“For some reason being part of a couple with Logan didn’t feel right”……..BSC FF # 3: Mary Anne’s Big Breakup

Recap

Lately, Mary Anne has just not been into things when it comes to Logan.  She doesn’t look forward to their dates and doesn’t even really enjoy them.  She’s also annoyed that he still tries to take control of things, like where they go on their dates/what they do.  So, she breaks up with him.  Logan’s surprised and upset about it, and tries to convince her to change her mind.  He tells her he only seems to make decisions for her because he knows her so well.  But Mary Anne’s firm and ends it.

Even though she called it off, Mary Anne’s still upset about the breakup, and she doesn’t like that the kids at school are talking about it. Everyone is really surprised about the split, but most people are understanding and tell Mary Anne she did the right thing.

However, Logan’s friends take his side and keep giving Mary Anne dirty looks in the hall at school.  Mary Anne’s upset that they’re taking sides and says she wishes she could stay friendly with Logan’s friends herself, but it doesn’t seem like an option.  Meanwhile, Kristy says she still considers Logan a friend and Mary Anne feels all weird about that.  She even worries that Kristy and Logan are going to go to a dance together.  They don’t, but Kristy tries to suggest that Mary Anne shouldn’t mind if she did, which I don’t really agree with.  Later Kristy says she wouldn’t go even if Logan asked, so she was probably just annoyed at Mary Anne for suggesting it or something.

Pete Black and some guy named Dave that I don’t think existed before each ask Mary Anne to go to the upcoming school dance, but she says she’s not ready to go out with anyone else.  The night of the dance she wants to hang out with friends, but they all have other plans.  She ends up being home alone and when Logan calls, she invites him over to watch a movie.  He tries to tell her she may be upset about the fire and isn’t thinking straight.  He also says that he doesn’t really try to control her, that’s just how she sees things.  Mary Anne says she can only see things the way she can see them.  She’s upset again when Logan leaves, but she still knows the split is for the best and the end’s pretty optimistic.

High/Lowlights

• I really like that in this book the break up happens early on, and the rest of it is about the fallout.  Because when Mary Anne and Logan originally split up it happened at the end of the book, and we never saw anyone’s reaction to the whole thing.

• Mary Anne says she and Logan went to Renwicks (a café) on their first date, but I’m pretty sure a dance was their first date.  When she kicked her shoe across the room? Or maybe that party Stacey threw for Mary Anne’s birthday happened first. But the first date wasn’t at a restaurant.

• Mary Anne ‘s talking to Dawn about how she’s changed she they first met and since Mary Anne first met Logan.   They say how her hair was still in braids when she met Logan.  Except it totally wasn’t, she stopped wearing her hair in braids six whole booksbefore Logan came to Stoneybrook.  This is not a small detail ghostwriter.

• Logan lends Mary Anne a box he kept with everything she ever wrote to him in, so she can recreate her journal that was lost in the fire.  She finds this picture from when she cut her hair and says Kristy took it to use when she told Logan about the cut.  But again, that’s totally not what happened.  Logan saw her hair before Kristy did, and Kristy was all pissed off about it, so of course she didn’t take a photo.

• I know this is a new series, but you’d think they’d still pay some attention to continuity.

• One of the notes Mary Anne wrote was from when they got back together says how she felt like half a person without Logan.  Which her current self is kind of horrified about.

• There’s one Claudia outfit, but nothing too outrageous.  All we get to hear is that she wore painter’s coveralls with a daisy pattern she made herself on it.  I’m disappointed we don’t get to find out if she has a real daisy in her hair or shoes or something to tie it all together. Cause you know she would have.

• Kristy remembers this “together but independent” thing Mary Anne and Logan did in Hawaii, where they tried not to do everything together.  She says, “remember when we all went to Hawaii and….?”  Only Kristy didn’t go with them.  That error doesn’t bother me as much as the earlier ones, but it’s still annoying.

• We hear about how Logan’s teammates are taking his “side,” but isn’t Pete Black on one of those teams?  Cause asking Mary Anne out sure isn’t taking his side.

• It really annoys me that on the cover they show Mary Anne with her old haircut.  Especially when they say she has chin-length hair in the book.

• Stacey and Claudia are still barely speaking in this book.  It makes BSC meetings a little bit awkward.

• Stacey encourages Mary Anne to go out with Pete, saying how she got to know him when they did a movie project together. But I think Mary Anne already thought highly of Pete because of that young author project they did. She always defended him after that.  (And SMS sure had a lot of projects, didn't they)?

• Also, didn't Stacey sort of date Pete at one point?  It seems weird to try and set him and Mary Anne up after that.

• A sign that this book’s definitely different from the original series…..Mary Anne goes Apple/Pumpkin picking with Kristy’s family, and they make a point of saying it’s NOT a sitting  job. So, even though we hear that Karen got stuck in a tree, we don’t have to deal with getting her out.

• Mary Anne has a sitting job for Logan’s siblings after the breakup, and she’s worried it’s going to be awkward.  But Mrs. Bruno’s super nice to her while his brother and sister give her a hard time.  So, Mary Anne thinks Mrs. Bruno doesn’t know yet.  And I totally get a guy not telling his mother about getting dumped, but it seems weird to then tell your nine-year-old sister and five-year-old brother about it.

• Mary Anne’s really surprised when this Dave guy asks her out.  He asks if she’s going to the dance and she says, “why, do you want me to work on some committee?”  Then she thinks how it’s been so long since a guy asked her out.  But who ever asked her out besides Logan?  Alex in Sea City’s the only one I can think of.

