LS #88, Karen's Puppet Show

Karen is going to art camp! The Baby-Sitters club is running an art camp during the month of August. I don't think this showed up in any of the regular series books, although they did enough camps that I may have just forgotten. Claudia is the art camp director, and Kristy, Mary Anne, Stacey, Jessi, and Mallory are the counselors. Then Karen lists off everyone who is attending Art Camp, which including Karen is ten kids, and does not include Andrew or David Michael. Nor is Jessi's sister Becca attending the camp. So, one counselor for every two kids. Also, the club has made T-shirts for all the campers, and Karen says that each camper got five shirts, plus, the club probably had to pay for all the art supplies and probably snacks too. This camp may not have made much profit, is what I'm getting at.

Karen is pissed because Hannie and Nancy don't want to come to Art Camp even though they'd signed up. Hannie's family is going out of state, which is a reasonable excuse, but Karen is still pissed at her. Nancy just decides that she would rather hang around the house with her parents and baby brother. Karen suggests that maybe this is because Nancy is also a baby. I think Nancy is kind of a baby, but I'm not allegedly her best friend, so it's less hurtful when I say it. And she'd already made the commitment, and then changed her mind. I hope the BSC charged a nonrefundable deposit.

For the first week of camp, the kids do various art projects. One day when it rains, they go in Mary Anne's barn (yes, of course the camp is held at the Spier-Schafer residence) and Karen and Marilyn and Carolyn Arnold make a huge long paper chain. It's not that I dislike paper chains. With Christmas coming up I may teach my little nieces to make them. It's just that if I was paying for my kid to go to Art Camp, I would probably prefer that they did actual art, and not just cut and taped strips of paper.

Claudia announces that the campers will hold an art show on the last day of camp. Each camper will make a special project of their choice to display. They'll sell dollar tickets, and the money raised will be used to purchase supplies for the next year. Now I am really, really thinking that the financial aspects of holding an art camp were not thought through. How much do you suppose each camper paid? It's five days a week, and probably at least 6 hours a day, since they eat lunch there. It appears to be about a four week camp.

Karen wants to put on a puppet show for her final art project. Here's a picture of her starting the writing for it. Clearly the illustrator doesn't read these books very closely or she'd know that Karen does not actually use lower case letter. Karen makes puppets that look like herself and Hannie and Nancy. She names them Sharon, Hannah, and Francy. Her show is going to be about the beautiful and lovely Mary Sue Sharon and her "meanie-mo deserter" friends, Hannah and Francy. This book uses the phrase "meanie-mo" a lot. Is this something actual children somewhere actually say? It always kind of confused me in these books, much like the "word" "gigundoly". Karen decides that her puppet show will be a musical, and she writes little songs about the puppets. I can't tell you what they say, as I skipped over them, like I do every poem in every book, even if it's only two lines long.

Nancy stops by Karen's house and gives her a gift (a mug with her name printed on it). Hannie sends Karen a postcard from wherever she is. But Karen's still pissed at them, so she ignores the gift and postcard, and when it's time to sell tickets to the art show, she does not sell any to Hannie or Nancy. But on the day of the show, Hannie and Nancy are in the audience. Karen's worried, because her show does not paint them in a particularly flattering light. But luckily, Hannie and Nancy just laugh it off and think the show is funny.

Karen, Hannie, and Nancy look at the other kids' art projects and are best friends again. The book says that the cardboard bouquet of flowers (on the left) was Natalie Springer's project. I don't know who made the others.

The subplot in this book is that all the grown-ups go away for a weekend and leave Sam and Charlie and Kristy in charge. Charlie orders pizza with toppings the kids don't like and makes them go to a scary movie at the drive-in. Sam feeds them toasted marshmallows late at night and lets them go to bed with sticky faces and they stick to their pillows. Kristy, Sam, and Charlie ruin the Saturday morning pancakes. I'm a little disappointed at how this plays out, because I would have liked to see Karen enjoying the weekend and having fun with the older kids, instead of reading about Karen, David Michael, and Andrew bitching the whole time about everything fun the bigger kids try to do.