fundraising. They need to raise a hundred dollars in one night, even though most of the kids in the project have already donated their allowances and done some extra chores. The Pike kids hit on the concept of selling future chores to their parents. Mallory calls up a ton of other kids the club sits for to order them to hit their parents up for 50 cents to do chores at some unspecified point in the future. She starts making these calls at 7:30 and says she has about two hours to make calls. My mom would never have let me call people until 9:30 at night. I don't remember what time it was that our friends couldn't call our house after, but I'm thinking it was 9:00, and that was when we were in like 6th grade. These are grade school kids. Are they all going to even be awake to sell promises at 9 pm? At the end, Mallory's ear aches from talking on the phone so long, and her finger is sore from dialing, but they meet the fundraising goal. Then she falls asleep.

The next day Mallory's parents announce they won't be going to the parade after all, because the doctor is worried that the excitement and activity could cause a relapse. Mallory offers to stay home and the rest of the family could go, but, in a rather uncharacteristic bit of caring about Mallory, her parents refuse and say the whole family will just spend Thanksgiving at home. The rest of the kids are pissed.

While Mallory naps, the club takes a bunch of kids to Costco some unspecified warehouse store that Watson has a membership to. They buy paperback books for the old people baskets, and apples and oranges, and a toy for each old person. The kids are sure the old folks will just love the toys and the sitters think it will be fun. The carnival goes well and the old people and the kids play with the toys together and the book makes it sound like all the old people were just dying for a Mr. Potato Head or a set of jacks, but I'm pretty sure the second the kids left the toys got put aside only to be brought out if a grandkid came to the home to visit. The kids tell her all about it when they get home, then Mallory takes a nap. Then the club and some kids surprise Mallory by bringing the carnival shit to her house. She gets to play the fishing game and wins a cookie, throws a beanbag through a cutout and wins some jellybeans, and wins a cake in the cakewalk. Well really Vanessa wins, but she gives the cake to Mallory.

At the end of the book it is Thanksgiving. The Pike family has a tradition of listening to classical music on Thanksgiving, and they all watch the parade together on TV while deciding which float, balloon, and celebrity they like best. Mallory says that her favorite balloon is Clifford the Big Red Dog. When it's time to eat, Mallory's mother makes her lounge reclining in a lawn chair at the dining room table. Is it just me or does that sound like a recipe for spilling shit all over one's fancy clothes? Mallory wears a blue velvet skirt with matching bolero and white silk blouse. Byron wears maroon corduroy slacks, a yellow shirt, and a blue and yellow sweater. Nobody else's clothes merit a description. After dinner, the whole BSC shows up as a surprise to eat pie with Mallory's family. Dawn even calls from California to say hello. Then Kristy tells Mallory they are going to send out new fliers and wants to know if she should put Mal's name on them. Mal sadly has to tell her no, because she hasn't even gone back to school yet and nobody knows how long it will be before she can babysit again.

Then Mallory takes a nap.

LS #64, Karen's Lemonade Stand

The illustrations in this book are super cute. I wanted to scan them all, but you know. Lazy.

Here's the front cover. Karen is sitting around looking bored with a much curlier side ponytail than usual.  This is another of my ex-library copies, but judging by the date stamps on the back, it was only checked out twice.

This book starts out in the middle of a heat wave. Karen is tired of the heat, and Kristy is worried that the weather will force her to cancel a Krushers practice. Karen decides that she's going to sell lemonade. She makes a pitcher of lemonade. She makes it one glass at a time because she isn't sure how much a quart or a gallon is. Then she takes her pitcher outside and sets up shop. There aren't many people outside. She sells lemonade to Nannie, Sam, Charlie, Hannie, and Linny. She also sells lemonade to some people in a car who stop. Lucky Karen. In all the times I set up a lemonade (or more often, Kool-Aid) stand in my childhood, never once did a car full of people stop and buy five cups. This is part of the reason that I will stop and buy lemonade whenever I see a kid with a stand, even though I hate lemonade. Anyway after three hours of selling lemonade, Karen has a buck fifty to show for it, and she's pretty disappointed, naturally.

It's time for Krushers practice. Here's a picture of Karen batting. Everything about this seems pretty awkward if it's the follow-through on her swing. I guess Kristy has some more coaching to do. Karen gets to first base on an error, but then Hannie strikes out to end the inning. Karen hunts her down after practice and screams at her that she should have tried harder, even though Karen herself dropped two balls in the outfield due to lack of paying attention. Karen is also mean to Andrew when he asks for help tying his shoe. Kristy takes Karen aside to ask her why she's being so mean and Karen explains that she is just frustrated due to slow lemonade sales. Kristy says that Karen can't just wait for customers to come to her, she'll have to figure out where customers will be. Karen apologizes to Hannie and Andrew for her outbursts, explaining that one must be prepared for stuff like that to come out of left field when one is on a baseball diamond. (No she doesn't really use that explanation but she totally should have.)

Karen realizes that the place she's been with the most potential customers is Krushers practice. People are staying in their air-conditioned houses because of the heat, except when they have to go out for things like work or parctices. She decides that she will sell lemonade before the next practice. She lets an adult help her this time so that she doesn't have to make it a glass at a time.

Karen's pre-practice sales are a rousing success. Because apparently her pitcher of lemonade holds a LOT. At the next practice, she even runs over during the practice game to serve customers. By the next practice, Kristy is getting annoyed with Karen's continual running over to sell lemonade, and talks to her about it. Karen decides to quit the softball team and sell lemonade full time. At the next practice, Bobby also sets up a stand, selling chocolate chip cookies, and he also quits the team. Then Hannie quits. Then Nancy.

There's a chapter where Karen goes over to Melody Korman's house to swim in their pool because of the heat wave. This is notable only because of this cute picture of Karen jumping into the water. Then the air conditioner at the Big House breaks, and they spend three days with no a/c while waiting for it to be fixed. It sounds pretty miserable.

Kristy announces that the team will be playing a World Series against the Bashers. Yet again, Kristy does not seem particularly concerned about the definition of the word Series, as it will only be one game. But by now, six kids have quit the team to be full time salespersons. Kristy is kind of sadface about this, because it's going to make it hard to play the game, but this is really what you should expect when you try to start a softball team that is not part of any league and does not charge any fees. If it was a thing the parents were paying for, they'd probably make their kids keep going to practice. If it was part of a standard league, the kids would have more to do than just practice all the time and occasionally play one other team. As it is, they're just going to get bored. Plus, Kristy always says the team is for kids who are too young or not good enough for Little League. Well, if you suck at baseball, it follows that you might not really enjoy playing after a while, because striking out every time isn't fun. So anyway everyone quitting to sell each other random crap is more likely than the team continuing to run like a well oiled machine.