• Everyone keeps pointing out that Mary Anne/Logan broke up before and got back together.  And Mary Anne points out how they thought they worked out their issues, but the same problems keep coming back.  So, she's convinced it’s for real this time.  I’m glad she stays firm about it.

• Dawn tells Mary Anne that Mary Anne always defined herself by her relationship to someone/something else (her dad, the BSC, Logan).  And she says Mary Anne should try to figure out what she really likes for herself.  Which I agree with in principle, but Dawn sounds rather bitchy when she says it. 

• At the end, Kristy, Claudia, and Stacey come by to see how Mary Anne’s doing (the morning after the dance).  They don’t plan this, they just all happen to show up at the same time, and go up to Mary Anne’s bedroom to see her. This seems unlikely, but I'll go with it. A few minutes later they go downstairs and see a note from Richard and Sharon that they went to the barn (where they’re starting construction on the new house).  But they must have been there to let the girls in, so why not just tell them, go up to see Mary Anne, we’re on our way out?

“I totally mind. I can’t believe you would betray me like this”……BSC FF # 2: Stacey vs. Claudia

Recap

I have to say right off, I liked this a lot more than the first Friends Forever book (which I didn’t dislike, it was just a bit different in tone).  Early on Stacey gets annoyed because Ethan (still her current boyfriend) signed up for some art class on Sundays.  Since he lives in NYC, the weekend’s the only time the two can see each other, so the class limits that.

Then Stacey notices a new guy at school – Jeremy who she thinks is totally cute, cool, etc.  So does Claudia.  At first Stacey’s encouraging Claud, since she still has a boyfriend (even though she’s very into Jeremy).  Then she and Ethan have another fight because he has to work on the next Saturday and won’t be able to see her.  They end that call by saying they should “cool things down.”  Stacey asks if this means they are breaking up, and Ethan says no they’re just changing things.  But Stacey still thinks of it as a breakup.  Anyway, she decides that she still needs to be a good friend and support Claudia’s interest in Jeremy.  She even helps arrange a “date” by inviting Jeremy and Claudia to go to the mall with her (as a group) to introduce Jeremy to the area.  Only then she “gets sick” and can’t go with them.  Claudia has a great time and is even more interested in Jeremy.  She keeps drawing him/sculpting him (without his knowledge, obviously).

However, Jeremy shows up at Stacey’s house the next day to see how she is.  He says he’s only into Claudia as a friend and wants to go out with Stacey.  She says she has to talk to Claud first.  She actually writes out note cards about how much she values Claudia’s friendship, to make sure she gets this across to Claud when talking to her.  Her logic is that Jeremy isn’t going to be dating Claudia no matter what, so why shouldn’t SHE date him.  However, when she delivers the news to Claud she skips all the friendship crap and just spits out the news that Jeremy asked her out.  Then she asks if Claudia minds if she says yes.  Claudia says, yes, she does mind and says Stacey is betraying her.  They get into a huge fight about it, and Stacey decides she’ll say yes to Jeremy anyway.

They keep fighting for the rest of the book….after Stacey and Jeremy have a successful date, Claudia mentions Ethan to Jeremy. He gets upset at Stacey for not mentioning she had a boyfriend.  Stacey insists she and Ethan are over and she and Jeremy arrange to go out again.  That night, Ethan shows up at her house right before Jeremy’s supposed to be there.  (Since he apparently meant it when he said cooling things down wasn’t the same as a break up).  But he and Stacey really break up and she goes out with Jeremy.   The book ends without Stacey and Claudia resolving their fight, which is realistic, but a bit surprising.

They only real subplot is that some girl named Rachel moved back to Stoneybrook, after moving away in fifth grade.  Apparently, Rachel didn’t get along with Kristy, Claudia, or Mary Anne back then.  Claudia used to hide from her because Rachel called her a wimp and taunted her into climbing a tree….that she then got stuck in.  But Stacey likes Rachel and they bond and become friendly.  Rachel even gives her some advice about Jeremy. I kept thinking that we were going to find out Rachel was purposely encouraging Stacey to hook up with Jeremy to hurt Claudia, but that didn’t happen.  I also thought we were going to find out Rachel and Jeremy were step-siblings, because it seemed weird that there would be two new kids at the exact same time.  But that didn’t happen either.  The book ends with Stacey and Rachel on good terms.

High/Lowlights

• Foreshadowing for the next book, where Mary Anne and Logan breakup (again) - when Stacey’s checking out Jeremy in the hall, she talks to Mary Anne about how cute he is.  Mary Anne says she has been noticing cute guys more and more lately.  She and Stacey decide it’s totally cool for them to notice other guys while having a boyfriend, but then get weirded out about the idea of the guys noticing other girls.

• Jeremy introduces himself by saying he is “Jeremy. Rudolph.”  Which of course he means his first name is Jeremy and his last name is Rudolph.  But Stacey and Claudia get all confused by this.  Apparently they think someone might actually give their child a first name of “Rudolph.”

• They also get confused when he says he’s from Olympia.  Which….really?  It’s not that small a town, is it?

• Kristy’s description of Rachel: “She’s like Lucy Van Pelt, HelgaPataki, and Angelica Pickles rolled into one.”  The pop-culture side of me is ashamed that I could not figure out who she meant at first. Especially considering I once interned for Nickelodeon.

• Stacey writes Claudia a note because she won’t get a chance to talk to her before lunch.  Only when she passes Claud the note in the hall, she stands there while Claudia reads it, then Claudia says how she’s sorry (about the Ethan breakup).  Why not just tell her?  My friends and I passed notes in the hall sometimes, but we didn’t stand in front of each other and read them.  The point was that you didn’t have time to wait while the person read it.  Especially if that person has Claudia’s reading skills.

