LS #120, Karen's Easter Parade

First of all, sorry about the inside scans of this book. For some reason they were printed very lightly in the book and the lines were so faint that my scanner had a hard time picking them up.

Karen is excited because her cousin Diana is coming to visit for just over a week leading up to Easter. Karen and Diana had met once before and had a magical adventure at their family reunion in Maine. Diana is coming on the train by herself, and the rest of her family will arrive in a week's time.


Karen finds out that the town will be holding an Easter Parade on Easter Sunday. She and her friends are really excited because they hear "parade" and think "floats and candy." Karen also thinks there will be a bonnet decorating contest with prizes. As it turns out, the Easter Parade is more of a social event where people dress up in their finery and chat with each other, but I can't fault Karen for thinking the other thing, because I had never heard of an Easter Parade either and I'm in my 30s. I think it might be another regional thing like Mischief Night. I'm getting ahead of myself, though, because Karen doesn't find out what the parade is really about till almost the end of the book.

Diana arrives on the train with her chaperone, and rushes to give Karen a hug. Karen thinks everything will be hunky dory, but Diana is kind of an asshole to Karen later. They go for a bike ride and Karen asks Diana if she's homesick. Diana yells at her and rides off. The next day, they are decorating Easter eggs, a week early, because they are going to donate the decorated eggs to the community egg hunt. Karen explains that the hunt will be held on Tuesday morning so as not to conflict with the Easter Parade, which is super ideal for working parents, right? Saturday morning apparently was right out.

The kids start decorating eggs. Andrew and Karen are using standard dye methods, but Diana is coloring hers with crayons and watercolor markers prior to dipping them in the dye. She is being a total asshole about it too, loudly bragging that her eggs look soooo much better than Karen and Andrew's baby eggs. Karen is upset, because she doesn't remember Diana being a huge asshole before.

That night, things seem fine with Diana again, and she and Karen talk and giggle until Mommy comes in to tell them to shut up. Karen is all ready to go to sleep, but Diana calls her a baby and gets Karen to keep talking until Mommy comes in again and yells at them. Then the next morning, the nanny wants the kids to help her with chores, and Diana is kind of an ass about that, too, but I blame her less for that, because who wants to clean out a rat cage when you're on vacation?

Diana is irritated at the egg hunt because the kids younger than 5 get a head start, and she doesn't win. She tries to talk Karen into combining their baskets so they can get a prize, but Karen won't do it because that would make them beat Andrew and she is happy for him that he got a prize. They run into Sam after the egg hunt and he tells them that he'll be dressed up as the Easter Bunny at the parade. For some kind of charity. So, if they're going to have a costumed Easter Bunny, why wouldn't the kids think it was the other kind of parade, right. Then Sam asks if the girls are going to wear their best Easter bonnets and for some reason Karen thinks this means there is a bonnet decorating contest.

Diana gets really, really into the whole idea of decorating hats. They go to the mall and the nanny is supposed to buy some stuff for the family party, but Diana drags them from store to store looking for plain straw hats and fake flowers and shit. Then the nanny is pissy because they don't have time to get the other shit and will have to come back. Which is stupid, because she's the adult in this situation, and let herself get bossed around by an eight-year old. Great nannying, there.

They go over to Nancy's house, and Diana is flat-out rude to Karen's friends and calls them babies. Hannie and Nancy laugh at Karen and Diana for still thinking it's a parade with floats and explain what it really is, and Diana yells at them that she and Karen are still going to win the bonnet contest that Karen made up.

Karen and Diana decorate their stupid hats. Karen is sad because Diana is still being kind of an ass, and she shoplifted gum from the dollar store. Diana thinks that they should add framed pictures to their stupid hats, and Karen says they don't have any money for frames, and Diana suggests they could just steal them. Karen calls Kristy and Kristy agrees to bike ride to the store with them. While they are at the store, Karen and Diana get in a big fight because Karen threatens to tattle on Diana if she steals picture frames. To put on their hats. Because framed pictures. On hats. Diana yells that Karen is a baby and is ruining her whole vacation.

They go to the mall to see Easter Bunny Sam. Andrew wants to get his picture taken with the Easter Bunny even though he knows it's just Sam in a suit. Some older boys are heckling the young kids for getting their pictures taken with the Easter Bunny. Diana goes up to them and tells them off for teasing Andrew, and the boys run off. Then Sam goes on break, and the kids chat with him and he tells Karen that there is no bonnet decorating contest. You would think this is the sort of thing adults might check before they let an 8 year old drag them to six stores and spend $50 on tacky shit to glue to hats.

