LS #58, Karen's Ski Trip

This book starts with Watson announcing that since the children are off of school during the upcoming winter break, the family is going to go on a trip to Shadow Lake. Unlike their usual summer jaunts, this one will be a winter trip. There will be skiing, snowboarding, ice skating, and fun. Ah, Shadow Lake. Home of the dorm-style cabin where the BSC can go on trips and have vacation romances. Oddly enough, Watson does not invite the whole world on this trip. It's limited to just the family. Karen is really excited. She's never tried skiing before and she's sure she's going to be fantastic at it. Before she leaves on her trip, Karen invites Hannie and Nancy over. They play Lovely Ladies and discuss the upcoming vacation, and Karen starts packing her stuff.

Hannie has a completely different face than she normally does in the illustrations. Karen, on the other hand, is rocking a side ponytail and looking much like she always does. Karen tells Hannie and Nancy that she is sure she'll be great at skiing, and that Andrew wants to try too but he's probably going to suck at it.

When the family arrives at Shadow Lake, everyone goes to the lodge. Karen notices that there is a Winter Carnival and a Valentine's Dance, both scheduled for the last day of the family's vacation. Everyone rents skis except for Sam, who tries snowboarding instead, and Nannie and Emily, who just want to hang out in the lodge, because what is more fun than trying to keep a two year old entertained in a ski lodge while she knows that her older siblings are playing outside and having fun? Not much, that's what!

After all the bragging Karen was doing about how she was going to be a natural on the slopes, it turns out to be quite the opposite. Karen is terrible and can't get the hang of skiing, but Andrew is a natural. After falling down a whole bunch, Karen stomps back into the lodge, returns her skis, and vows never to ski again.

Not skiing makes being on a ski trip a little boring for Karen, but the next day, she meets a boy named Keegan who is vacationing with his parents. Keegan doesn't really care for skiing, and he and Karen make friends and spend the day together. Karen finds out that Keegan likes ice skating, and she and Keegan decide that they will enter the skating contest and the snow sculpture contest at the Winter Carnival.

Karen has a dream that she is a famous Olympic ice skating champion. I know I put a ton of images in this post, but if you only enlarge one, it should be this one. Then you have to check out the faces of the judges. Look at the judge just to the left of Karen's hair. Did you ever see such a happy judge? She's given Karen an 11. I don't know why this picture cracks me up so much, but it does.

The next day, Watson announces that the whole family is going to spend the day together. They all help make breakfast, and then have a breakfast picnic on the cabin floor. They go snowmobiling, Sam shows off some of his snowboarding moves, they build a whole family of snowmen, eat lunch at the lodge, go ice skating, and then go back and make dinner together at the cabin. It is kind of nice to read about the whole family spending time together, because even though it's a family vacation, most of the family members are barely mentioned in this book. They're all just skiing or watching Emily or otherwise out of the picture.

On Saturday, the day of the Winter Carnival, Karen and Keegan meet up at the lodge. They're scoping out the best spot for their sculpture competition when there is a big commotion. Andrew fell while skiing and hurt himself badly. Karen and Keegan quickly rent skis and ride up so that Karen can hold Andrew's hand while he waits for medical attention. Does it really take that long for a kid to get rescued from a fall on the bunny hill? Karen didn't even get the skis right when Andrew fell, she heard people discussing the accident before  she rushed to his side. After Andrew is whisked away, Karen realizes she is up on the mountain with no choice but to ski down. Luckily, Keegan is able to teach her in two minutes what her paid skiing instructor couldn't, so she and Keegan slowly ski their way down the mountain, and Karen gets over her fear of skiing.

Karen and Keegan compete together in the ice skating competition. Karen does not have a fancy outfit like in her dream, so she has to wear jeans and a sweater. Keegan appears to be wearing a fetching sweater dress with leggings. They do not win the skating competition, which actually kind of surprised me but I'm glad they didn't.

It turns out that Andrew has twisted his knee badly and will have to use crutches for a while, so Karen and Keegan say that he can help them with their snow sculpture. They get Honorable Mention in the contest. Karen thinks it's just because the judges feel badly for Andrew because he got hurt. The winner of the snow sculpture competition makes a beautiful snow angel. Apparently this is what you should make if you ever enter one of these competitions, because the winner of the snow sculpting in Karen's Sleigh Ride also made a snow angel.