• In this book we do hear about the girls having BSC meetings and baby-sitting.  We just don’t get full chapters devoted to the jobs. Stacey just mentions that after school she sat for the Rodowskys then went on with her angsting about Jeremy.  It makes it feel more similar to the original series, but it concentrated on the more interesting stuff.

• Has there ever been a book that had two of the girls’ names in the title?  I wasn’t sure who the narrator was until I opened it.

• Even before the fight, Stacey gets annoyed at all the spelling errors in Claudia’s note.  I think this is the first time anyone has complained about her spelling.   

• When Kristy tells the girls about Rachel being back, she says how her looks have changed and she’s not a “butterball” anymore.  She adds that she looks better than you’d have expected her to turn out.  Which is totally bitchy, but SO something a 13-year-old would say.

• The girls are all at Claud’s house before 5:30, and Kristy just says, “Well, as long as we’re all here, we might as well get started early.”  It’s kind of hard to believe she loosened up about things that much.  In theory, it’s only a couple books since she would stare at the clock doing a countdown.

• Ethan keeps leaving Stacey messages and she just ignores them cause she figures they are done and she no longer cares.  Which is kind of bitchy of her….it seems like she just used the no time together thing as an excuse to go after Jeremy.

• Part of me wants to say it’s good for Stacey to be nice with Rachel, because you shouldn’t be a bitch to someone just because your friend didn’t like them a few years ago.  But isn’t it also a bit disloyal to befriend someone who was actively mean to your BFF?  I’m not saying she should freeze Rachel out, but it seems like there should be more of a balance. 

• Apparently, Claudia and her ex, Josh, are actually doing a good job at staying friends.  They said it a couple times, so I’m wondering if it will become important.

• Claudia and Stacey’s fight is pretty vicious.  Stacey calls Claudia brainless for not being able to spell and says that her artwork isn’t that great.  She also calls Claud a loser, and tells her that no matter how much Claudia follows Jeremy around, he’ll never want to date her.  THEN she says they should stop before they say anything they regret.

• Claudia gets in some mean things as well, but I don’t think they’re as bad as what Stacey says to her.  Especially considering, she’s really the wronged one in this situation. But she says Stacey’s just stringing multiple guys along, that she’s stuck up, and  that 10 million people live in NYC, so Stacey should stop acting like it’s some big claim to fame. (Actually, I think that last part is more hilarious than mean).

• Stacey’s date outfit: “The blue thermal-knit shirt with the tow of small white buttons up the front….it was great with jeans.” Kind of boring.

• Abby’s around in this one…she’s at the lunch table with the other girls every day, which makes a lot of sense.  This may sound silly, but I’m glad they’re all still friends.

• We do get some additional BSC talk – they’re talking about how they want to schedule free time so they don’t all end up with jobs all weekend.  But since they still have people calling, they are still sometimes calling Logan as a backup sitter.  Which actually makes sense.  I’m surprised they wouldn’t still ask Abby to be a backup every once in a while too. 

• I don’t think Stacey’s behavior would be so bad except that she was encouraging Claudia to go after Jeremy.  If she said right off that she was interested in him, then things would have been different.  But she basically set Claudia up for pain.

• Stacey says how she and Ethan didn’t make time for each other over the summer.  Which is totally not what happened in Everything Changes.  But maybe there was another summer since then? You never know in BSC-land.

As an FYI - I'm leaving on vacation tomorrow, so it'll be a couple weeks until the next update.

“He has some…some important news for you”…..BSC FF #1” Kristy’s Big News

Recap

One night Kristy’s dad (Patrick) calls and he asks to speak to Charlie, Sam, and Kristy.  He says he’s getting married and wants them to come to the wedding.  Charlie hangs up after Patrick asks if they’re going to congratulate him. (Cause it’s kinda a douchey thing to say to the kids you abandoned). Sam and Kristy feel a bit weird about the whole thing, but both agree to go. 

After they get off the call, Charlie says he’s not going.  David Michael (who Patrick didn’t even both to say hello to) WANTS to go, but Kristy’s mom tells him he’s too young.  What I think she really mean is, he’s too young to hear, “you’re father’s a dick who doesn’t care about you. “ Eventually Kristy’s mom tells Charlie that if he doesn’t go, Sam and Kristy can’t, so Charlie takes one for the team and goes. They get to California (Sausalito) where Patrick lives and find out that he and his fiancé (Zoey) live in some huge house and work together at a restaurant she owns. Apparently, Patrick gave up sports writing to become chef there.  This surprises Kristy and her brothers because they always thought his leaving had to do with him being so dedicated to his job as a sportswriter.

They’re there a few days before the wedding and things are kind of awkward.  Charlie keeps insulting Patrick, while Sam and Kristy try to be nicer.  Patrick asks Charlie and Sam to be his best men, but only Sam agrees to it.  Zoey tries to get them to do some family bonding, but Charlie keeps throwing out bitter-ish comments.  Kristy spends a lot of time with Zoey, who keeps thinking Kristy will be into fashion issues and other “girl” stuff, which is clearly not true.  But this it’s okay, because Kristy actually really likes Zoey – Sam and Charlie seem to as well. Kristy’s problem comes in when she hears that Patrick and Zoey are planning on having kids.  For obvious reasons, this upsets her, but she still tries to act like she’s okay with things.

