Here's the cover. Nancy, Karen, and Hannie are looking oddly sinister, which is impressive for Karen particularly, because it's hard to look sinister when you have rolled up the cuffs of your jean shorts.
It's spring, and practices for Kristy's Krushers are getting started. Apparently a lot of new players want to join the team this year. Because that's what you do when you want your kid to play ball, is you go search out a team run by a 13-year old. You don't look into Little League or anything. So practices are pretty overwhelming and also boring, because there is one 13-year old coach for all these players, and not everyone gets a turn to bat, and Kristy announces that for the first time, the Krushers may have to make some cuts.
This is one of the new players, Julian, and his older sister, Barbie. Karen describes Barbie as wearing "cool clothes" and Julian as "not as cool." They both look to be wearing about the same thing to me, but I guess shirts with scribbles on them are way more cool than shirts with no scribbles. Barbie tells Kristy that they are new in town and Julian is kind of shy and she is hoping that he will make new friends by joining the team. Where are these kids' parents? Why is the 12-year old in charge of arranging extracurricular activities and managing the social life of the 8-year old?
Practices are still chaotic and they start to get more so because things start to come up missing. Some equipment disappears, and some pages out of Kristy's notebook. Also a few of the new players have pushy parents or siblings who don't like the way Kristy is running the team.
Here is a high-school aged kid yelling at Kristy because he thinks she's not coaching his sister on how to hold the bat the right way. I've mentioned before that Karen looks awkward in a lot of the illustrations of her playing softball, but really, if you don't like the way that someone is coaching your kid, maybe you should sign them up for something else instead of bitching about the free option. The high school kid also comes to practices with his sister. You know, because, again, that's what older siblings DO, is watch and critique boring little kid sport practices. There's another kid whose dad is overbearing and wants him to hit home runs all the time, and again I'm left to wonder why the hell he wouldn't sign his kid up for actual Little League if he wants him to become a good player. Because being the best player on Kristy's Krushers isn't really that much of an accomplishment.
Anyway, the mystery. Karen, Hannie, and Nancy notice that all of the equipment stolen is for right-handers. They decide the thief must be a lefty, who is trying to remove equipment so that the right handed players can't use it. They find a baseball card on the ground near some bats that got knocked over or moved or something. And they see that whoever stole Kristy's stats notebook and changed some numbers used a dark pencil with a pink eraser that left pink smudges on the paper. Pencil with pink eraser should help us catch that thief right away, amirite?
The subplot in this book is that Ms. Colman the greatest teacher ever has been out of school for a while because of having a baby but she is going to come back and the class plans a welcome back party for her. She doesn't come back on the scheduled day so they have the party anyway to cheer themselves up, and then have another party when she really returns. They also combine it with a going away party for their substitute teacher Mrs. Hoffman. Normally I'd say something snotty about how many parties a classroom really needs, but these kids were in second grade for like 10 years, so I guess it doesn't hurt anything to have extra parties and field trips.
Kristy wants to hold a toy sale to raise money for new equipment. Mommy helps Karen and Andrew sort through their toys. Andrew is willing to donate everything, but Karen refuses to part with her toys. Raise your hand if you are surprised. Nobody? Eventually Mommy donates Karen's old tea set despite Karen's protests, but don't worry, because Nancy buys it at the sale so Karen can still play with it. Also some of the shit Mommy is talking Andrew into donating is clearly broken, like a wind-up bear which no longer winds, which doesn't make much sense to me. Who is going to buy broken toys at Kristy's yard sale spectacular? Toss them, seriously.
Barbie and Julian come to the toy sale and Karen says Barbie is wearing another cool outfit but I don't see anything notably cool about it. There aren't even any scribbles on her shirt. Julian apparently only owns the one outfit. Barbie has a binder of baseball cards and Karen realized that it has one missing card where the card found at the crime scene would go. Barbie also has a pencil. With a pink eraser. No, for real. So Karen confronts her with the evidence and Barbie confesses that she just wanted Julian to look good so she was trying to make some better players look bad so that he'd make friends. Seems a bit convoluted to me but that's okay. Barbie buys some new equipment for the Krushers with her own money which along with the proceeds from Kristy's yard sale is enough to outfit the team nicely, and then they play a game against the Bashers and Julian hits a home run.
Oh also every time Karen gets up to bat in this book she gets on base, even though pretty much everyone else on the team strikes out repeatedly. Maybe she's getting too good for the Krushers and should go join Little League.
