Wednesday, May 28, 2008

If you don’t do your initiation, you don’t play……BSC # 74 Kristy and the Copycat

Memory Reaction

Eh, this is probably when I REALLY started to hate Karen. The main sublplot is about Karen being annoying. As opposed to when she just happened to be annoying independently from the rest of the action.

I never really liked the softball plots. I hope I realized it was kind of lame that Kristy just got away with everything in this book. Because thinking back, I know even before rereading that that the entire book ends up being for nothing. Although, remembering my personality as a kid, I was probably both horrified that Kristy actually performed a hazing and relieved she didn’t get in major trouble.

Revisited Reaction

First of all, the title to this book makes no sense. The “copycat” part is in reference to Karen being an annoying brat, who suddenly wants to be a grown-up (meaning 13), and goes around copying various BSC members. The back of the book description implies she is imitating Kristy, but she’s not. She imitates Mary Anne, Stacey, and Claudia, but barely even shares a scene with Kristy until the end. At that point, she bugs Kristy until Kristy snaps and tells her to act her age. But Karen never actually tries to copy her.

But that whole thing is stupid. AND just the subplot. Let’s get to the main idea, which is that Kristy decides she misses playing softball. So, she tries out for the school team and makes it, obviously. She is one of four new girls, and the rest of the team decides to haze them, by making them spray paint an old shed. Kristy is against it, but eventually gives in because the rest of the team keeps making her look bad on the field. The night they do the spray painting, two of the other new girls light up cigarettes. Kristy basically walks away, because she is a goody-goody and all, but the next morning we find out the shed burned down and some guy was hospitalized while trying to put it out.

The rest of the book consists of Kristy freaking out and feeling really guilty. At one point, she gets letters threatening to tell on her if she doesn’t confess like she is in I Know What You Did Last Summer, but nothing comes from that. It turns out it was one of the other new girls trying to get the rest of them to confess because she feels guilty but is too chicken to do it herself. Meanwhile, the boys’ baseball team is wrongly accused, which makes her feel even more guilty. There is a lot of guilt in this book. Finally, Kristy tells the rest of the BSC and they support her and she plans to turn herself in. Before she gets a chance, some high school kids admit to starting the fire, so Kristy is off the hook. It’s kind of a lame ending.

High/Lowlights

  • Claudia and Stacey volunteer to coach the Krushers while Kristy is playing, and it is like something out of Amelia Bedelia. Claudia keeps taking things literally, like thinking call for the ball means trying to get the ball to come like it is a dog. I think it is supposed to be funny. It’s not.
  • These books always had the line “Maybe I should stop and introduce myself.” For the longest time I thought that was a sign of good writing.
  • Um, Logan is not an alternate member of the BSC. He is an ASSOCIATE member. What is Kristy talking about? Honestly, did Scholastic throw any money towards copy editors?
  • Outfits! “Stacey had her premed blonde hair back with a leopard-print scarf tied under one ear. She was wearing one of her favorite pairs of earrings, gold-leaf-shaped ones. She was also wearing a black wrap long-sleeve top, a short, low-slung brown skirt with a big black belt, black tights, and leopard flats.” Not TOO bad.
  • Now we get to Claud: “A big yellow shirt with red X-shaped buttons, enormously baggy white pants, and big red Doc Martens double-laced with black and yellow shoe laces braided together. Her earrings said ‘stop’ and ‘go’ – ‘stop’ in her left ear and ‘go’ in her right.”
  • Claudia, you are 13. I don’t think you can talk about how hard it is to be a grown up. Besides who feels like an adult at 13? I am 26 and still don’t feel grown up. Of course, maybe that is because I am reading books meant for third graders.
  • One of the senior members of the softball team calls Kristy and the other new girls the “four musketeers,” and Kristy really likes the nickname until she realizes it is a joke. Then she feels like a dork. As she should.
  • If anyone from the BSC should have stepped in for Kristy as a softball coach, it should have been Mal. When they are talking about softball at the meeting, she is the only one who knows what Kristy is talking about. But Mal is lame and doesn’t get real plots, so scratch that.
  • When Kristy spray paints the shed she dresses in all dark clothes and actually rubs burnt cork on her face. It seems a little extreme for a prank. But then, I never did anything like that, so who knows.
  • Okay, Stacey and Claud coaching outfits:
    • Caudia: “a red satin baseball cap, purple sweatpants that were cut off just below the knees, purple high tops with neon pink laces, red and white striped socks, and a red and pink tie-dyed crop top shirt.” Do you think maybe she is colorblind? It would explain so much.
    • Stacey: “Black bicycle shorts with neon yellow racing stripes down the sides, a pair of Nikes with matching yellow swooshes on the sides (but ordinary white laces) an enormous white v-neck T-shirt, a black jog bra, and a Brooklyn Dodgers cap, turned backwards.” Um, A Brooklyn Dodgers Cap? In 1994?
  • Later, Karen copies Stacey’s outfit. But she uses a black bathing suit top since 7-year-olds don’t wear sports bras. And she wears a plan baseball cap, not a Dodgers one, because as annoying as she is, Karen knows the Dodgers have not played in Brooklyn since the 1950s.
  • Even if Kristy isn’t responsible for the stupid shed burning down, she still spray painted the thing. And yet, all her guilt basically goes away when she finds out someone else actually set the fire, and she no longer feels the need to confess. Way to advocate kids getting away with hazing, ghostwriters.
  • The next book is called “Jessi’s horrible prank.” That should really be the title of this one (only it would have been Kristy’s horrible prank, obviously).