Jackie Rodowsky's dad suggests the kids have a sales fair on a Saturday when they can all set up their tables and sell each other crap. The kids are excited, and spend a lot of time planning. Karen helps Hannie make friendship bracelets to sell on a day when Kristy is babysitting Hannie. Kristy pretty much ignores them and plays with Sari the whole time. Like, she makes Karen and Hannie some lunch, but doesn't sit with them while they eat. It seems a lot more petty than Regular Series Kristy would probably like us to believe.

The sale ends up  having to be postponed because of a big storm. Karen goes with Charlie and Sam to the grocery store to stock up on bread and milk, and there's this adorable picture of Andrew being afraid of the storm, and the power goes out and Karen and Hannie (who spends the night at Karen's house the night of the storm) pretend to be pioneer girls. Which is totally what I would have forced my sister to do when we were kids. The next morning, the kids go walk around to look at the storm damage, and discover that the bleachers at the field where they play softball have been demolished. They decide to donate all of the money from their sales day to rebuild the bleachers. The money raised is not enough, but it is a start, and the sale is successful and fun. The kids decide they miss softball and give up their lemonade and other stands and rejoin the Krushers, then they play the Stoneybrook Non League Softball Championship Game against the Bashers and win, and they are all very happy.

M#2, Beware, Dawn

This mystery is terrible. Not because it's a Dawn book, though that doesn't help. Not because the premise is pretty stupid, though that doesn't help either. No, it's terrible because almost every chapter is about a babysitting job. I know that's supposedly the main focus of these books, but it's really not why I liked reading them. Give me the plots that are all about the girls having boyfriends and vacations with a couple of sitting chapters inserted in such a way that you can skip them and not miss anything.

Here's the cover. How come Dawn never has waist length hair on the covers even though it's always mentioned in the books?

Even the first chapter is a babysitting job. Dawn is babysitting for James, Mathew, and Johnny Hobart while their mom runs errands and Ben and Mallory go on a hot nerd date to the library. She helps Johnny with a find the picture activity in his Highlights for Children magazine while the older two play ball or something with some neighbor kids, including Zach and Mel. As previously mentioned, Zach and Mel are only friends with the Hobart kids, not anybody else in the neighborhood. While the kids are playing, Dawn notices that Mel is calling the Hobart kids names (Croc is his insult of choice. Like Crocodile Dundee, the book explains. It feels contrived.) Dawn mentions this to Mrs. Hobart when she gets home.

At the club meeting, Dawn doesn't describe anyone's outfit. See? I told you that this is a terrible book. Then we get another chapter of her babysitting. She babysits Kristy's younger siblings. The kids want a snack, and she gets out a box of Cheez-Its, which she manages to do without making any snotty comments about their lack of organic ingredients. This book must have been before Dawn became Super Militant Dawn. She hands the box to Karen and tells her to take some and pass it, but Karen tells her that they like to eat their crackers in bowls. I approve of this, because pouring crackers into bowls is a lot more sanitary than letting four kids stick their grubby hands in and contaminate the whole lot. Mind you this is one of my personal hangups and I don't judge you if you reach your hands into bags of chips and boxes of crackers. But I'm not going to share them with you either. Then the kids have a slow eating contest with the crackers and Karen yaps about how her goldfish are getting pretend married. Dawn is thinking how it's nice to have a relaxing job where the kids are mostly entertaining themselves. But then David Michael comes in and takes her picture and tells her that there is a Sitter of the Month contest and Jamie Newton's mom is going to help with the voting and they're going to send the winning sitter's picture to the newspaper. And since this is Stoneybrook, the newspaper will probably publish it, too.

Dawn decides that she needs to really liven up the sitting job by playing a fun game with the kids. She chooses to play Let's All Come In. Frankly I am surprised I've done this many recaps without this game coming up. It's a game Karen Brewer invented. The premise is that the kids dress up in various outfits and pretend to be checking into a hotel. I'm not saying I wouldn't have played it but it doesn't sound all that fun either. Just dressing up and checking into a hotel? Yeah. I read somewhere (either Ann M. Martin's biography or one of those letters to the reader in the back of one of the books) that Let's All Come In was a game invented by her father and aunt when they were kids and the younger one had to play the crappy parts like being someone's dog. Just like Andrew does in the books.

David Michael doesn't want to play because the game sucks and is boring, but Dawn convinces him to join in and she invents new characters for him to play. Bruce Stringbean the rock star, Darryl Blueberry the baseball player, and Dawn herself dresses up as Ladonna the rock star. I am mostly surprised that Dawn has any idea who Bruce Springsteen, Darryl Strawberry, and Madonna are to make characters based on them. They seem far too modern. Not that I'm complaining.

At the club meeting, the girls are all feeling pretty competitive about the Sitter of the Month contest. They talk it over and decide not to go overboard trying to show each other up, although not till after Kristy makes some snide comments to Dawn for daring to add new characters to Karen's game.

In the next chapter Dawn babysits for Jenny and Andrea Prezzioso. It's pretty boring. There's only so much description of getting a baby ready for bed and then watching a four year old color that one can handle without eyes glazing over. After the kids are in bed, Dawn writes a letter to Jeff.

"Dearest Little Bro," I wrote. "What's up? What's fresh? Everything's cool back here in Stoneybrook. What's happening out there in sunny Cal?" 

That was better.  

I told Jeff the latest news about the neighborhood and about our mother. "Mom actually cleaned out the refrigerator the other day," I wrote. (Our mom isn't the world's best housekeeper.) "Guess what she found? That G.I. Joe you lost while you were visiting."

Two things. First of all, I hope Jeff and Dawn, despite being fictional characters, kept the letters they wrote to each other, because it would be fun to have them to look back at and remember the days when you wrote things like "What's fresh?" in all seriousness. Secondly. Why the hell was the G.I. Joe in the refrigerator in the first place? Did Jeff put it there and forget? Did Sharon find it lying around somewhere and absently hide it behind the sprouts? And most of all, how does a man who alphabetizes the soup cans have a refrigerator in enough of a state that you can hide a G.I. Joe in it?

There is a weird phone call where the caller just hangs up (ah, 1991. Caller ID would make this book so much shorter.) and then after the kids are in bed, the doorbell rings and Dawn finds a creepy note on the front step. It's made of cut out letters from newspapers and signed "Mr. X."

