#86, Mary Anne and Camp BSC

I have a few more Little Sister books with Seth's parents upcoming but it's summer so I wanted to do a book where the BSC holds one of their camps.

The book starts with Mary Anne and Mallory babysitting for the Pikes. The kids are being really wild but do not do anything actively gross. When Mary Anne goes home they have supper with three-cheese macaroni that's a recipe Dawn made up, and garlic and onion toast that Mary Anne made. It is supposed to sound really good but I hate homemade mac and cheese and garlic toast so the meal just sounds kind of gross to me. Richard announces that his law firm has merged with another firm and he'll be traveling more, starting with a two week trip to Cincinnati in July.

The baby-sitters realize that there is a three week gap between the end of school and the start of most camps and YMCA activities in the area, so they decide to hold a day camp in Mary Anne and Dawn's backyard for a couple of weeks and give it a circus theme. Shannon quotes a line from the Wizard of Oz.  The club signs 22 children up for the camp. There are a bunch of kids from Karen's class at school as well as a bunch of kids the club usually sits for.

One of the kids, Alicia Gianelli, is four years old and has separation anxiety about being away from her mother. Mary Anne feels sympathetic toward her and spends a bunch of time with her, even staying with her while the other kids go to the park. The club announces the circus theme to the kids. Karen and her friends start acting superior because they've been to a real circus camp before. Karen in particular acts like a little brat about the entire idea and doesn't want to participate.

Richard leaves on his trip to Cleveland. Nothing is mentioned about why he is now going there instead of Cincinnati. Some of these later books weren't edited particularly well. Sharon has decreed that she and the girls will have a great time while Richard is gone. They rent stupid movies and throw popcorn at the screen during the bad scenes. Mary Anne misses her dad and really doesn't enjoy the movies or the mess.

The BSC campers take a field trip to the Stones' stupid farm, well, except for Alicia who stays with Mary Anne. Mrs. Stone gives the children a tour of her farm and tells them about the animals and some of the crops she grows. Everything goes well until they get to Elvira the stupid goat, who chews a strip off of Claire Pike's t-shirt. I don't know why I hate a fictional baby goat so much, but I really, really do.

Richard has been gone for four days, and the house is a mess. Sharon has been ordering takeout every night. FOUR NIGHTS YOU GUYS. She and Dawn tell the delivery people to not pack the food in Styrofoam or send plastic forks, so they have to use their own utensils. Three people have already managed to go through all of the silverware the family owns, then dig out the "good silver" and start using that, even though it is explicitly stated that they had pizza one night. I think maybe the family could use a few more forks, is what I'm getting at. Mary Anne tries to clean the house and does "about a thousand loads" of dishes in the dishwasher which is frankly fucking ridiculous. After four days where the girls are at camp and Sharon at work during the day, and they eat takeout at night, how many dishes can there be? Cereal bowls and breakfast dishes, maybe. Some plates and the aforementioned silverware from suppers. Glasses. But there really shouldn't be many pots and pans or other dishes, so I don't know how Mary Anne can be doing so many dishes.

Karen is a bratty little shit some more and bitches about the circus camp not being a real circus camp.

On Friday night, the end of the first week of camp, the sitters have a cookout for the campers. They serve turkey dogs, coleslaw, and baked beans, because Dawn will eat turkey dogs but not beef or pork because, well, because these books were really inconsistent about whether Dawn was actually a vegetarian. Then they take the kids in the barn to tell ghost stories. Some of the kids have brought pajamas to change into and pretend it is a real campout. This is the scene depicted on the cover. Mary Anne looks cute. I'm pretty sure Jackie Rodowsky is the kid next to Karen but I don't know who the others are supposed to be.

Mary Anne, Logan, and Dawn are going to ride their bikes to the lake and have a picnic, but Mary Anne wrecks and scrapes herself up badly, and of course, badly sprains her ankle. I should add a sprained ankle tag, there really is one in about every third book. Mary Anne wants her dad to come home but he can't and she feels really lonely and sorry for herself.

