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.