The very next page finds Dawn babysitting for the Rodowsky family. There is another hangup phone call and another creepy note. The Rodowsky kids are older and they notice that something's going on and they see the note. Dawn tries to play it off like it's nothing. Then she remembers the plot of Claudia and the Phantom Phone calls and decides it must be Alan Gray playing pranks on her. She calls his house, but his mother answers and says he's been at a basketball game with his dad all evening, so Dawn is back to square one. She decides not to mention Mr X to the other sitters because she is afraid it will cause her to lose the contest.

The next chapter has Jessi babysitting for Becca and Squirt. Again there's like a whole page description of Jessi getting the baby ready for bed. Becca talks her into watching a scary movie after Squirt is in bed. The description of the movie sounds really stupid, but apparently it terrifies Becca. Then after Jessi shuts the movie off in the middle and sends Becca to bed, there is a hang up phone call and a note from Mr X. She also decides not to tell the other sitters.

The next chapter has Mary Anne and Mallory babysitting for the gross Pike kids. They are eating spaghetti for dinner, and they are all being stupid with it. All of them want their spaghetti served in different ways because the Pike kids like to be annoying as hell. Oh but when I say all of them, I of course mean that the triplets all want theirs in cereal bowls because heaven forbid that Adam should eat his out of a mixing bowl and Jordan put his in the blender and drink it through a straw. They are triplets, so they have to want the same things. After the meal gets over, there is a ring of the doorbell and a note from Mr X.

Mary Anne tries to hide the note but the kids see it and proceed to be stupid with their hamster for the rest of the chapter. They take it out of its cage and put it in a shoebox and keep moving the shoebox to different spots. As though none of them are aware that hamsters can chew through cardboard. Also the hamster gets loose twice and breaks for freedom, but alas, escape is but a dream. Mary Anne and Mal decide not to tell the rest of the club about Mr. X.

The next chapter is another damn babysitting chapter. Kristy babysits for the Korman kids on Friday the 13th. Nothing mysterious happens and there is no visit from Mr. X. When Kristy gets there, Skylar the 1.5 year old is napping. Then she shrieks and Kristy gets her up. They go downstairs to the kitchen and Kristy makes hot chocolate and then the kids play a game and then it is time to get ready for bed. So, I guess Skylar was napping at 7 pm? And after getting up, is ready for bed at 8 or 8:30 or whatever? It just seems weird.

There is finally a chapter where nobody is babysitting. They have a club meeting and talk about Mr. X. Dawn suspects Kristy might be Mr. X because nothing happened when she was sitting, but she doesn't say anything. Kristy isn't dumb. If she was going to do this Mr. X shit why wouldn't she say she'd gotten a note or a phone call? Dawn's reasoning for suspecting Kristy is that she might want to win the sitter of the book contest. I don't understand why the contest results would be jeopardized by the actions of outside persons, but I am not one of the people voting, either.

The next chapter is right back to the babysitting bullshit. Claudia babysits for Charlotte Johanssen and they take turns reading out loud to each other from a chapter book. I bet listening to Claudia read out loud is excruciating, I'm just saying. There is a hangup call and then a doorbell, but no note this time. Instead, someone has covered the porch with a couple of cans of baked beans. Claudia and Charlotte hose them off into the bushes. Gross.

Then in the next chapter, Dawn freaking babysits AGAIN. This time for Jamie Newton, who spills the beans that Mel Tucker is doing "secret babysitting checks". Dawn decides that Mel must be Mr. X. She and the rest of the club spread a story that Dawn will be babysitting a cousin from out of town at her house, and the night of the fake job, they set up to catch Mr. X, assuming he will use the secret passage to try to scare her, which he does, and it does turn out to be Mel Tucker, who is mad at all the babysitters because he got grounded for two months because Dawn tattled to Mrs. Hobart that he was calling her kids Crocs. So he has been making creepy letters and phone calls, and sneaking out to leave the letters when the sitters are babysitting. That's...pretty disturbed, really. Mel Tucker's parents say they are going to take him to a psychiatrist. And Dawn goes home and the club has a pizza party sleepover, but it is too little, too late as far as non-sitting portions of this book are concerned. Oh and then at the end we find out the entire club tied in the Sitter of the Month contest. I bet Mrs. Newton fudged the numbers a little, just to save Mallory's self-esteem.

LS #42, Karen's Pizza Party

Stoneybrook is a weird place. The book starts out with one of Ms. Colman's surprising announcements. Apparently a bunch of repair work and painting was supposed to have been done at the school over the summer, but it didn't get finished for unknown reasons. So the teachers all got together and took a vote and decided not to wait for the next summer to repair the classrooms. Instead, each classroom will be closed for about a week to be painted and whatnotted. During this time, the kids will work in the cafeteria, but Ms. Colman needs someone to get permission to take Hootie the class guinea pig home for that week. Of course Karen volunteers. Ms. Colman says anyone who gets permission to take Hootie home should bring in a note from their parents. She puts all the notes into a bowl and draws one out. Karen is the lucky winner. Raise your hand if you are surprised by this. Nobody? Okay, moving on.

Karen goes downtown with Hannie and her mother and as they pass by Pizza Express, Karen sees a sign in the window saying that they are having a drawing for the Pizza King or Queen. They go in to inquire as to what this contest is all about.

It turns out that Pizza Express runs the most ill-conceived advertising campaign in the history of ever. See, every month, they draw a name out of a barrel of entries and the winning child gets to be the Pizza King or Queen for a month. And you're thinking, well, that's not really so bad. But no, it's not just that they get to have their picture taken and put on the wall. They get a thousand bucks cash and get their photo on a billboard and shoot a TV commercial. Which seems like an awful lot of money to spend every single month. And what if the child picked out of the barrel is ugly or bad at acting? (Yes, all children are beautiful. No, I wouldn't chance picking one out of a barrel to advertise my product.)  I don't know. Maybe their advertising budget has to be that extreme to keep up with competition, but as far as I can tell, Pizza Express is the only pizza place in Stoneybrook. Karen and Hannie fill out a ton of entry forms.

On Pizza King Or Queen crowning day, the store is full of children milling around waiting to see if their name will be drawn. Last month's pizza king, whose name is Rodney, is there. So Karen's name gets picked out of the barrel (yeah I'll wait a minute for you to make the surprised face) and she goes up and they take the crown off of Rodney and give it to her and she's all excited.

Then that weekend, Karen gets to go make her commercial. She is crowned Pizza Queen, and then also she sits at a table and has to say, "Mmm, this is the best pizza ever." It sounds like a shitty commercial. It also sounds very short. I guess maybe they have other filler of their monthly specials or whatever that they can add without having to try and get a full 15 or 30 second spot out of a child randomly chosen from a barrel of entry forms.