The campers go to the bowling alley, except for Alicia who stays with Mary Anne. Alicia kind of wants to go bowling but Mary Anne doesn't realize it. She's still babying Alicia. The bowling chapter is pretty boring. The next day Alicia wants to go to the park and after she goes, Mary Anne realizes that she's been acting like a baby and refusing to have fun with Sharon and Dawn because she misses her dad. She has a talk with Sharon and tries to embrace the remaining time before Richard returns. They go to a double feature at the drive-in.

The circus dress rehearsal is a disaster because Karen and her asshole friends have spent so much time bitching about the circus that they didn't rehearse their acts. The club has to work quickly to rework some of the acts so they don't seem completely terrible. Of course since the BSC is amazing, the circus performance the next day goes off without a hitch.

Mary Anne, Dawn, and Sharon clean the house because Richard is due home. They do a "gazillion" loads of dishes and laundry, which again, pretty impressive when you've not cooked anything at home. Mary Anne has a long talk with her dad and he tells her to try to loosen up and enjoy herself more. You know, because that's a thing that a man who alphabetizes his socks would say. Then I guess Mary Anne probably does another hundred loads or so of dishes.

#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.

#42, Jessi and the Dance School Phantom

This is probably my favorite Jessi book. I know a lot of people think Jessi has the most boring books, but I always liked them well enough. I think part of it is that her family seemed like nice, regular people who enjoyed each other's company.

The book opens up with Jessi auditioning for the lead role in her ballet school's production of Sleeping Beauty. Since Jessi is the best 11-year old ballerina in the world, she obviously gets the lead role. Daddy is really excited for her and he buys ice cream for dessert to celebrate her accomplishment, but Jessi only eats a tiny bit of it, because she has to watch what she eats so she won't get fat. Being fat is the Worst Thing in Baby-Sitters Club land, like that part in Winter Vacation (Super Special #3) where some boys on the bus are singing a mean song about a fat girl, and not only is this presented as a normal thing to do, the next sentence is a snotty line about how the song didn't stop the girl from eating three Snickers bars on the ride home. So clearly Jessi does not want to get fat.

On the first day of rehearsals, Jessi's toe shoes disappear from her bag and she has to go in without them. It is completely embarrassing for her and makes it impossible for the rehearsal to go on. When they go back into the dressing room, the toe shoes have magically reappeared in Jessi's bag, which aside from being confusing is also pretty embarrassing. And then after the rehearsal when they go to change, there is a slip of paper with the word BEWARE written on it.

The next rehearsal, Jessi brings a whole spare outfit, to avoid a repeat. Then she works her ass off to show Mme Noelle that she is serious about working hard and the toe shoe thing was just a fluke. When she goes in to change after rehearsal, though, her spare outfit is missing from her bag and there is another note, written in red letters, that says WATCH YOUR STEP.

Jessi spends her baby-sitting money to buy a whole new dance outfit, and a new dance bag that she can lock. This is one of the things I always remember about this book, the locking dance bag. The rehearsal goes well at first, but then Jessi botches the landing on a tour jeté and twists her ankle badly. She won't be able to dance for several days. The worst part is it turns out she wasn't even supposed to be performing that particular move. She hadn't heard what Madame said, and one of the other girls in her dance class had given her the wrong instruction. When Jessi goes in to change, she finds another threatening note. This one says TOLD YOU SO. FROM NOW ON, WATCH OUT. Then she has to sit out one rehearsal, and after that one, finds a note that says IT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE. TOO BAD IT WASN'T.

Jessi talks to her friends, and they suggest they come watch the next rehearsal. The rehearsal is going to be in the auditorium, and Jessi thinks that if they sit in the back maybe no one will notice their presence. This seems extremely unlikely to me, because while the back of the theater will be dim if the house lights are off I doubt it'd be pitch black enough that they wouldn't be spotted at all, and secondly a group of middle school girls is not exactly the quietest thing in the world, but this is BSC land. Charlie drives them all to the auditorium. This is the other part of the book I always remember, because his car doesn't even have enough seat belts for all the girls, and some of them are sitting on each other's laps, and I don't know why their parents allow it, and then I also wonder what Charlie is going to do in Stamford for the time the girls are watching the rehearsal until he has to pick them up again. Maybe hang out at the mall or get a bite to eat I guess. Why doesn't Charlie have anything better to do on a Saturday?