The night of the rehearsal dinner, Patrick finally asks Charlie to stop insulting him and act like a “good son.”  Charlie sort of goes off about that and talks about how Patrick’s leaving impacted them.  When Patrick tries to defend himself, Kristy comes to Charlie’s defense.  Charlie says he isn’t going to the dinner and Sam and Kristy stay with him.  But after Patrick leaves they start talking about good memories from when they were kids and how when you grow up you lower your expectations, and they decide to go to the dinner after all.

The wedding goes well and I guess Kristy ends up happy for her dad.  Back in Stoneybrook, she tells her mom about the wedding, who says she wants the best for Patrick.  Which I guess is easy to do after you’ve married a really generous millionaire.  No matter how annoying his kid is.  Kristy also talks to Claudia, Stacey, and Mary Anne about her dad and how she doesn’t know how she really feels about him.

High/Lowlights

• In Stoneybrook, Kristy’s amused that Andrew made a nest for his peas out of mashed potatoes before eating them.  Apparently, Charlie taught him to do this.  She’s even more amused (as am I) when she sees Charlie still does the same thing. 

• The first time Kristy mentions the BSC is on page 20.  She’s like, “I have mentioned the BSC, right.”?  But she hadn’t.  It felt weird.

• This book’s very light on any BSC members other than Kristy.  She talks to Mary Anne a bit before she leaves, and then mentions a BSC meeting at the end, but that’s about it.  I hope the other Friends Forever books aren’t the same, I like the girls interacting.

• Patrick and Zoey can’t pick the kids up from the airport, so they leave their car there and mail Charlie a key and directions to the house.  But how busy could they be, they both seem off work that week?

• I find it interesting, that they have Patrick and Zoey living together before they get married.  Now, I don’t have an issue with this, but it surprised me for a BSC book.

• I was happy to see that we do get some outfits in this book.  They’re not nearly as awful as some of the old-school ones though.

• Here’s Claudia: “Cutoff jeans over bicycle shorts, and suspenders she’d decorated with buttons.  Beneath that she was wearing a paint-splattered T-shirt, which she called her tribute to Jackson Pollock.”  It wouldn’t seem so bad if the book wasn’t taking place in 1999.

• So, the backstory chapter’s pretty much gone in this book.  Which I expected to be happy about, but it actually was a little disappointing. I guess I’m just not a big fan of change. We do get some background on all the members of Kristy’s family though.  And I didn’t notice this until after I finished, but the inside front cover has mini-bios of Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, and Stacey.

• The back of the book refers to Kristy being a bridesmaid, but this is never actually mentioned in the book.

• Kristy does get a new dress for the wedding: “It was velvety…colored a deep burgundy…with [a] regular neckline, right at [her] collarbone, and short sleeves.”

• One thing I thought was weird was that the day after Patrick calls, Kristy goes to see Mary Anne because she “needs her friends.”  But in Everything Changes, Kristy kept talking about how close she and Abby were getting.  And now she has a crisis and doesn’t even mention her?  I mean, obviously, the series is now just concentrating on the original 4.  And maybe Kristy wanted to talk to someone who knew her when her dad was around.  But it still felt a bit odd.

• Kristy says that Charlie took care of David Michael most of the time when Patrick left, but doesn’t that contradict her autobiography?  It said David Michael was in day care and Charlie took care of Sam and Kristy.

• Patrick keeps trying to yell at Charlie for being rude.  That’s pretty nervy of him.  I can’t believe he doesn’t EXPECT all his kids to be a bit angry with him.

• When Zoey suggests Kristy get a slip dress, Kristy’s worried she’ll look like she’s going around in her underwear like “last year’s rock star.”  Do you think she was being specific?  I can’t remember a musician doing that in the late 90s.

• Kristy also gets caught in a dress when trying it on.  It would be really amusing if this was a TV show or movie and we actually got to see it, but here it fell a bit flat.

• Claudia supposedly calls Princess Diana, “The late fashion-great.”  It always feels weird to hear the BSC refer to things that happened after I stopped reading. 

• Maybe there’s a rule about ugly clothes showing up in every BSC book.  Because Patrick and Sam pick out AWFUL tuxedos for the wedding: “They were a sort of unnatural yellow-orange…and [had] ruffled shirts with matching yellow-orange edging.” Even Kristy can tell they’re ugly, and Charlie, Kristy, and Zoey make Patrick exchange them. 

• The night before the wedding, Zoey sleeps in the room Kristy’s staying in, because of the whole curse thing.  That’s when Kristy tells Zoey how things went down with Patrick leaving her mom.  Zoey admits she knows, partially from Patrick, but also based on the fact that he had no pictures of the kids or stories about them that weren’t at least six years old.  But she’s still in love with him.

• At the rehearsal dinner, Kristy stands in for Zoey because it’s apparently bad luck for the bride to participate in the rehearsal.  Has anyone heard that one before?

• Apparently Patrick had a falling out with his brother and hasn’t spoken to him since.  He wrote back to the wedding invitation with “best wishes, but no way.”  Patrick’s sounding more and more like a winner. 

• After Charlie tells Patrick he never acted like a good father, Patrick’s all, “Well, I didn’t have a chance, did I? You didn’t exactly stay in touch.”  That’s his actual quote.  Which…really? I don’t even know where to start with that.

• Zoey’s father has been married 4 times, so we have all these scenes that (I think) are supposed to be comic relief with them all at the wedding not getting along.

• At one point, Patrick says that one reason he didn’t visit was because of Kristy’s mom, and suggests she would have made things hard if he tried to visit.  Yes, I’m sure the single mother of 4 children would have hated if someone offered to take them off her hands for an afternoon.