The next day Karen goes to a photo shoot. There are four photographers and bunch of assistants milling around. They ask if she wants anything to drink and she asks for apple juice for her and her friends, because Hannie and Nancy came with her. Then later in the day, she asks if she and her friends can have some ginger ale, and Daddy frowns at her. I don't understand why. She's been under studio lights for hours at this point, and was even thoughtful enough to remember that her friends might be thirsty. Is asking for two drinks in one afternoon really a frown-worthy offense?

Then of course Karen manages to lose my goodwill on the very next page. It's the car ride home, and she announces that she is tired and wants Hannie to sit on Nancy's lap so that she can lie down in the backseat. (Ah, 1993, when second graders did not have booster seats, and apparently Karen's family didn't care much about seat belts either.) Daddy tells Karen that he knows she worked hard, but she is acting like a brat and it needs to stop. Hannie mutters, "I'll say." She is probably wondering why nobody told Karen that some 40 books ago.

Karen decides that she is going to wear the fucking crown to school every day for a month. For some reason, her mother doesn't have a problem with this, and her teacher doesn't make her take it off and leave it in the cloakroom during the day. (Does anyone still know what I'm talking about when I say cloakroom? I don't think Karen's school had lockers. Maybe I should have said "leave it in her cubby." At any rate my point is, Ms. Colman lets her wear the stupid thing.) As we are reminded in every one of these books, Karen's teacher makes her sit in the front row because she is an obnoxious pain in the ass wears glasses. So all the kids who sit behind her probably can't even see the board because of the crown.

There is a chapter where Karen has to spend a weekend soliciting donations to help the homeless and then attend a pizza party for a kindergarten kid who gets to meet the Pizza Queen for his birthday. Today is my birthday. I met no royalty, temporary or otherwise. I don't think it would have made my day any better, I'm just saying.

Karen's classmates ask her if she can get them free pizza, she assures them that she can, and she proceeds to act like she's the most important person in the entire world because her name got drawn out of a barrel. She keeps wearing the crown, she starts wearing sunglasses to school, she gives autographs to kindergarten kids. As you know, everybody getting pissed off at Karen and her having to make up with them is a well-used plot in these books, so, yeah, that's pretty much what happens. Karen is annoying, her friends get pissed, Mommy says she can't ask for free pizza for her friends, her friends say she's a liar who doesn't keep her promises, and then a newspaper reporter and the pizza store owner come to her class to do an interview and ask some of her classmates what it was like going to school with the Pizza Queen.

Are you fucking kidding me? What the hell kind of newspaper...you know what, never mind. There are some things about Stoneybrook that I will never understand, like kite stores and newspaper articles about a monthly promotion. I'm not going to put too much thought into it lest I have an aneurysm.

Anyway while they're there, using up valuable educational time that could have been used for learning, someone asks about free pizza. The pizza store owner is confused, of course, but that evening he calls Karen and tells her that she can have a pizza party for her friends on Friday after school. She goes in the next day all, "SUBJECTS! GATHER ROUND! I told you I could get you free pizza, and free pizza ye shall have! Friday, after school, because I am just that awesome, we shall have free pizza, because I have arranged for it to be so!"

Karen goes to the bathroom and while she is in a stall she hears some of the other kids talk about how they don't want to come to her pizza party because she is being a pain in the ass. For the first time in the book she shows some self awareness and stops wearing her crown and apologizes to the other kids, and they all come to her pizza party, which would probably have been more of a surprise if the front cover and title hadn't given it away. Then finally it is time for her to go to Pizza Express and give up her crown to the next winner, who turns out to be Natalie Springer. Poor Natalie. She won't even get to be obnoxious about being the Pizza Queen for a week, because Karen used up any and all goodwill the class had toward Pizza Royalty.

Oh and the subplot. Remember up at the beginning I told you Karen got to care for the class rodent for a week while her classroom was being fixed up? Well, the day after she gets it home, it gets loose, and she doesn't want to tell anyone because she was supposed to be totally responsible for it. She just keeps the door to her room closed and tries to discreetly search for it. Luckily for the guinea pig, it doesn't get eaten by the cat or dog. Karen's mother finds it behind the refrigerator and Karen gets a lecture about how if a person or rodent is in danger, telling an adult is always the safest choice. Someone should probably tell this to the Baby-Sitters Club, what with their tendency to not tell adults anything because they think they can handle it.

Mystery #31, Mary Anne and the Music Box Secret

The book opens with Mary Anne handing Sharon her car keys, which were in the bread box. Perhaps it's because I do not own a bread box (I bought one at a yard sale once but it smelled like mold when I got it home so I never wanted to use it) but I do not understand why Sharon puts so many inappropriate objects in it. Really, car keys? If they're not in the right spot, look wherever you went first when you got home. Does Sharon grab a slice of bread upon getting home? She even says she should have known to look there. Richard says if she had, they would have been in the bathroom cabinet or her underwear drawer. Really? Then Mary Anne says that her dad hangs his keys on the key rack every night and alphabetizes the cans of Campbell's soup in the cupboard. Sometimes the "ha-ha Sharon is scatterbrained" stuff is less weird than the "ha-ha Richard has OCD" stuff. Although if you're going to arrange Campbell's soup, alphabetizing isn't the worst thing. At least if you alphabetize other people can follow your system if they're so inclined. Nobody will ever know where the soups go if you do it by primary ingredient or how much you personally like each flavor.

A few pages later, Mary Anne mentions that Sharon doesn't eat meat and her dad won't knowingly eat tofu but Sharon sneaks it into casseroles sometimes. That feels pretty disrespectful. Richard is a grown adult who has the right to choose what to eat. I'm sure Sharon would be furious (and with good reason) if he snuck things into her food.

I should mention right up front that I don't care for this book. I think it's boring and trite. I have been told that my recaps are better when I don't like the books, so maybe this one will be enjoyable. That being said, here's the cover. It has a clearance sticker, but it's one of the ones I bought online to finish off my collection, so I paid more than the sticker says. Mary Anne looks cute in this picture, but I'm pretty grossed out by the fact that she's kneeling in stagnant water. I think. This book involves cleaning a basement after a flood and that may be a bluish floor but it looks like water to me.

Sharon's parents are going on a cruise to celebrate their anniversary. Mary Anne, Richard, and Sharon go to the ship to see them off. Granny and Pop-Pop's good friends Esther and Hank are also there. Mary Anne tells us that Hank is always a pessimist and it sounds like she's spent some time around him. This confuses me a bit since Granny and Pop-Pop were barely mentioned after the first Dawn book. I guess maybe they came to Richard and Sharon's wedding, but I don't remember them being there. Apparently in between babysitting and solving mysteries and dating Logan and going to school dances but being too shy to dance, Mary Anne has been bonding with Dawn's grandparents and their friends.

