#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.