16 comments:

Anonymous said...

it always bothered me when the title of the book or the synopsis on the back focused on the subplot more than the plot itself... some one really should have been paying closer to the whole editing thing....

Anonymous said...

I know they're going for drama, obviously. But really. Cna't anyone just BE on a softball team with out hazing and burnt to the ground sheds?!

Anonymous said...

I remember this one. I normally didn't read the Kristy ones because softball = blah. But it sounded interesting. And I definitely remember being disappointed over a bunch of things - Kristy never got caught/punished, the inclusion of annoying Karen, and the fact that nothing really seemed to get resolved at the end. Since then, I only read the Kristy stories where Cary Retlin showed up. At least he was exciting (well, for the BSC).

Donica said...

Well, I'm in the minority liking Karen and liking the softball plots (what can i say?), and liking this book.
Ah well. :)

Though agree that it's weird that it's called Kristy and the Copycat when it should be called Kristy and The Hazing Incident Gone Wrong or something

Anonymous said...

Amelia Bedelia!!!!


I don't remember reading this book, but it sounds pretty lame.

Anonymous said...

lol @ annakelly - I wanted Kristy and Cary to get together so bad when I was a kid! Later, I realised that Kristy would probably never get with any guy. If you catch my drift.

I remember purposefully avoiding this book because I didn't want to read anything about Karen... now I'm glad I didn't, since reading a book about Kristy not getting to play softball is lamer than reading a book about Kristy actually playing the damn thing.

Mary Ann said...

I usually avoided Kristy books like the plague, so I didn't read this one back in the day, but I couldn't believe it at the beginning when you said you were horrified that Kristy performed a hazing, I thought, "OMG... Kristy was hardcore about softball!" because I thought you meant that SHE was hazing OTHER PEOPLE. And then when I read the tagline that said "if you don't do your initiation, you don't play," I thought that's what SHE was telling the kids on the Krushers... I was like, "dag, she went crazy in this book," LOL.

Anonymous said...

I have gold-leaf-shaped earrings, a big black belt, black tights, and leopard flats. And now, come to thing of it, I might pair them with a black skirt and a white button down... DANG IT!

BSC Snarker, aka Kristen said...

mary ann I guess, I wasn't clear....but your version sounds like it would have been ten times more fun. I can actually sort of see Kristy going crazy and making kids do some kind of initiation. She has control issues and all.

Anonymous said...

I soooo wanted to read this one . . . but now it sounds really lame. Why couldn't they have let Kristy get in trouble? I think the ghostwriter just took the easy way out.

How disappointing. :(

That said, I love this blog.

Happy said...

stacey's outfit sounds fucking siiick! i totally want that outfit RIGHT NOW.

If you can, could you please do that next book? the jessi and the horrible prank one? I hope its bad enough that it breaks her leg too, like the time Claudia got her leg broken by that prankster.

but.. now that im thinking about it - i have a feeling the horrible prank is probably some sort of racist kind of prank.. like a burning cross on her lawn except.. you know.. at the 3rd grade level.

Devika said...

I totally thought this was about Kristy going nuts, too! It's funny, because I actually own a Brooklyn Dodgers sweatshirt from the "Cooperstown" collection of some sporting goods manufacturer.

Also, a crop top seems inappropriate attire for coaching a children's softball team...

Isabel Escalante said...

I would totally wear the Stacey outfit (the black shirt, skirt, and leopard flats)... but the Claudia ones sound terrible. The red and yellow one reminds me of Ronald McDonald.

Liz said...

Unless! The title of the book is supposed to have more than one meaning. Obviously there's all the Karen stuff, but maybe Kristy was also being a 'copycat' by going along with all the hazing stuff even when she knew she shouldn't. ...Would that be too clever or sophisticated for BSC books, though?

(And yes, I have just recently discovered this blog and intend to read all the entries, in order, with no shame.)

tip said...

I just started reading it too. I am reading each entry in order too. This has been my hobby the last week or so.

Marianna E said...

I also remember being disappointed by this book because I thought it was going to be about Karen copying everything Kristy did. And I think I may have had gold leaf earrings like Stacey, because they seem so familiar to me.