• Now, I should clarify, I don’t have a problem with Patrick deciding he wanted a divorce.  I don’t even have a problem with him wanting to move to California.  But this guy just moved out and never even told his wife he was going.  I really can’t see any excuse for that.

• At the end, there’s a scene where Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, and Mary Anne are looking at pictures of the wedding, and it reminded me of a scene at the end of the book where Kristy’s mom married Watson.  I doubt it was intentional, but it would be cool if it was.

• The other thing that bothers me about Patrick is how he tries to act like nothing happened.  Everyone makes mistakes in life, and I think they should be able to redeem themselves. However, they need to acknowledge that they did something wrong and apologize for it.

• Zoey says she knows Patrick has changed, but I would still have a hard time marrying (and having kids with) someone who had walked out on their family like that.

“And so this whole big huge chapter of my life is drawing to a close”………….Friends Forever Special: Everything Changes

Recap

I’m changing my format up a bit, because the whole memory/revisited thing doesn’t work when I never read the book to begin with.

This book switches from Kristy, Mary Anne, Stacey, and Claudia’s point of view.  It’s told all in letters between Kristy and Mary Anne, journal entries by Kristy and Mary Anne, and letters/emails between Stacey and Claudia.  The girls are apart for the summer – Kristy’s back at Camp Mohawk, Stacey’s in NYC, Claudia’s on a month-long vacation with her family, and Mary Anne’s in Stoneybrook. Mary Anne was supposed to go to camp too, but backed out because she was worried about leaving town so soon after the fire, when she doesn’t know if her family’s moving or not.

Stacey’s in New York to see her dad, but is looking forward to spending time with her boyfriend Ethan as well.  Unfortunately, her dad sees 15-year-old Ethan standing outside some club and decides he’s too old for her and a bad influence.  We don’t know if Ethan was actually in the club or not, but it doesn’t seem to matter to Mr. McGill. He tells Stacey she can only see him 2 hours a day, or a total of 14 hours a week. So, Stacey’s mad at her dad and gets even more annoyed when he tells her his girlfriend Samantha may move in with him.   Ethan convinces Stacey to be more open to this, which makes her Mr. McGill relent about Stacey spending time with him.

Claudia’s on a little island in Maine for a month.  She and her family are doing a thing where they don’t have a phone, TV, computers, etc. Claudia’s bored at first, but she ends up loving it because there are a lot of artists on the island and she bonds with them.  She thinks it beautiful and is inspired by it all as an artist and all sorts of cliché stuff.  She even talks about wanting to live there someday. Then she catches Janine using her laptop (that she snuck in) to check email (the house has phone service, the Kishis just had the physical phones removed).  Janine lets Claud use the computer for email in exchange for keeping quiet.  Claudia also finds her mom reading some trashy romance novel and her dad watching some game on their neighbors TV. And she promises to keep all their secrets, so feels like she scored some points all around.

Mary Anne’s staying in some tiny rental house in Stoneybrook that the insurance company’s paying for because of the fire.  Her grandmother comes to visit, which Mary Anne’s nervous about at first, but it ends up being a good visit.  She brings Mary Anne some things that used to belong to her mom, so Mary Anne feels better about everything she lost. Meanwhile, she’s annoyed at Logan because he keeps asking her if she’s okay/treating her like she’ll break.  She finally tells him how she feels and he stops talking to her.  He’s a very mature 13-year-old, huh? The whole thing doesn’t really get resolved.  But Mr. Spier decides not to take the job in Philidelphia, and the family decides to renovate the barn on their property to a new house.  In the meantime, they’ll be renting a house from the Goldbergs, this couple that live next-door to Claudia, but are moving to Florida, but don’t want to sell the house yet.

Kristy loves being at camp.  She and Abby are co-CITs in the same cabin, and Kristy can’t stop talking about how much fun they’re having together.  It’s almost weird how much she talks about it, actually. Then Abby says she’s quitting the club so she has more time to play sports/relax. Kristy’s pissed, but eventually forgives her/says she understands. I think it was particularly hard because Logan and Jessi had already quit. Logan so that he’d have more time for sports and Jessi because she got into some awesome new dance school and won’t have time to sit.  By the end of the book, Shannon also tells Kristy she won’t have time to do much sitting.  Since Mallory’s already in boarding school, this leaves the original four members of the club.  They talk and decide they want more free time too.  They will still keep the club running, but may cut back on jobs and only have 1-2 meetings a week.

The whole thing seemed very fan fiction-y to me.  It felt a bit weird to have the girls seem so willing to cut back on sitting, when they were still very on board with the whole thing in the last couple books.  Especially with Kristy’s whole essay about how valuable and rewarding it is.  That may just be them wanting to end the old series on a high note, but set up the revamped series in this one.

High/Lowlights

• In her journal, Kristy says she should ask Jessi and Mal to visit Mrs. McGill while Stacey’s gone, because she’ll miss having Stacey around.  That seems….overly nice of her.

• Stacey takes 4 suitcases with her to NY.  She says her mom helped her get them on the train, but now I’m wondering how she got them off the train.  Because she had to walk out of the train to find her dad.  That’s a lot to carry.

• Claud says how she’s never been stuck on an island before so she doesn’t know what the trip will be like.  Now….really? I’ve never been shipwrecked, but I have a feeling it’s not something I’d forget.

• I could have sworn that Mary Anne finds her mom’s necklace after the fire, but in this book she says she didn’t find a single thing that belonged to her mom.  I guess they have different people ghostwriting the Friends Forever books?

