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.