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.
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