• So, they’re renovating the barn on Mary Anne’s property. I always pictured the barn as a little bigger than a garage or something.  I’m surprised they can revamp it into an actual house. They acknowledge that it’s the same amount of work as rebuilding their old house, so I don’t totally get the thinking.

• The island Claudia’s family’s on is bigger than the one Stacey was at in her autobiography.  It has stores and a couple restaurants and stuff. But I guess Ann M. Martin has a thing for islands in Maine.

• One thing I thought was odd.  In the book where Mary Anne’s house burns down, Richard says how Sharon couldn’t take the classes she wanted in Stoneybrook.  But when he announces that he’s not taking the job, she’s just all, “oh, I can probably take them in Stamford, or go into NY a couple days a week.”  Which just seems weird to backtrack like that.

• Also, I thought it was weird that Richard told Mary Anne about the job at the same time he told Sharon.  I would have thought he’d let his wife know and get her input before telling Mary Anne.

• Since this is told in mostly letters, we have to deal with Claudia’s spelling and grammar mistakes in every page of her chapters not just the handwritten intro.  Even the emails where she had access to spell checker (in theory).  But on the plus side, everything was typed so I didn’t have to read that awful handwriting of hers.

• Ethan’s uncomfortable being with Stacey when she goes to the bra section of a store they were in.  He was sitting around waiting for her, but when Stacey got to bras he went back and insisted on sitting in a different section.  Wouldn’t a 15-year-old boy be into that? Or maybe it was weird for him because he was with Stacey?

• What I am surprised about, is that Stacey had no issue picking out bras in front of Ethan. She wasn’t trying them on in front of him or anything, but still.

• Ethan’s friend Tomas is 17 and has a party while his parents are out of town.  Stacey and Ethan go and they all sit around drinking coffee and reading poetry.  Those party animals.  Mr. McGill’s right to be worried.

• The other thing that made me laugh is that Stacey thought the coffee/poetry reading was really boring.

• Kristy keeps using the initial “A” to describe Abby.  Actually she used initials for everyone, but the A one was the most noticeable, because it keeps making me think of Pretty Little Liars.  Which I obviously don’t watch since I am way too old for a show like that.

• I don’t really get the use of initials?  Was she being lazy? Trying to get more to fit on a journal page or something?

• When Stacey’s dad wants to talk to her, he sends her a fax from work insisting on a “meeting” (this is to the fax in his apartment).  So, when he gets home Stacey has set out notebooks and bottles of water for them, which is kind of funny. It’s kind of immature though.  Her dad’s 15 minutes late, so when she tells him the meeting’s half over he gets annoyed.  But she has a valid point there.  Lateness annoys me.

• Claudia says that when she caught Janine on the computer, Janine added her to her email account.  Which suggests she didn’t have an email address before.  So why does she know Stacey’s email address?  You’d think there would be no reason to have it if you don’t have any way place to use it.
• Also, I want to know how Stacey managed to get the email address “NYCGirl” with no numbers or anything after it. She must have been an early adopter to whatever service they’re supposed to be using (which they don’t tell us).

• Claudia eats lobster every day of her trip (in Maine).  But she has to leave the room when her mom cooks them, because it’s cruel to watch them die. She knows that happened to every one she ate, right?

• The new dance school Jessi gets into is in Stamford and “on par with the American Ballet School in NYC.”  I don’t know much about ballet at that level, but I have a hard time believing some new school in CT would just suddenly appear and be at that level off-the-bat.  This was one of the things that made the book seem fan-fiction-y. But whatever.

• I am happy for Jessi though, because the main reason she didn’t stay at that school in NYC was because it would have required moving away from her family and friends.  This way, she gets the same level of instruction, but gets to live at home.  And Mal already skipped town, so that’s less of a factor.

• Kristy lists out all the moves/marriages/etc that have happened during the series.  It’s almost a full page, and sounds ridiculous when you read them all together like that.

• Mary Anne calls Logan, asks to have dinner together.  When they meet, she’s surprised Logan brings flowers and thinks it’s a date.  It made me laugh, because she tells us about her phone call with Logan, then says isn’t it weird Logan thought it was supposed to be a date?  But she called her boyfriend and asked if he wanted to go out to dinner with her.  I think that’s the definition of a date.

• Claudia takes Janine to an art class that one of the artists on the island is giving.  Janine’s all nervous and insecure about what to do, but eventually manages to have fun.  I thought it was a cute scene.

• Kristy says she’s been looking forward to going back to camp for a long time.  I guess she means since the first time.  She’s certainly had plenty of summer vacations since then, it must have been ages ago.

“Maybe this really is a chance for a new beginning”……BSC # 131: The Fire at Mary Anne’s House

Memory Reaction

I never read this one during the original series.  I do remember seeing it in a bookstore and being surprised that they would actually have Mary Anne’s house burn down….that’s more serious than the BSC usually got.  I read the author’s note in the end, so I knew they were relaunching the series and feeling a bit sad about it.  This must have been after it was out a while though, because the store also had the first Friends Forever book, which I flipped through and thought was very un-BSC like.

Revisited Reaction

The title of this book pretty much tells the plot.  There’s a fire at Mary Anne’s house.  It’s a major one that hits in the middle of the night.  Everyone (including Tigger) gets out okay, but the house is destroyed and they lose pretty much everything they own.   In the days that follow, Mary Anne, her dad, and Sharon stay with Kristy’s family and start going through the remains of the house to try and find anything salvageable.  Dawn also comes to town, because obviously that’s the thing to do when your mother’s home burns down, she’s forced to stay at someone else’s house, and she’s dealing with a ton of crap.