That night is the Valentine's Dance. Keegan asks Karen if she will be his date at the dance. It is a little odd when 11- and 13-year olds have romances at Shadow Lake but it is downright ridiculous when 7-year olds do. I may be a little biased here because I hate how young children are pushed to "date" or "be boyfriend and girlfriend". I get especially irritated when people post pictures of infants with their friend's same aged baby and announce that the two are betrothed. Still, Karen's parents see nothing wrong with her having a date to the dance, so I guess it's really none of my business. Karen and Keegan mostly stand around talking, but he does ask her to dance and they do. At least they don't kiss.

Foods eaten in this book: lasagna, salad, green beans, bread, melted cheese on crackers, fresh squeezed lemonade, chocolate milkshake, hot chocolate, bacon, eggs, pancakes, waffles, cereal, juice, coffee, pretzels, toast, soup, spaghetti, rolls, toasted marshmallows, punch, jelly beans, chocolate kisses.

Overall, this book is not one of the strongest in the series. It's pretty forgettable, and nothing in it is ever referenced again (Andrew's knee has healed before the next book.) My score: 6/10, and that's mostly for the picture of the happy judge giving Karen an 11.

LS #80, Karen's Christmas Tree

I was going to do the book where Karen meets the President of the United States. I even got it out and read it to prep. But it was just far too stupid to even write words about, so I picked this book as a substitute.

The book starts out with Karen, Hannie, and Nancy having a Lovely Ladies tea party at Karen's house. Andrew runs in to show them his picture of Santa. Karen says that all she sees are scribbles. Do four year olds normally still just scribble? My niece was drawing recognizable people when she was 3. Maybe Karen is just being mean about Andrew's picture because she's a brat.

Karen's family decides that they'll each make an ornament for their tree this year. While they are downtown buying craft supplies, Karen goes in the toy store, where they have a wish tree. She asks the clerk about it and later convinces Hannie and Nancy that the three of them should grant a wish for an underprivileged child. They choose a little boy who wants a fire truck. The three of them plan to do chores for their parents and raise money to buy the toy. It's pretty sweet actually.

Karen has some neighbors, the Druckers, who show up in the books from time to time. In this book, the Druckers are sad because their blue spruce tree died over the summer. Then Mrs. Drucker breaks her hip. Karen is really worried about Mrs. Drucker and her broken hip. She talks to Nancy and the two of them decide to try and raise money from the neighbors to replace the spruce tree.

Nancy is given tickets to Annie as a gift. She can choose one friend to take. When Karen hears what day it is, she mentions she thinks she is busy that day, so Nancy invites Hannie. When Karen finds out that Hannie got the invite, she flips the fuck out and is a total cow to her friends. Nancy and Hannie both look really surprised that Karen is being an asshole, which leads me to suspect that they've never read one of these books. Karen is sure the fight will be over soon but Hannie and Nancy play together at recess and leave Karen out. Good for Hannie and Nancy, I say. Karen is pretty much a bully and a spoiled brat, and if I were Nancy's or Hannie's mother, I would encourage her to make other friends. Then when Karen gets home from school, she sits alone in her room waiting for her friends to call her and apologize. For what, I don't know.

Here's Karen looking sad because Hannie and Nancy are playing together and Karen is stuck playing with droopy socks Natalie. Natalie is not in the picture, maybe she is bent over pulling up her socks just to the left of the margin.

At school, the kids have to write a short paper about their holiday wish. Karen wishes that her fight with her friends was over. Ms. Colman asks her to collect the papers and she sees that Hannie and Nancy had the same wish. That afternoon, she and Nancy go collect money from the neighbors for the spruce tree. Afterward, Karen apologizes to Nancy and they call Hannie and Karen apologizes to her too. The fight is over. Nancy decides to take Grandma B. to the play instead of choosing between her friends. The girls pick out a fire truck at the store and pay for it with their own money.