Right after Granny and Pop-Pop go on their cruise, a water pipe or something bursts at their house, flooding their basement. Sharon calls them on a shipboard phone and they give her permission to take care of it so they don't have to cut their lovely anniversary cruise short. Sharon hires a contractor to replace some things, and a plumber to fix the whatever, and enlists Mary Anne's help too. She and Mary Anne start out by carrying things upstairs so they won't get further water damage and so they can sort what they need to save. Mary Anne notices a loose piece of paneling and behind it she finds a wrapped package with YOU WILL BE CURSED IF YOU OPEN THIS AND PLUS YOU WILL HAVE A REALLY BORING BOOK WRITTEN ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE. THINK OF THE CHILDREN. PLEASE, THINK OF THE CHILDREN written on it. She rationalizes that if she doesn't open the mystery package, whatever's in it will stay damp and probably rot and mold and be ruined, so she takes it home and opens it. It's a lovely music box. They talk to Granny again via the shipboard phone and she tells Mary Anne she doesn't know anything about a music box.

Mary Anne decides that the box must have belonged to whoever lived in the house before Granny and Pop-Pop and she tries to find out who it might have been. She also starts having dreams about a sad looking "sailor boy". Mary Anne is thirteen and the sailor in her dreams is 19-ish. I don't know why she refers to him as a boy. I mean Sailor Man is way too Popeye but she could just say sailor. She finds a secret compartment in the music box and inside she finds a picture of the sailor she's been dreaming about. He is standing next to a girl whose face has been cut out of the picture, who is wearing a bracelet with stars on it. Claudia, who has taken photography courses, attempts to ENHANCE PICTURE, but they learn nothing new.

We find out that Granny grew up in the house next door to the one they now live in, and she loved the neighborhood so much that she insisted on buying a house in the neighborhood when she got married. Mary Anne reads some of Granny's old letters, possibly under the premise of drying them out. I had lost interest by this point. Granny wrote to her cousin about the girl next door and her romantic love story, and Mary Anne draws the conclusion that the girl next door was the box's original owner. I get that there wasn't internet and long distance calls were crazy expensive when Granny was a kid, but I don't really know why she would spend so much time writing letters to her cousin about the next door neighbor's teenage romance.

White Collar did a story arc about a music box, and I have to say, they did it way better.

Oh also Mary Anne and the rest of the club are suspicious of the work crew because they seem to be meddling around in areas they have no reason to be working in. They know from Granny's letters that the owner of the house got fired for stealing from the bank he was president of, so they decide the money must be buried in the backyard and the work crew magically knows this because they are psychic. The club tries to set a trap to see who is trying to find the stolen money. They stand around loudly saying that they dug up a metal box and isn't that mysterious. Then they hear someone digging and it is the father of one of the work crew, who has been hanging around being a creeper, and now thinks the stolen cash may be buried under a crabapple tree. He grabs a shovel and starts digging and nobody objects to this. He digs up a metal box that has some worthless papers in it, because of freaking course there would actually be a buried box. Everyone is disappointed that they don't actually get stolen bank money. Maybe it is just me but if I heard that someone got fired from a bank they worked at for stealing, I would think "embezzlement" and not "box of cash". They decide that there was probably never really any money buried and it was just a story.

When Granny and Pop-Pop return from their cruise, Sharon throws them a surprise party for their anniversary. She lends Mary Anne a bracelet with stars on it that looks awfully familiar to Mary Anne. Granny sees the bracelet and reveals to Mary Anne that it was given to her along with the jewelry box by her first love, Frank, who died in WWII. She has kept it a secret all these years because I don't know, maybe Pop-Pop is a jealous asshole who would not want her to have a gift given her by a sailor who died in the war. She was the one who hid the box when they moved into the house. So apparently Granny, as a married damn adult, was the one who wrote YOU WILL BE CURSED as a way to keep people out of the box which was hidden away in her own home. Granny says Mary Anne can keep the box if she keeps Granny's secret. Also when Mary Anne says "The box really is beautiful," Granny replies with, "You opened it despite the horrible warning?"

Well, yes, you senile old bag, she asked you about it about 150 boring pages ago, and if you'd said then that it was yours, you would have saved me from reviewing this book, and for that I will never forgive you.

Oh also at Granny and Pop-Pop's anniversary party, Mary Anne and Logan fill up a huge plate of food from the buffet to share instead of each getting what they want, and due to my food issues, I seriously gagged reading that part. Gross.

In the "Stoneybrook Parents are Morons" category we have Mrs. DeWitt. If you don't remember or didn't get this far in the series, I'll remind you that the Barrett family of Buddy, Suzie, and Marnie became a large blended family when their mother married Franklin DeWitt, who has sole custody of his four young children: Lindsey, Taylor, Madeline, and Ryan. Their mother is never mentioned. I do not like the Barrett/DeWitt family probably because it just stresses me out to read about all those kids and the chaos they create. In this book the family is having an addition built onto their house.  You see, none of the kids wanted to move away from Stoneybrook when the parents married, but most houses were out of their price range, so they ended up in a small house that didn't have room for everyone. Then the kids were stressed and fighting because they were so crowded, so their parents pulled money out of thin air to build a large addition onto the house they could barely afford in the first place. They planned to do a few bedrooms but the kids threw a fit and demanded to have two large rooms so they could all share, and since apparently you should let your kids dictate where you live and what kind of addition you should build, their parents went for it. So this is the book where they have work crews in building the actual addition. Mary Anne and Abby show up for a sitting job for the seven kids, and instead of saying "Take the kids to the park to get out of the work crew's way," Mrs. DeWitt casually announces that she has told the kids they can invite friends over, so three of the Pike kids and all three of the Kuhn kids are coming over.

What. The. Hell.

So Mary Anne and Abby call Claudia and Mallory to also come over, so now we have four sitters and thirteen children, giving us a total of seventeen kids aged thirteen and younger milling around while the contractor tries to work. The contractor is really nice to them and suggests the kids go play in the shed out back working with scrap lumber on the beginnings of a playhouse. Seventeen people in a shed, really? The book says all the kids really get into working on the playhouse. I totally believe this, because Marnie Barrett and Ryan DeWitt who are both two years old probably have a clear idea what's going on and are thrilled to work on the playhouse.

A few chapters later, Claudia babysits the brats sproggen children again with Stacey.

Claudia had on her favorite painters' pants. They used to be white, but she's worn them during so many art projects that they are now splattered with paint in every color of the rainbow. To complement the pants, Claudia wore a tie-dyed shirt she made herself that features a huge yellow peace sign surrounded by starbursts of orange, red, and purple. She also had on her red high-top sneakers, and she had braided her hair in two pigtails, tied with purple ribbons, to keep it tidy and out of the way.