Anyway, Mary Anne doesn’t cry after the fire.  Everyone else is all teary, but Mary Anne just can’t cry and she feels weird about it.  Since, you know, she cries at TV commercials and everything. But she’s pretty numb about the whole thing.  After a couple days the Spier/Schafers have a family meeting.  We find out that Richard was offered a job in Philadelphia recently, which he wasn’t even thinking of taking.  But it’s a great offer and he thinks that with the fire it may be a reason to start over in a new city.  Also, Sharon hates her job and thinks she’d like to become either an architect or an interior designer.  If they moved, she’d be able to take classes to do that.

At the end, Mary Anne can’t sleep one night and goes back to the site of her old house.  She’s in the barn looking at what little they’ve managed to save and Dawn shows up looking for her.  And this is when Mary Anne finally cries and they have a whole long talk about things.  Ultimately, we don’t hear whether they’re going to move or not.

Back before the fire, Mary Anne had seen an ad in some teen magazine about a contest for “Baby Sitter of the Year.”  Instead of fighting/competing about it, the club decides to enter as a group, and split up the various parts of the application.  But after the fire, Mary Anne and everyone else is a bit distracted.  They mention this to some of their charges, who voluteer to write up the actual history of the club and some testimonials in order to finish the application.   Kristy writes the last part – an essay about why she likes to baby-sit.  She has some trouble getting started, but eventually writes a piece about how much she loves the kids she sits for and how rewarding it can be.  She even talks about the fire and how all the kids came together to help with the application. We don’t find out if they win, but we aren’t supposed to care, since Kristy wrote about how it doesn’t matter if they win, since the fact that the kids cared so much was the most important thing.

High/Lowlights

• So, I may not be as snarky as usual, because this is the last book and it’s making me feel kind of sentimental.  But I’ll try.

• In the backstory chapter, Mary Anne calls Dawn relaxed, and claims she never judges anyone.  I kind of disagree.  She judges people who eat meat, who eat junk food, who don’t care obsessively about the environment, and even who have school spirit.

• Mary Anne says that she once found one of Sharon’s socks in the lettuce crisper in the refrigerator. Now….really? That’s beyond scatterbrained, IMO.  I can buy socks in the linen closet (another place mentioned) cause you could have been putting laundry away or something.  But the refrigerator?  How does that even happen?

• Mary Anne says she hates reading those embarrassing moments in teen magazines, because she always feels so badly for the person.  I feel the same way about people having embarrassing moments on TV shows or movies.  I have to look away from the screen sometimes. But I didn’t have an issue with the magazine ones, I actually loved reading them when I was 13. My friend and I once sent a made up one in to Seventeen, but it never got printed.

• The winner of the baby-sitter contest will be featured in the magazine’s back-to-school issue (this takes place right after school let out).  Which is ridiculous because most magazines would have their back-to-school issue final by June/July.  Possibly even in print. They tend to work in advance.

• Have we ever heard what Dawn’s mom does for a living?  She works for a woman who has her own accounting firm.  She kind of hates it and/or her boss, and she feels unappreciated.  I would feel bad for her, but if she’s half as scatterbrained at work as she’s at home, her boss shouldn’t appreciate her.

• Mary Anne doesn’t salvage much from the fire, but she does find the pearl necklace that used to be her mother.  Her dad had given this to her when he got married.

• The house was pretty much all destroyed and most of the second floor collapsed.  The part with the least damage was Dawn’s (old) room.  This annoyed me in two ways.  First, Mary Anne mentions that some of the secret passage might be intact, but then we never hear if it actually is.  It’s not super important, but details like that bother me. Second, why does Dawn’s room get the least damage?  That sucks for the people who live there all the time.   Granted, she did lose pretty much everything she kept there. But still.

• When she’s describing Kristy’s family, Mary Anne says how it sounds crazy and living in it would be overwhelming to her.  Then she ends up staying at Kristy’s and is totally overwhelmed.  Foreshadowing or coincidence (since I’m pretty sure they say something like that in every book)?

• The day before the fire, Mary Anne and Logan have a picnic in her barn (because it was raining).  After they eat, they jump from that rope in the hay loft that we haven’t heard about in ages. She claims it’s the first time she’s done it in “years.”  A statement like that makes the timeline issues jump out at you, doesn’t it?  If she just finished 8^th grade, it’s only been a year-and-a-half since she met Dawn. That’s without even getting into the fact that once upon a time Mary Anne was too scared to jump from the loft.

• Mary Anne references Titanic as one of the saddest movies.  It’s really weird to read that, because I was obsessed with that movie when it came out, but it was way after I stopped reading the BSC books.  Pop culture references like that always seem out of place in these later books.

• The only outfits we get in this, are the ones Mary Anne and her family had on when they ran out of the house during the fire.  Mary Anne had on “a pink nightgown printed with 50s-style illustrations of kittens playing with a ball of string.”  Sharon just had on shorts and a T-shirt and Richard had on matching plaid flannel pajamas (not surprising, I guess).

• The Pike kids are all worried about fires after hearing about the one at Mary Anne’s, so Abby and Claudia arrange to take them on a tour of the firehouse. I don’t know if that’s realistic, do they just give tours to random people like that?

• Also, at the firehouse they give Claud and Abby a pamphlet called “Fire Safety Tips for Baby-sitters.” Really?  There are enough dedicated baby-sitters that someone makes a pamphlet just for them?  Why not just have one for kids/families?