Jessi's friends manage to hide in the theater seats. Jessi can't even spot them when she looks for them. This despite the fact that Dawn has brought a tiny flashlight to take notes with. If you're on a stage looking out into a dark auditorium you'd probably notice a flashlight beam, I'm just saying. On the ride home, the girls talk it over and come up with a short list of suspects in Jessi's class. At no time does the idea of telling an adult come up, even though Jessi has received threats and hurt her ankle.

Jessi's stolen leotard is returned to her dance bag, cut to shreds. To me this is the creepiest part of the book. There is a lot of hatred involved in stealing something, destroying it, and returning it so the victim knows exactly what you did. She gets some more notes. She gets shoved into some wet paint. She almost gets taken out by a piece of falling scenery. She has also eliminated two of the three suspects on the BSC list and is left only with a girl named Hilary.

There is a bit where Jessi is helping Aunt Cecelia with the dishes and has an idea about how to expose Hilary and she exclaims out loud. Aunt Cecelia asks her what's going on and Jessi says nothing, because she hasn't told her aunt or parents about all the danger so as not to worry them. I personally think this is the exact wrong kind of message to send to kids reading these books. If someone is sending you threats and almost knocking you out with scenery and destroying your possessions, tell an adult. Don't leave it all to  your group of middle school friends.

Jessi gets Hilary to incriminate herself by asking her to make a sign about a wet floor, which Hilary obligingly does with the red calligraphy pen she has been using to write the threatening notes. Hilary is not a winner in the brains department obviously. Hilary has been trying to scare Jessi because Hilary's very pushy mother is upset that she didn't get the lead. Hilary is very upset to be caught and begs Jessi not to tell Mme Noelle. She'll stop doing nasty things and she'll pay Jessi back for the leotard she ruined. Jessi agrees to this. Jessi is not a winner in the brains department this day either.

Opening night! All of Jessi's friends come to see her dance.

Claudia looked extremely cool and exotic, as usual. Her hair was braided with silver ribbons, and she wore a shimmery dark blue minidress. On her feet were silver sandals, with laces up the calves -- kind of like toe shoes.

Jessi dances and the show goes extremely well, and she gets roses from her family and friends. Hilary announces that she is quitting dance.

The subplot in this book is that the BSC is having a pet show for the kids they sit for. At first they're worried because it is causing some conflict among the kids, especially siblings who don't want to share pets, and kids who are bragging that their pet is the sure winner. Becca is worried because their family pet is a hamster and she's sure Misty won't win anything because she's not a cat or dog. At the very end of the book, Jessi comes up with the totally obvious brilliant idea that each kid who enters should get a prize. The pet show is a roaring success and none of the kids' pets try to eat each other, which is very realistic. There is a list of some of the prizes they give out and Pow the basset hound wins "shortest legs." Which probably should have been "shortest legs in proportion to size" as there were at least two hamsters entered and I very highly doubt Pow had shorter legs than they did. Misty the hamster wins best overall pet and Becca is very pleased.

LS #92, Karen's Sleigh Ride

This is another one I got toward the end of just trying to finish up my collection and have only read once, but I did actually remember one of the plot points.

This book starts out with Karen, Hannie, Andrew, and Emily making Christmas crafts at the big house. Karen and Andrew are spending December there, and even though it's only December 2, the kids are totally excited about all things Christmas, except Emily, who only wants to talk about presents. Karen and Hannie try to teach her some Christmas carols, but they're interrupted when Kristy comes in with some bad news. The Stones' barn has burned down, although luckily none of their animals were hurt. Karen's pretty upset, because she went to farm camp at the Stone farm. (LS#75, Karen's County Fair) Karen offers to share her bedroom with Ollie the lamb if he needs a place to stay, but her family are a bunch of jerks and say no. Then she suggests they could have a barn raising like she saw on TV. Everyone will bring food and spend a day building a new barn. Again, Karen's family are a bunch of jerks who have to ruin her brilliant plan by pointing out that nobody knows how to build barns anymore. Daddy does say he'll call Mr. and Mrs. Stone and offer to help.