The kids are excitedly working on their playhouse again. Apparently Eddie the contractor has been helping them out and leaving them wood cut to the right lengths. There is only one problem, when they go to move the finished playhouse out of the shed, it is too big to fit through the door.

The Barrett/DeWitt family has a housewarming party to celebrate the completion of the new addition, and at the end, it is revealed that Eddie the contractor disassembled the playhouse, took it outside, and reassembled it, so the kids don't have to go in the shed to play in their playhouse. And they get a bunch of presents from the neighbors like an easel and beautiful rugs to decorate their new addition. Good for them, I guess. Being really crowded in a small house does suck.

LS #2, Karen's Roller Skates

Much like the regular series, the Little Sister books were better at the beginning, before ghostwriters and endless years of the same grade stretched the plots to the point of complete impossibility.

Karen has gotten a pair of roller skates. They are red with yellow wheels. On the third page of the book she describes the outfit she likes to wear while she skates, which is pretty much what is pictured on the cover, except the cover shows elbow pads which aren't on the list and doesn't show wrist guards which are. Foreshadowing! She's going to Daddy's house for the weekend, because the early books are pretty much all set during the weekends she is at her dad's. Later on, when it switches to being one month at each house, I think there are actually more plots where she's mostly at her mom's.

Karen gets up on Saturday morning and goes outside to skate. First she and Andrew take the dog for a walk while he rides his trike and Karen roller skates. Then Karen sets up a couple of coffee cans on the sidewalk and jumps over them. She successfully does this trick, then loses her balance while turning around, falls, and breaks her wrist. Daddy and Kristy take her to the hospital. Elizabeth tries to make Kristy babysit Andrew and David Michael so she can go to the hospital, but Kristy refuses and insists on going.

There are a couple of chapters of hospital stuff, where it is confirmed that Karen's wrist is broken, and she gets a cast and a sling. Then when they get home, Karen makes her dad carry her inside because she is too tired and her wrist hurts. Her brothers set her up a little sick nest on the couch in the den, and Elizabeth brings her lunch on a tray, and she calls and talks to Mommy. But later when she orders Andrew and David Michael to fetch her coloring book and wants to eat on the couch again, everyone tells her no.

FOOLS! YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS! YOU WILL PAY!

Is it just me or does Karen have a tiny right arm in this picture?

The next day Karen gets up and is feeling pretty chipper. She puts on her clothes herself, even though it takes her forever one-handed. She bounces downstairs and makes herself toast. Then she is pissed off when Daddy refuses to let her go roller skating even though she is clearly capable of doing absolutely everything. She has to go back to the hospital for a follow-up. While she's there she sees Ricky Torres, who is in her class. He has broken his ankle by falling down the stairs. Falling down the stairs always makes me think "code for abusive situation" but I suppose he could have fallen down the stairs. Cliches have to start somewhere.

Ricky has already gotten a bunch of people to sign his cast, and Karen decides that she has to get more and better signatures. Ricky is even going to have a baseball player's signature, because the player is a friend of his dad's. The player is apparently famous enough that Karen has heard of him, because when Ricky says by Monday he will have Hubert Gregory's signature, she replies, "The baseball player?"

So when Karen gets home, she rushes off to force all her family and neighbors to sign her cast so she can show it off to her classmates. I think Karen might get more attention if she went to school with lots of space for her classmates to sign instead of filling it all up with her family's signatures, but I'm obviously  not wise to the politics of Ms. Colman's second grade. Also when Karen is talking to Ricky and then when she is going around getting signatures she keeps telling exaggerated lies about how she broke her wrist. First she makes it four coffee cans she jumped over, then five, then seven while doing a double twist in the air, then it's seventeen coffee cans and helicopters and ambulances. I don't know why she expects anyone to believe any of this. Particularly since her neighbors might have noticed helicopters. Andrew keeps trying to tell people that Karen is a lying liar who lies, but nobody pays him much attention because in the beginning of the series Andrew was quiet and shy. Finally he yells and tells the real story and Karen stops making up ridiculous and annoying lies.

While Karen is asking everyone if they know someone famous to sign her cast, Hannie's mother says she knows the mayor. Karen asks if he can sign the cast and Hannie's mom says that he's out of town that weekend. This is interesting only because in every other mention of the mayor in this series, she is a woman. Apparently there was an election soon after this book.

Karen gets an autograph from the ice cream truck driver. She is a little disappointed to find out that his name is not actually Mr. Tastee. She wants some more special autographs, so she makes Hannie go over to Mrs. Porter's house with her so she can have a witch's autograph.

You can almost hear her thinking, "What does that little brat want NOW?"

She signs the cast and that is when we find out that Mrs. Porter's first name is Tabitha. Karen thinks it's a witchy name, possibly because Bewitched is suitably old enough for Stoneybrook kids to watch. I don't think Tabitha is a witch name but perhaps I'm just in denial since I have a cousin with that name.

Mommy comes to pick the kids up and on the way home she announces that her friend Amy Morris is in town and can sign Karen's cast. Karen says, "Amy Morris? The movie star?" Karen thinks it's funny that she went looking for a famous autograph and couldn't find one, then when she stopped looking, one fell into her lap. They continue home to the little house, with Karen secure in the knowledge that her cast will beat Ricky's cast in the next day's popularity contest.

Amy Morris will never be mentioned again.

#3, The Truth About Stacey

The truth about Stacey is that she has diabetes. Sorry if that spoils the book for you. It shouldn't, though, because this is one of the better books in the series in my opinion. I'd say that it's in my top five.

Here's the original cover. It's not my scan, because I don't have this one in the original cover. Stacey is hanging out at the candy store with shy little Charlotte Johanssen. This is the first book where she and Charlotte make friends. You remember I told you in my Boy-Crazy Stacey writeup that in fanfiction, Byron is always the gay triplet? Well, another super popular pairing in fanfiction is Stacey/Charlotte. I am not sure if there's anything in the books that particularly supports this. I guess it just seems like an easy coming-of-age pairing without going the "Kristy likes sports so she's obvs into girls" route.

The book starts out with a BSC meeting. The girls are trying to come up with a plan to help Mrs. Newton out by watching Jamie when she has her baby. They do not stop to wonder whether Mrs. Newton might have already made arrangements, because they are 12-year old girls and they are very excited about the new baby. It's pretty cute really. Then Janine comes rushing in with a flier for a rival baby-sitting club, the Baby-Sitters Agency, run by two girls named Liz and Michelle. It has older sitters who can stay out much later, and the girls are super upset and sure that they are doomed.