Karen and Nancy get to go pick out a new spruce tree for the Druckers. The day Mrs. Drucker comes home from the hospital, the neighbors set the tree up in their yard and  decorate it. The Druckers are very pleased. This is the scene depicted on the cover, except that Hannie isn't there in the text.

At the end of the book, Karen's family hangs their handmade ornaments on the tree. Andrew made a paper reindeer. Karen made a star out of clay. Seth carved a beautiful wooden soldier. Mommy made a Santa out of pipe cleaners and foil. This always makes me laugh a little because a pipe cleaner Santa seems way more like something a child would make than an adult.

Foods eaten in this book: Pizza, blueberry pancakes, spaghetti and meatballs, salad, melted cheese on toast, warm apple cider, chicken soup.

There's a lot going on in this book, so at times it seems a bit disjointed, but overall it's one of my favorite Little Sister holiday books. My score: 8/10.

M #28, Abby and the Mystery Baby

Wow, it's been a long time since I did a mystery. And I'd only read this one once prior to this writeup, so it was almost like reading a new BSC book.

The book starts out with Abby running home from school instead of taking the bus. And while she runs, she thinks about the plot of every BSC book she's had so far, and she thinks about her own personality and about her family, so that by the end of the chapter, we are bored acquainted with Abby. When Abby arrives at her house, she sees a car seat "the kind people use for babies" on her front step and is intrigued. Why would someone leave a car seat on her porch? Then she gets closer and realizes that someone left a baby, and the car seat is just one of its accessories. Abby takes the baby inside and changes its diaper, thus discovering that the baby is a boy. Abby's mother isn't home yet, but she's left a note that she'll be back early, so Abby calls Kristy, who comes over with Nannie. Nannie holds the baby and coos over it, while Kristy asks if there was a note or any ID. When Abby says there wasn't, Kristy calls the cops. The cops arrive at around the same time Abby's mother does. The officer who arrives is Sargent Johnson, who is the main police officer in the mystery books. He asks everyone some questions, then just leaves them with the mystery baby. Abby's mother seems interested in the blanket the baby was wrapped in, but Abby assures her that although the blanket is thin, the baby was not cold. He couldn't have been out there long before Abby found him.

Abby and Kristy would love to stay and chat, but it's Monday and they have a club meeting to get to. Abby describes her friends to us and tells us what each of them would do if they found a baby on their doorstep. Surprise surprise, they would each do one thing that corresponds with their sole personality trait. Mary Anne would knit for it, Claudia would draw it a picture, Jessi would measure its feet for ballet slippers, etc. Speaking of Claudia,

She was wearing a typical Claudia outfit: a funky red-flannel minidress layered with a black-and-white checked thrift-shop man's vest, black tights, and red high-tops. Her hair was in this sort of sideways ponytail (that's the only way I can describe it), held by a red scrunchie.

Sideways ponytails are, as you know, a gingundoly cool way to wear your hair.

Abby and Kristy tell the club about the baby and they are all excited and intrigued. Then Mallory proposes an idea for a subplot: they shall declare the month of February to be BSC Writing Month, get the kids they sit for to write poetry, and then cap it off with a poetry slam. I swear I am not making this up. I did not remember this subplot at all. Actually the only thing I remembered about this book from my first reading was whose baby it is.

Abby gets home and finds that the baby is going to be staying with them. She is confused, wondering why social services wouldn't have been involved, but her mother tells her that the authorities decided that their house was the best place for the baby for now. This is a totally logical decision considering Abby spends half of the pages of all of her books bitching that she's constantly home alone. They decide to call the baby Eli. The next morning, Abby gets up and feeds the baby and snuggles him and wants to skip school to stay with him but her mom says no, so Abby goes to school and spends the whole day daydreaming about Eli, because she's super excited.

That afternoon, Abby and Anna are there with the baby and pretty much the whole neighborhood comes over. Mary Anne comes with the Papadakis kids who she is babysitting. Kristy brings David Michael over. Shannon and Maria Kilbourne show up, as do Bill and Melody Korman. The kids all crowd around Eli, arguing over who should get to hold him. Bill calls the baby a "doink" and the book makes it sound like it's just nonsense baby talk, but that is a weird word for a nine-year old boy to call a baby, isn't it? I have never in my life heard someone look at a baby and say "What a little doink!" Eli doesn't appreciate all the attention and screams his little baby head off, so Mary Anne takes the kids in the kitchen to start working on their writing projects and sends them out one at a time to meet with Eli. This works much better.