The day before Easter, Diana's parents and little brother arrive. Last time, Kelsey was Diana's 4-year-old sister, one of the most glaring inconsistencies in the series. On Easter Sunday, Karen wakes up and finds a note from Diana apologizing for being an asshole for an entire week and explaining that she did it because she was embarrassed to have a chaperone on the train and didn't want Karen to think she was a baby, so instead she just called Karen and Andrew and Karen's friends babies. It's a really stupid resolution to the conflict because Karen is just like "oh, okay. we're besties again."

Later in the day, they go downtown and run into Karen's friends again. Diana apologizes for being rude to Hannie and Nancy. (No, I don't know why Karen's Jewish friend is at the Easter Parade, all dressed up.) Nancy and Hannie agree to give Diana another chance. Karen says that they have given her a million second chances. This is true. Again, if I were Nancy or Hannie's parents, I would encourage them to find other friends.

Here's the cover. Karen is walking with Sam in a bunny costume, although Sam doesn't look as tall as you'd think, considering that he's 15 and Karen's 7. Karen has pulled her hair into a side ponytail for this special occasion. Her bonnet is not nearly as tacky as you would expect from reading the book. Maybe they removed all the fake flowers and fruit when they found out there wasn't a contest.

Foods eaten in this book: spaghetti, lemonade, fruit roll-ups, marshmallow bunnies, orange juice, cereal, chocolate bunnies, eggs goldenrod.

Overall, this book is pretty stupid. My score: 3/10.

#55, Jessi's Gold Medal

Good job giving away the ending, title of the book!

It's getting to be summer time, and Jessi is supervising her younger siblings playing in the sprinkler. Becca is wearing a bathing suit with wild patterns all over it, and Jessi reassures us that it is not a fancy designer suit, but a plain white suit that Becca decorated with Magic Markers. This really doesn't relate to anything else in the book but it's really strange to me that one would assume a plain colored suit would be necessarily less expensive than some "designer" version that used multiple colors.

Jessi asks her parents if they can get a pool, which gets a hell no, but they do say they'll buy a family membership to the Stoneybrook pool complex.

Jessi goes to a club meeting and we get a Claudia outfit description:

At that meeting, for example, she was wearing these sharply creased, pastel green, cuffed shorts; a wild Hawaiian shirt tied at her waist, with vibrant colors that perfectly picked up the green; and sandals with crisscrossing ankle straps to her knees. Her hair was swept to one side and held in place with a long, fake-flowered barrette that looked like a Hawaiian lei.

 In gym class, the teacher announces that they will be doing a swimming unit, combined with the boys' class. I don't know why they even bother having separate gym classes (my schools never did) considering that they are always combining them. There's this unit for Jessi's class, the volleyball and archery units in Mallory Hates Boys (and Gym), the class that Kristy has to co-teach with Cary in Kristy in Charge, and probably more that I'm forgetting.

Mallory is mortified that she has shown up to the pool with the "ugliest, babiest bathing suit in the world!" Jessi looks at it and agrees that "It was an out-of-style, faded, one-piece suit with a ruffled skirt." Mallory tries to stand behind Jessi so that none of the boys can see her, which of course draws even more attention to her. I am just wondering why Mallory has chosen the old, faded bathing suit. The Pikes go to Sea City every summer, right? They have bathing suits. I looked up the suit Mallory wore in #34, and it was a two piece with a blue bottom and a striped tank top. That sounds perfectly reasonable, and clearly the Pikes don't seem to object to buying bathing suits for all of their kids. Then in #39, Poor Mallory, when she's babysitting the Delaneys and wearing her bathing suit, she doesn't describe it all, which leads me to believe that it's not embarrassing, because Mallory would be sure to mention if she hated her suit. Even if Mallory has had a little growth spurt and outgrown her old tankini in the intervening books, where would she have gotten the old, faded one-piece with the ruffle? She's the oldest child in her family. Did her mom take her to a thrift store and buy the suit? Did she just dig out something from the way back of her drawer, or even her mother's drawer? WHY? The Pikes are weird. And gross.