It turns out that the Stones were underinsured, and won't have enough to rebuild their barn. Daddy says they might have to sell their animals or move to a smaller farm, and everyone is really upset by this, although probably not as upset as Mr. and Mrs. Stone. Karen and Kristy go to try and think up ways to help, and Emily comes in and starts trying to get into Kristy's dresser to look for presents. Then Karen comes up with a plan and calls a family meeting. She says everyone but Nannie is there, because Nannie has decided to give Emily a bath. But since Nannie is the only person not present, I guess she'll have to wait for Emily to get out of the meeting to commence the bath.

Karen's brilliant idea is that they can have a winter festival at the Stones' farm. They can have snowman making and ice sculpting contests, skating on the pond, sleigh rides, refreshments, and general merriment. The Stones agree, and they all put in a ton of work to get ready. Karen helps Kristy and some of her friends clean Mary Anne's family's barn to temporarily house the Stones' displaced animals. She informs us that Mary Anne's stepmother feeds them lunch of all natural turkey hot dogs on whole wheat buns, and they are "all right." I guess Karen isn't much for whole grains. Karen also helps Sam and Charlie fix up the Stones' old sleigh to use for the sleigh rides. And she and her classmates make signs about the festival during art class. A lot of other people are volunteering to make refreshments and things. This festival is a lot of work.

There is a meeting and between some funds that have already been raised and the projected outcome of the festival, they will have raised about $5000. Karen thinks this is a lot, but it turns out that it's only about half of what the Stones need to rebuild the barn.

The night of the festival arrives, and tons of people crowd onto the Stone Farm to take part in the action, such as it is. The festival is one of those things that sounds nice in theory but once the people arrive and eat a refreshment I don't really know what they're doing after that. Milling around and making there be too many people in a small space I guess.

Karen, Hannie, and Nancy win second prize in the snowman contest with their snow bunny. Claudia wins third prize. I guess being the best thirteen year old artist only gets you so far when you're competing with Karen Brewer. First prize goes to a contestant who made a snow angel. I know this probably is meant to imply that they did angel wings on their snowman and made a snow halo, but I'm going to just pretend that the winner flopped down and made an actual snow angel. Then they go on a sleigh ride. Then there is a little ceremony where Watson has Karen present a check to the Stones. Karen feels sorry that they couldn't do more, but when Mr. Stone looks at the check it is the exact amount they needed to rebuild the barn.

When they are taking things down and getting ready to go, Karen overhears some people talking. It turns out that they really didn't raise enough, but Watson paid the difference out of his own pocket but didn't really want to make a big public deal out of it. (That's the part of the book I remembered.)

Emily has still been talking about presents the whole book, and she trashes Karen's room looking for presents. Karen yells at her but then remembers that Emily is just little and it's really hard to wait for things when you're little, so she gives Emily a few small presents in the days leading up to Christmas. Little things like a tennis ball with Emily's initials written on it and a barrette Karen doesn't wear anymore. It's really quite thoughtful of Karen. Also, I know I say this a lot, but seriously, how cute is Emily?

#47, Mallory on Strike

I was going to do Kristy's Great Idea next, and maybe do the series in order, but then that felt like work, so I figured I'd just read what I was in the mood for. And today I was in the mood for some Mallory angst. This book has always been one of my favorites. I particularly like the chapters where Mallory has to do asinine tasks for her family, like make Claire a peanut butter sandwich so she can have a picnic with her dolls. Because her mom doesn't feel like it, or is busy, or something, so she finds Mallory and gets her to do it, even though making the damn sandwich would probably take less long than hunting down Mallory and asking her to make it.

