Yes, I invited six friends to come on the trip……..BSC Super Special #8: Baby-sitters at Shadow Lake

Memory Reaction

This is weird, because I remember reading this book, and I remember really liking it, but I don’t really remember what happens. I know it is a book where they all go away with Kristy’s family and it is at a lake, but the details are a total blur. The only thing that stands out to me is how Karen gets a chapter in this book, and in some Little Sister book, she also talks about going to the lake. I was so impressed with the crossover stuff.

Revisited Reaction

This is actually a pretty mild plot. Some of the Super Specials were about major events (like a snowstorm, getting stuck on a freaking desert island, being in a play, etc.) In this one....they just they go to a lake. The set up is that Watson’s aunt and uncle are thinking of leaving him their vacation house at a lake in Massachusetts, and they are letting him stay there with his family for a couple weeks to decide if he wants it. They let the kids invite friends (because Watson and Elizabeth are psycho), so the BSC comes, plus some annoying friends of David Michael and Karen. So, of course, all the girls get some sort of subplot in the overall story.

Kristy: Um….she learns to drive a boat? That is really all she does. Plus, she really wants Watson to accept the cabin so she makes everyone right a journal talking about how great it is. When she gives it to him, Watson is touched and decides to let his aunt and uncle leave it to him. He also calls Kristy his daughter, which totally touches her.

Claudia: She decides to enter this little speedboat that comes with the cabin in a boat show. All the other boats are huge yachts, so everyone makes fun of her, but in the end it goes well because people think it shows guts. I guess if you don’t see her spelling, you could confuse “stupidity” with “guts.” She does win a prize for “best spirit,” which sounds like one of those prizes you give to the worst athlete in little kids sports competitions, but Claud is happy about it.

Stacey: Gets really annoyed because Sam keeps pestering her and flinging food at her during meals. Sam finally tells her it is because he wants her, and she gets all confused. But at a dance they end up dancing all night, and by the end she says it is true love.

Mary Anne: Gets stuck baby-sitting for Karen and her friends a lot.

Dawn: Thinks there is a monster in the lake. Actually, she keeps calling it the Loch Ness Monster, which is even stupider, because they are not in Scotland, let alone at Loch Ness. She also finds a “mystery,” but it is sorta lame. There is an island in the middle of the lake where a rich family lived years ago. Then one day they disappeared and no one ever found out what happened. Dawn thinks they are haunting the lake, because everywhere Dawn goes has ghosts. Nothing else happens with that.

Jessi: Meets a guy and thinks he is hot. Then feels bad because she has a sort of boyfriend in New York (Quint, the dancer, remember?). So, she tells the guy she just wants to be friends, and he is all, “that’s all I ever wanted. I have a girlfriend.” Then Jessi is all embarrassed.

Mallory: Gets bit by a lot of bugs. She wears a bunch of hideous clothes to stop this, but it doesn’t work.

We also get random chapters from Karen and David Michael, who waste our time fighting over a playhouse/fort they find in the woods. It takes up WAY to much time though, they should have taken those chapters out and given Kristy or Mary Anne an actual plot.

High/Lowlights

• In the letter Watson gets from his aunt and uncle, they totally diss Emily Michelle. They say how much they want to meet Karen and Andrew, his new wife, and her children. But they do not mention Emily at all.

• Watson agrees that the kids can invite friends. But why does that translate to the entire BSC? I don’t buy the, “Oh, my friends are going to help watch the kids so we were all allowed to go.” No one needs childcare that badly.

• When they find the boat, Kristy’s mom says anyone twelve or older can drive it. That seems like an unnecessary slam on Jessi and Mal.

• On the first page Karen asks Watson why Shadow Lake has its name, and he says he doesn’t know. Like, two pages later Dawn asks Kristy the same thing, and she doesn’t remember if Watson told her.

• “On that particular day, Claud was wearing a pink tank top and a pair of neon pink-and-black bicycle shorts. Also, she was wearing three pairs of flop socks, arranged so that her ankles looked like multicolored ice cream cones. Her sneakers were Day-Glo yellow.” That actually sounds like something I would have tried to copy as a 10-year-old.

• “Stacey was wearing a simple (for her) outfit – black leggings, a long black T-shirt with brilliant starfish swooping across the front, black flop socks, and high-tops.” I guess starfish and sophisticated?

• It is pretty disrespectful that the rest of the BSC calls Watson, “Watson.” I know that is what Kristy calls him, but Kristy calls her mother, “mom” and they don’t do that.

• Sam totally hates Karen. In his chapter, he wakes up hearing someone singing nonsense words, and thinks it is Karen, but realizes it is Andrew. He totally freaks at the idea of there being “two of them.”

• Mallory thinks it sucks that there are 11 girls sleeping in a room (that sleeps 12) and five boys (in a room that sleeps 12). Well, that is what you get for tagging along on someone else’s vacation.

• Stacey changes her clothes because Sam calls her outfit (shorts and a Hard-Rock Café shirt) ugly. Then claims she doesn’t know he is bugging her because he likes her.

• Kristy thinks that even though her mom still looks good in a bikini, she should not wear one because she is over thirty. Honestly, if a woman who gave birth to four kids can still look decent in a bikini, let her show off.

• A Kristy outfit: “Blue shorts that fastened with a drawstring, and a T-shirt with a picture of Gumby on the front and a picture of Pokey on the back.” For hanging out at a lake, that seems more appropriate than most of Claudia’s outfits.

• Idiotic Karen pretends that she is in The Secret Garden and that she has all these flowers growing in the middle of the woods. David Michael laughs at her for weeding the forest.

• Mallory’s bug defense idea is to wear a towel on her head, a jungle safari hat over the towel, and a piece of mosquito netting over the hat. She also wears gardening gloves and a kerchief around her neck. Everyone refuses to walk next to her, but I bet they would call it awesome-looking if Claudia ever wore that.

• I can not imagine a four-year-old saying, “ You are frowning….What are you thinking about?” Actually, I can’t imagine anyone actually using the word “frowning.”

• I don’t think it is hard to believe that Claudia could tutor Emily Michelle. Peer tutoring is supposed to work well, and Claud is certainly on the level of a two-year-old.

• Dawn meets some old guy in a store and gets him to tell her the “mystery” of the lake. I swear, when I was reading this I was convinced it ended with him sending a letter at the end of the book saying he made it up since she wanted a mystery. For the record, he doesn’t, so I must either be thinking of another book or am totally crazy.

• In the picture of the boat show, Claudia, Dawn, and Kristy are shown in the boat. But Claudia and Kristy were the only ones who rode in the show. Someone screwed that one up.

• How do you mix up the theme songs for Gilligan’s Island and Beverelly Hillbillies?

• Karen is such a bitch. She and her friends have a bet with David Michael and his friends that the boys can’t build a decent fort. Since these boys are eight, they only really manage to tie a couple “walls” together and make a lean-to. Karen laughs at it, leans against a wall until it falls down, and then declares herself winner of the bet.

• Oh, wow, I totally remember this scene. Karen and her friends dose themselves with perfume for a dance and stink up the whole cabin. That is why you don’t give a seven-year-old perfume.

• Jessi outfit? Why not: “A jean skirt, a yellow tank top, flop socks, and a high-top sneakers.” Man, I remember when “flop socks” were acceptable.

• It seems a little tacky that Kristy is so eager to have Watson’s aunt and uncle leave him the cabin in their will. I realize she wouldn’t have known said relatives, but it still seems rude go to be excited about getting something when they die.