After class, the teacher meets with Jessi to ask if she wants to switch from regular gym into synchronized swimming. Jessi's not sure about it because she's not a very strong swimmer but the coach really likes her form. Jessi is paired up with a girl named Elise to be her pairs partner. Elise is Jessi's opposite; a strong swimmer (she's on the swim team) with less-than-stellar form. Then the coach announces that the team will be doing a demonstration and a pairs competition at the upcoming SMS Sports Festival.

Here's the cover, which shows Jessi and Elise competing at the end of the book. They have gotten matching bathing suits for the competition, but don't worry, as you can see they're a solid color and not some fancy designer swimwear. Jessi and Elise feel like they are way behind the rest of the class, because Jessi is completely new to synchro and she and Elise just got partnered up. The two decide that they will practice together outside of class, after school and on weekends when they don't have other obligations.

The rest of the club will also be participating in the Sports Festival, except for Mary Anne, who hates sports. I have never really thought of any of the club members aside from Kristy as being particularly athletic but they all plan to enter an event or two just for fun. Kristy, by the way, is going to be involved in a special one-on-one exhibition against Alan Gray. The winner gets a week of "personal service time" from the loser.

The subplot in this book is that they decide to hold a mini-Olympics for their charges. Naturally, they are going to hold it in Mary Anne and Dawn's backyard, where they hold almost every activity they do. Kristy babysits at her house and a bunch of neighbor kids come over, so she is in charge of ten kids. Even though the club rule is that two sitters are needed for more than four children. Andrew is trying really hard to do everything but he sucks at it all because he's four, and he ends up in tears. Poor Andrew. Naturally all the kids in Stoneybrook are totally into the idea of the mini-Olympics, except for Charlotte and Becca. Stacey inadvertently hurts Charlotte's feelings by trying to push her to participate. Claudia and Mallory babysit for all of Mallory's siblings, who are all running around practicing to enter various events. Eight more neighborhood kids show up, too, which leaves an eleven and thirteen-year old to supervise fifteen children. Nobody seems to have a problem with that. Mallory tries the potato sack race and sprains her ankle. (The people of Stoneybrook seem to have weak ankles. There's a sprain like every third book.) Mallory tries to pretend that she is sad she'll miss the Sports Festival, but eventually admits she hurt herself on purpose to get out of it because she only signed up so her friends wouldn't think she was a baby.

The day of the SMS festival arrives. Jessi's really nervous about her routine, but her mother reassures her that all that matters is that she does her best, and they will be proud of her no matter what. Jessi feels a lot better and even enjoys watching some of the other events. Kristy gets second in the hundred-yard dash, Dawn enters the javelin throw, and Claudia enters a backwards race. Two Claudia outfits in one book? We are all winners today!

Take Claudia. She was wearing electric-pink track shorts with a turquoise racing stripe, a matching top with cut-off sleeves, brand-new high top track shoes with no socks, and floral-print suspenders! Her hair was pulled up on top of her head and held in place with a silver barrette in the shape of the Olympic symbol. If it had been an athletic-wear fashion show, she would have won.

 Kristy wins her obstacle course race against Alan Gray, and is kind of a bitch to him about the week of "personal service." I am unsurprised by this. Then it is time for Jessi's event. She and Elise do their best, and when prizes are announced, they have won. Again, thanks for giving that away, title of the book.

Elise and Jessi both decide to quit synchronized swimming. Jessi because it interfered with her ballet, and Elise because it gave her less time to devote to the swim team, which was her true love. This isn't really surprising. Jessi already has a single characteristic (loves ballet) to mention in the chapter 2s. Unfortunately, but again not unexpectedly, Elise and Jessi don't stay friends after this book and she is never heard from again.

The club holds the mini-Olympics for the kids and naturally it is a huge success. There are like 30 kids, plus parents milling around, plus all the club members, plus Elise and Alan Gray, all in Mary Anne and Dawn's backyard. Aside from giving up their yard for the day, I imagine that Richard and Sharon have a constant stream of people in and out needing to use their bathroom. That is what they get for having the biggest and most centrally located yard, I guess. Andrew enters almost every event but doesn't win any, and the club gives him the Most Determined award.

Overall, this book is just not that interesting to me. I have a hard time getting invested in Elise because she never shows up again, and reading about all the sports and the kids practicing various sports is not interesting either. I wish there were more scenes with Jessi at home with her family, because I think I've mentioned before that the Ramsey family is one of my favorites. My score: 6/10.