#91, Claudia and the First Thanksgiving

This book starts out right. We get a description of Claudia's outfit on page four.

Now where was I? Oh. Right. My autumn fashion colors. I'd put on a pair of baggy pants, not blue, not black, but yellow. With these I was wearing my red Doc Martens, laced with orange and yellow laces, and this great, funky, enormous shirt that I found in a vintage clothes shop. It has a leaf pattern on it. The leaves are in a Hawaiian print design, and the colors are fabulous. Underneath I was wearing my red and yellow tie-dyed long underwear shirt. To complete the ensemble, I had on earrings that I'd made myself, shaped like pumpkins, and a fringed yellow-and-white scarf tied around my hair.

Claudia goes to school and finds out that her next Short Takes class is going to be a drama class. If you stopped reading before this point in the series, Short Takes classes were these special classes the middle school kids would take for six weeks at a time. I guess it was a way to work in more school related plots without having to worry about any previously established continuity with what the girls were studying. Because continuity was a huge concern in the series, right. Anyway, Claudia's class is assigned to write a play for the third graders at the elementary school to perform. The class decides to do a play about the first Thanksgiving.

All seven of Mallory's brothers and sisters decide to dress as Groucho Marx for Halloween. This seems like a very Stoneybrook thing to dress as. Mallory, naturally, is a giant party pooper who does not dress up while she and her father take the others trick-or-treating. Because Mallory is eleven, so she is far too mature to dress in a costume and get candy like her ten-year old brothers.

Claudia and her classmates decide they will make a Thanksgiving play that will highlight the differences between modern times and the Pilgrim era. The play sounds, honestly, pretty terrible, because in order to highlight the differences, the dialogue has to be really heavy-handed. But the third graders are excited about the play, because, well, they're in third grade. Don't worry, though. All of the speaking roles in the play go to kids the club sits for. Betsy Sobak gets the lead, and Jake Kuhn is Squanto, and Carolyn Arnold is Miles Standish.

In lieu of boring babysitting chapters, we get sitting jobs that just happen to take place at rehearsals. First, Mary Anne babysits for Laurel and Patsy Kuhn and decides to walk them over to watch the rehearsal. I always wonder how some of the names in this series were chosen. Because a five-year old named Patsy just seems anachronistic. Mary Anne watches as the kids rehearse the lines, which, again, are pretty terrible.

Here's the cover. Claudia is wearing one of the outfits she describes later on, well, almost. The skirt isn't rainbow colored but it's fairly close. The Pilgrim cooking the turkey looks about ten years older than the little kid pointing at her while she does it.

At the next rehearsal, Claudia and some kids are painting scenery, and she notices some parents watching the rehearsal. She mentions that a little girl named Susie is part of the scenery crew, which, again, how many 8-year olds were named Susie in 1995? Susie's mother is watching and making a bitchface while the kids rehearse. There are some other unhappy looking parents there too.

Jessi has a babysitting job which brings her to the next rehearsal, where there are a bunch of angry parents milling about. They are upset at the content of the play, because they don't want their kids talking about historical differences in women's rights and race relations. Some parents start to shout. Abby yells right back, because she is Passionate, but Claudia stays away from the main conflict.

The class is told that either they can put on the traditional Thanksgiving story with the kids, or the play will be canceled. They decide to go ahead and do the play because the little kids are excited about it, but the night of the play, they go around writing the word "CENSORED" in red on the posters and things.

I want to point out, though, that I was a very well dressed graffiti artist/protestor. [sic] Just for the occasion, I was wearing my rainbow colored crinkle gauze skirt, my crocheted vest with the matching hat, and my silver earrings (designed by me, of course). I felt that I looked artistic, yet responsible. And of course my button, with the bright red writing on it, added the finishing touch.

The next night, the original version of the play is performed at the middle school by a different Short Takes class. There are lines of protesters outside the school, some pro-play, some anti-. Some of the people in Stoneybrook really have too much free time on their hands. Don't worry, every single person the club sits for supports the 8th graders. It's only the non-recurring characters who feel that it is un-American to spit out lines of overwritten dialogue about women's rights as related to Thanksgiving. As Claudia watches the play, she realizes it  really isn't very good, but she is glad that the play went on anyway.

The subplot in this book is that everyone's plans for Thanksgiving fall through. Mallory's family was supposed to stay at a cousin's apartment in New York and watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from the windows but the apartment flooded and they will be unable to do so. Sound familiar? Jessi was supposed to visit relatives, but the relatives were wait listed for spots on a church retreat and spots open up so they can go. That's noteworthy because it's one of the few overt mentions of religion in the series.

The girls talk Kristy's parents into inviting everyone's families over and hosting Thanksgiving for 36 people (then Dawn shows up as a surprise so 37.). It sounds like fun but also like a lot of work. The adults all cook at Kristy's house the day before while the club sits for all the younger kids at the Pike house. Most of the kids get to help make cookies and decorations but the triplets have to clean their room before they can do any of that. Except don't the triplets share a room with Nicky? Nicky is baking cookies with the others, apparently he is immune to cleaning. Then after the triplets clean their room they play pin the feathers on the turkey and Claudia says that one wall of the Pike family room is covered in cork so it doesn't matter where the pushpins go in. Is that weird? I think it's weird. I can't imagine it looks very good.

The next day they all eat Thanksgiving together and I should probably say something snarky about it, but it's actually one of my favorite subplots. I like it when the girls' families spend time together.