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.