#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.