This book starts out with Mallory finding out about Young Author's Day, and she wants to go home and finish her homework super fast so she can start thinking up the perfect story idea, but then she has to take care of her younger brothers and sisters. Claire is upset because the triplets are scaring her, Margo is getting into their mom's makeup (and she has painted her lips with orange lipstick, and I want to know why Mallory's mom even owns orange lipstick), Nicky gets bitten by their hamster and then the hamster gets loose and they have to catch him, Mallory's mom wants her to calm the triplets down. I do not know why the hell the triplets listen to Mallory when she is only a year older than they are and there are three of them, but they do.

I sort of loathe Frodo the Pike family hamster. It's not his fault, but he's always getting loose and having to be caught and that just makes me think there's rodent feces ground into all their carpets and it just seems sort of asinine that with eight kids the pet they get (at this point) is one nocturnal caged animal to pester and annoy. If I were their mother I would spend most of my time yelling. Of course if I were their mother I wouldn't have gotten pregnant within months of delivering triplets. Can you imagine? Five kids under three when Vanessa was born. No wonder that in the early books the Pikes are characterized as letting their kids do whatever they want. They had no strength left to fight after they had their eighth kid in six years.

Meeting time! Mallory informs us that Kristy does not need to wear a bra yet. I care deeply.

Claudia can wear anything and it looks great. Like she'll wear polka dot leggings with a short red skirt. Then she'll wear a long-sleeved T-shirt with a black vest (covered with cool pins that she's made herself) over that. Sometimes she decides to go fifties and wear penny loafers with white anklets.

I never understood the big deal about penny loafers in these books.

Mallory sets her alarm for 7:00 on Saturday morning. She tells us it is agony to get up so early and usually she would sleep until at least eight. I work at 6:00 am, so I guess I should consider 8 to be sleeping in, but I don't. On my last day off I slept until 3 pm. So maybe it's just my night-owl tendencies, but I don't consider anything before 11 to be sleeping in.

There's more shit with Mallory having to care for her siblings. Byron spills a glass of milk at the table and their mom asks Mallory to clean it up. WTF. He's ten years old, I think he can use a damn sponge. Hell, I'd expect the five year old to at least make an effort to clean up her own mess. Maybe I'm just unreasonable.

Mallory keeps having to spend a bunch of time looking after her siblings, and she doesn't want to take new baby-sitting jobs. She babysits for the Barrett kids, and Buddy cuts his foot while riding his bike, so she decides she should either be an associate member or just quit the club. Instead, Kristy tells her to take two weeks off.

Mallory goes on strike one Saturday so she can finish writing. She sits in her room all day, not even emerging to eat. The Pike Parents, horror stricken at the idea of actually having to care for their own kids, call Dawn and Mary Anne over to babysit, make up a quick bullshit story about an emergency library board meeting, and head out to paint the town red. Dawn and Mary Anne have to feed the kids pizza. The book says they have to cut the crust off Margo's pizza and cut Claire's slice into bite-sized pieces. My niece is three and she's been able to eat pizza by herself for at least a year, no cutting required. I'm just saying. Also who cuts the crust off pizza? You use the crust like a handle, then leave it on your plate at the end if you don't want it. Or if you are eating pizza at my mom's house you can throw it into the living room and say, "Oh no, pizza crust flew into the living room!" and watch her dog go running to gobble it up. My mom will give you a dirty look, but it's tradition. The dog's getting old now though, so you may have to act fast if you want to get an invitation to pizza night before there's nobody to eat the crust and it just sits there and congeals.

How could you not want to throw pizza crusts to her?

Anyway, Mallory talks to her parents and they decide that from now on they'll try to demand less from her, and then the next day she and Jessi go to the mall, and then her story wins the prize, and then the next weekend she takes her siblings on a totally lame outing, including paper hats, which they all enjoy and decree to be the most fun ever. Even the ten-year old boys. At one point in the day they stop by the Braddock house, where a backyard circus is being held by some neighbor kids.