Kristy calls to set up a sitter to see how the rival club works, and it is one of the most memorable scenes in the book. She says that her name is Candy Kane and she is calling for a sitter for her brother because she has a date. When Liz asks who the date is with, Kristy ad-libs that it is with Winston Churchill, who is in high school and plays football. Liz seems more interested in "Candy's" date than in the actual sitting job.

Stacey is pretty upset when she goes home and doesn't have much of an appetite, and her mom nags her and accuses her of snacking at Claudia's house. Then she announces that Stacey will be going to a special doctor in New York City at the beginning of December. Stacey's Uncle Eric (who as far as I know is never mentioned ever again) saw him on a television program and supposedly he is working miracles. Stacey is pissed. She almost failed sixth grade because of missing so much school being dragged to various doctors because her parents were looking for a miracle cure, and now seventh grade is looking the same.

Kristy calls an emergency meeting and presents a bunch of ideas to keep their clients in the face of older sitters who can stay out longer, but some of them, like doing housework and lowering their rates across the board, are rejected. The ones they do adopt are special deals for their best customers and bringing Kid-Kits to each job. These are Kristy's idea of a box filled with toys and stuff for the sitters to bring with them for the kids to play with during sitting jobs. If you are not clear on the concept of a Kid-Kit, don't worry, it will be explained to you in every single book that follows this one, so, 128 regular series books, 15 super specials, 36 mysteries, and 4 super mysteries. If you are not clear on the concept of a Kid-Kit after 183 more explanations, I do not think there's anything I can do for you.

The next chapter is the one depicted on the cover, where Stacey sits for Charlotte Johanssen and they walk downtown and look at the sweets in Polly's Fine Candy. On the way home, some kids at the playground yell insults at Charlotte like, "Teacher's pet!" and Charlotte doesn't want to talk about it. Which is pretty understandable really. Stacey mentions to Charlotte that she used to get teased by her ex-best friend, Laine, but doesn't really want to give details to a 7-year old. Then Charlotte is given a balloon by Liz Lewis, who is out promoting the Baby-Sitters Agency, and Stacey is pretty upset.

Here's the new cover version picture, which depicts the same scene as the original, but with new artwork. Personally I think Stacey and Charlotte both look cuter on the old cover.

Mrs.  Newton has the baby, and Stacey and Kristy throw a Big Brother party for Jamie while his mom is in the hospital. Jamie is upset and tells them that his mom is going to hire older sitters to take care of the new baby. Kristy is really mad about this and decides the club needs to find some new members, older ones. She finds two eighth-grade girls who can sit later, but they turn out to be spies for the Agency. Both of them accept one sitting job and just never show up for it, which also hurts the BSC.

Stacey baby-sits for Jamie Newton, who expects her to just ignore him like his new sitters have been doing. He also shows her a hole in a chair that one of his sitters made with a cigarette. Then Stacey baby-sits for Charlotte again. One of the girls in Charlotte's class is the younger sister of one of Char's new sitters, and told her that her sister doesn't like her and only sits for money. Charlotte thinks Stacey is only pretending to be her friend because her parents pay Stacey to sit. Stacey reminds her that she invited her to Jamie's Big Brother party, and nobody paid her for that.  She encourages Charlotte to talk to her parents if she is unhappy with her sitters.

A day or two later, as the BSC are walking home from school, they come across Jamie Newton playing outside by himself, with no hat or mittens, near the street. He says his sitter told him he could play outside. The girls don't want to be tattletales, and they're not sure if they should say anything to Mrs. Newton, so they decide to talk to their parents and get some advice. What a great idea! If only they kept this up throughout the series. After talking to her mom, Stacey thinks they need to talk to Mrs. Newton, who is shocked that her sitter let a 3-year old play outside unsupervised. She says she's going to stop using most of the sitters the agency found for her, and she's also going to call some other parents.

Meanwhile, Stacey's parents have been moving full speed ahead with their plans to take Stacey to a holistic doctor in New York City. Stacey gets Dr. Johanssen to secretly make an appointment for her with a well respected doctor. The holistic doctor orders a bunch of expensive tests and suggests enrolling Stacey in private school. The not-a-quack doctor says it looks like Stacey's diabetes is being treated appropriately already. Stacey doesn't want to leave her new friends at SMS, and her parents agree to stop dragging her to doctors.

The trip to New York City was awkward for Stacey anyway, because they stayed with the Cummings family, and Stacey had to share a room with her ex-best friend Laine. They talk and patch things up though, and by the end of the book are friends again.

At the very end of this book we find out that Charlotte will be skipping into third grade after Christmas. Charlotte skipping a grade is like the number one thing the ghostwriters screwed up later on.

The graphic novel cover. I highly recommend the graphic novelizations of the books. There are four of them, for books one, three, four, and seven. The artist did a great job with them.

At the end of the book, the Baby-Sitters Agency falls apart because the sitters they were finding just weren't that great. Kristy and company will forever afterward be the one and only baby-sitting service in Stoneybrook.

Little Sister Playground Games

I found this book at a thrift store today and didn't already have it and it was only a quarter, so I bought it, along with a few other books. My sister and her kids were with me and her kids are remarkably patient while I look through every book on the shelf just in case there's a hidden gem. Another thrift store had a bunch of regular little sister titles but I haven't made a purse-sized list of what I need to replace due to icky covers or just being in poor shape so I left them all there for some other lucky person.

The first thing I noticed about this book is that nothing is written on the This Book Belongs To ______ line on the first page, but there is a name carefully written on the inside front cover. The little girl who owned it wasn't taking any chances on someone being able to rip out the first page and claim the book for their own. Next I noticed that the inside illustrations were not done by the usual LS illustrator.

Anyway the entire reason I am actually posting about this book is that it made me wonder who the market is for novelty books like this. Apparently it came with a ball originally. Is it Little Sister fans who beg their mom for tangentially related books? Is it kids who don't know any games to play on the playground? Is it worn down parents who think giving a book of games to the kids might make them play outside for a while? Then on the inside just so you never forget that you are reading a LS book, every game has to have a little paragraph about how Karen and her friends like the game. Hannie likes to use things around Stoneybrook when they play their version of Pictionary, but Nancy likes to use movie titles. Remember when Karen went to Shadow Lake and didn't like skiing? Well here are instructions for freeze tag! It just seems like the book is trying a little too hard. I don't even know. And some of the games, well...

If you don't feel like clicking for big, I will tell you that this game is looking for shapes in clouds. But what makes it a game is that it is for two players and you take turns. I am not sure how you keep score, but seriously? Looking at cloud shapes is a game now, not just something you do?

All things considered, I think I'd rather have the quarter instead of this book.