That night, a cop and a social worker show up to check on Eli, who is asleep on the couch. Abby is worried that they'll judge her for letting the baby sleep on the couch, but he fell asleep there and she didn't want to move him, but it's okay because she surrounded him with pillows so he'd be safe. What can she say, it happens. The cop and social worker want to talk to Abby's mother in private. Probably about the baby. Abby wants to eavesdrop but is stopped by Anna, who is kind of a killjoy.

Then a nanny shows up to interview for a job, because Abby's mom had called an agency and apparently the agency and the prospective hire don't feel like bothering with such petty things as scheduling interviews. So the nanny comes at like 9 pm, with her overnight bag just in case she gets hired that very second, I guess. Abby thinks the nanny is weird but she does not make these decisions, so her mom hires the nanny. She says that they only need her during the day while the girls are in school. I guess she assumes that Abby and Anna would love to give up their extracurriculars and social lives to watch Eli every single day until 7 or so when she gets home from work.

Mallory and Jessi sit for the gross Pikes and force them to write for Writing Month. I feel bad for calling them gross before I even read the chapter, but then I start reading and on the second page of the chapter Byron, the fatty triplet, composes a poem that goes "Snot is gluey and snot is green, snot is the coolest thing I've ever seen." Then Jordan has a poem about puking. I feel vindicated. The other kids are working together to compose a story, each taking turns to write a couple of sentences. Nicky is making fun of Claire, because her sentence doesn't make sense in the story, because she's only five and doesn't know how to write anything else. Mallory and Jessi tell Claire that instead of working with the other kids, she can just draw pictures. Because I guess it would ruin everything if Claire just said her sentences aloud and someone else wrote them down? Fortunately, the chapter draws to a close without any more of the Pikes being gross, and thank goodness they don't eat anything.

Abby's mom has been acting unusual. Abby thinks she knows more than she's saying. The rest of the club suspect other people of being involved in the Eli mystery. Mal and Jessi suspect a woman from their writing group. Kristy suspects Erin the nanny. It's really kind of stupid, because the book has made it obvious that Abby and Anna's mom probably knows where the baby came from and just doesn't want to tell Abby because that would make the book really short she doesn't think Abby needs to know.

Claudia babysits the Arnold twins, who are fighting with each other and bored, so she invites Becca and Charlotte over. Stacey comes too, since she is babysitting Charlotte. They are having trouble with their writing projects, so Claudia tells them they should all write a play together. They decide to write a play about photosynthesis, because mullet-twin loves science. The kids in these damn books write more plays than anyone ever. Most kids I know would write one page, realize that an entire page is only ten seconds of stage time, and go watch TV.

Abby's mom has still been acting mysterious. On a Sunday afternoon, she makes some phone calls, then leaves abruptly. Abby and Anna go snoop in her study. They find a piece of paper with "Miriam" written on it, which is the name of  their estranged aunt. They go through some really old photo albums and find a picture with Miriam in it. She is holding the same blanket that Eli was wrapped in when he arrived on their doorstep. Abby hits redial on the phone and discovers the number her mom called is a hospital in New York City. She decides to go to NYC and confront her mom and find out the whole story behind baby Eli.

She finds her mom in a hospital room with Miriam, who has been very ill due to complications of diabetes. It is confirmed that Miriam is in fact the baby's mother, although his name is Daniel, not Eli. Abby's mom gives a strange explanation of why she didn't want to tell Abby and Anna that the baby was their cousin. Miriam recovers and moves with Daniel to Florida. Abby does not get in trouble for impulsively going to New York City alone and without permission.

The club holds their poetry slam at the public library. The gross Pike triplets perform a rap about snot and puke. The winners of the writing competition are the four girls who wrote the play about photosynthesis. It is probably the most boring subplot of any BSC mystery ever.

Overall, the book was readable, but there wasn't much mystery for it being a mystery. Abby's mom just didn't want to tell them where the baby came from. It's not one I'll look forward to rereading. My score: 4/10.