LS #76, Karen's Magic Garden

This book has a plot that is really obviously something that is happening in a book. I don't know if that makes any sense, but that's how it comes across. Sometimes Karen has realistic adventures, like breaking her wrist roller-skating, and sometimes, well, there are books like these.

It is an ex-library copy, but the front cover isn't in too bad of shape. There are due date stamps and random crap on the back cover though.

Mommy's family is totally having a family reunion, and they will be traveling to Maine, which is apparently where Lisa grew up. In this book we discover that Mommy's parents have moved to Maine. At least that explains why they never show up in any book after Karen's Witch (Grandma Packett is at the gardening club meeting that Karen and Hannie crash to accuse everyone of being witches). The family will be going up four days before the reunion and staying with Lisa's Aunt Carol and Uncle John, who of course have a big sprawling manor that can easily accommodate houseguests. Lots of Lisa's relatives will be there, most of them one-book characters whose names are unimportant. The ones who will show up again are Lisa's sister Ellen, her husband Mark, and their kids Diana and Kelsey, who are seven and four like Karen and Andrew. This book is the first time Karen and Diana ever meet. In fact, Karen is a little surprised that she even has a cousin her own age. I find this endlessly fascinating, because Lisa and Ellen seem to get along just fine once they're in the same room. I wonder if they had a falling out and that's why their kids have never met. Maybe they really don't get along, but since the book is from a kid's perspective you don't see it. Maybe life just carried them in different directions and before they knew what happened, seven years had passed. Lisa's parents used to live in Stoneybrook, remember. Did Ellen not get along with her parents, so that she never visited for any holidays or anything? I may end up writing some fanfiction about it, because there are so many possibilities.

Traveling to Maine by car takes up a chapter and a half where Karen whines about being bored and how it's annoying to have to use one's indoor voice in the car.  Also they stop for fast food and Andrew gets a "cool eraser" in his Junior Meal and Karen gets a ruler, and they amuse themselves with those for a while. And I mean I know you wouldn't want licensed characters or anything, and I should just be glad that they didn't get Wizard of Oz toys, but random school supplies sounds like the lamest kid meals ever.

When they arrive at Great-Aunt Carol and Great-Uncle John's house, Karen and Diana meet, and are instant besties, because Diana is also loud and full of energy. Andrew and Kelsey also hit it off when Kelsey reveals that she has a pet frog named Prince Caliber. The kids (there are like six more of varying ages but who cares) are going to sleep on a screened in porch in sleeping bags. This is the most exciting thing that ever happened. The next day Karen and Diana explore the grounds (and this place is freaking gigantic) and find a vegetable garden, a little gazebo, and more. The adults are all working on a big family tree and trying to fill in names and pictures on it. Then they all go out to eat and Andrew has fried clams which he loves but Karen doesn't like. The next morning when the kids wake up it is raining.

This right here is where the book goes from something that could happen into completely obviously something that would only happen in a book territory, FYI. The kids decide to explore the house, and one of the 12-year olds leads them up into the attic where there are trunks of old clothes and boxes of old toys, because that's what people in BSC books keep in their attics. Nobody just has holiday decorations and maybe some boxes of college memorabilia surrounded by itchy insulation. They have fully finished attics with old as hell clothing that their kids can just try on when it rains. And nobody in BSC land cares if kids unpack boxes and strew the contents about, either. Karen and Diana find some diaries and take them downstairs to read them. They were written by a long ago ancestor named Annemarie, who was nine years old in 1892. Her cousin Polly was visiting, and Annemarie showed Polly the "magic garden" and then Polly's mother died and they made memory boxes to open together the next summer. Karen and Diana are captivated because Annemarie and Polly were "twin cousins" just like them. They don't know what the hell the talk about the magic garden is, though. It doesn't mean the vegetable garden, because that is referenced elsewhere in these apparently quite detailed diaries.

When the rain stops Karen and Diana get permission to go outside again and look for the magic garden, and they find it. Karen says it's not big, but it's surrounded by brick walls and has at least three benches, a fountain, and two statues in it. They run to get the adults and show them, and Great-Aunt Carol announces that she never knew this was here.

HOW THE GODDAMN HELL DO YOU NOT KNOW THERE IS A WALLED IN GARDEN CONTAINING A FOUNTAIN, BENCHES, AND STATUARY ON YOUR PROPERTY?! HOW DOES THAT EVEN WORK?

I mean let's say that during the Great Depression, the gardener had to be let go because even such a grand estate couldn't afford to keep him on. There would still have to be someone maintaining the lawns at least a little bit, right? Because otherwise the whole property would be overgrown and probably filled with creepy critters, right? And the vegetable garden is still in use, and the gazebo. How did an entire walled in garden get forgotten?

Anyway the kids and adults work together to clean up the garden, which is overgrown, but clearly next spring/summer there will be roses and various other things that they see evidence of.  Karen and Diana make secret wishes, and Karen's comes true. She wished to have a picnic on the beach like Mommy used to when she was little, and that's exactly what they do. Then Aunt Ellen gives Diana a bracelet that was packed in the wrong suitcase by mistake, and it turns out that finding the bracelet was Diana's wish.

The next day there is work to be done with getting ready for the main part of the reunion, and the next day is the big family reunion. Tons more aunts, uncles, and cousins come, and they wear matching T-shirts and play games and eat. Karen and Diana both eat way too much and get stomachaches.

This makes sense because I know that I, too, am helpless to resist when faced with bowls heaped with delicious scribbles.  Heck sometimes I even go back for seconds on scribbles.

All the relatives who come have brought pictures to fill in the family tree the adults were working on, and after they all leave, there is only one blank spot, where Polly's mother's picture should be. The next day Karen and Diana go back into the attic and of course they find more journals. They were written by Annemarie again, ten years later. It turns out that she and Polly never saw each other again. Karen and Diana realize that the memory boxes may still be in the garden. Of course they find them behind some loose bricks. There are lockets and some other crap in the boxes, and in Polly's is a picture labeled "Mama". When the girls show the boxes to the adults, Great-Aunt Carol ceremoniously takes the ONLY DAMN SURVIVING PHOTOGRAPH OF POLLY'S MOTHER AND GLUES IT ONTO THE FAMILY TREE. The archivist in me cringes every time I read that paragraph. Then Karen and Diana get to keep the rest of the crap from the boxes, and they make new boxes and hide the to hopefully open the next summer when they hope to return to Maine, even though this is the first time either of their families have been there in at least seven years.

So yeah. That's this book. It is not very realistic. Thankfully the RNG realized I would need a break after this one, because it rolled up The Truth About Stacey next, and I love that book, so yay.