• I thought it was weird that Dawn comes to Stoneybrook as soon as she can after the fire, but Jeff’s told to stay home.  Mary Anne claims he’s too young (at 10) to see something this upsetting.  But apparently 13’s totally mature and adult and Dawn can handle it.  Never mind the practicality of coming to see people who are basically homeless.  I think they just wanted Dawn in the last book.

• They didn’t find a way to get Mallory in the book, but I think every single character made a point of saying how she would have been the perfect person to write up the history of the club.  Which is what I was thinking as soon as they mentioned it.

• So, Sharon wants to be either an interior decorator or an architect.  Those seemed like pretty different things to me at first, but I guess they’re related if you think about it.  They both involve creating spaces where people would live/work.

• I would recommend interior design for Sharon though.  Architecture takes a lot of school.  Not that she couldn’t go back to school, but that would be a lot of time and effort.  Also, would you want someone who can’t keep track of ANYTHING planning your house?  I mean, they claim the fire was from old wiring, but I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear about Sharon leaving the stove on overnight or candles burning or something.

• The Spier/Schafers can’t find anyplace alone to talk at the Brewers, so they go outside and into the new playhouse in the back.  This sounds really familiar to me, but I can’t think of which book it would have been in.  I just know that Karen always wanted to make playhouses for her and her friends.

• One of the firefighters we meet’s a woman, which is clearly Ann M. Martin getting in her feminist message for the book.  I always approve of that.

• The day after the fire, Richard and Sharon both call their bosses.  Which I thought made sense at first.  But then I remembered the fire was on a Friday night.  It isn’t like they were expected to show up at work. Why make that one of your first calls?  And would they even know their bosses’ home numbers?

• Richard also calls Mary Anne’s grandmother, who he’s apparently gotten closer to.  That’s nice for them, I think.

• The neighbors all come out during the fire to see what’s going on.  Which is only natural.  But I was surprised that Stacey was the first BSC member to show up.  I didn’t think her house was that close to Mary Anne’s, but according to this map, I guess she is.  (Mallory was in boarding school, so she doesn’t count).

• The girls are surprised that Matt Braddock (a 7-year-old) is so good with a computer.  Which is kind of dated, because now everyone assumes that kids are better at computers than adults.

• I’m wondering how big Kristy’s house really is.  I remember an early book where she said it had ten bedrooms.  But they have at least two guest rooms in this book (one for Sharon/Richard and one for Mary Anne/Dawn).  This  means there are at least 11 (Watson/Mrs. Brewer, Nannie, Charlie, Sam, Kristy, David Michael, Karen, Andrew, Emily, and 2+ guestrooms).  And I think that’s without expanding to the third floor.

• Apparently, Karen’s not just allowed to have a pet rat, she’s allowed to take him out of his cage and let him run around in the house for exercise.  She keeps him confined to one room, but that seems a bit freaky to me.

• A bunch of the kids the girls sit for gather at the Braddocks to work on the history of the club, and Haley says they can use their computer.  But then Mrs. Braddock offers to type up the final version.  If they’re writing it on the computer, what’s left to type?  Maybe she’s just editing for them?

• David Michael, Karen, and Andrew say they’re going to build a Lego house large enough for Mary Anne’s family to live in.  Which I would normally think’s a silly idea, except recently I read about this, which I think’s kind of cool.

• When Mary Anne bikes to the site of their house, she mentions passing various peoples’ houses and thinks about how well she knows this town.  The only weird part’s when she mentions the Hobarts’ house.   Because I’m pretty sure that’s where Mary Anne lived for 13 years.  If you’re reminiscing, wouldn’t you call it your old house.

• I’m sure it’s unrealistic to have a contest about baby-sitters in a teen magazine, I would think one for kids/parents would be more likely, if anyone was going to do it.  But I love the concept because it lets us get all sorts of references to past books.  If it was a TV show we’d be getting clips, but it’s a book, so the closest we get are snippets from the BSC notebook.  It looks like they’re actually taken word-for-word from the original books.  We get one about Jackie Rodowski being a walking disaster, one about the Barrett/DeWitt kids making up instruments, and one about Buddy Barrett making baskets for one of their Thanksgiving charity projects.

• We also get references to Fire Safety/Prevention Day, Charlotte spying, Mary Anne taking Jenny to the hospital, and Jake Kuhn going missing.

• If I didn’t know there was a Friends Forever series after this, I probably wouldn’t have liked that we didn’t find out if Mary Anne moved away.  I like closure.  But I definitely wouldn’t have liked finding out she was leaving.  I always hate when TV shows end with all the characters are separating.  Even if it’s done for a happy reason, or is about starting a new path or whatever, it still seems sad to me.

• In the final essay Kristy writes about how much they get back from baby-sitting, and how she doesn’t care if they win because they already have so much. It’s totally cheesy and sappy.  But I kind of like that.

So, I was originally saving this to be the last entry in the blog.  But, like I said last time I'm now going to do the Friends Forever books.  I can't not read them after I've gone back and read everything else I missed as a kid. Look for that soon, I am going to try and go in order with them.

“I don’t tell you who to date! Don’t tell me!":…………….BSC # 124: Stacey McGill…Matchmaker?

Memory Reaction

I didn’t read this as a kid.  I did read it a few years back, before I started this blog, but then I moved and lost access to the library that had BSC books.  I finally re-found it on ebay a few weeks ago. However, I really don’t remember what I thought of it then…just that Stacey seemed a bit too happy about seeing her mom date a client’s father.  My parents split up when I was about Stacey’s age, and while I was never upset about it and wanted them to both be happy, I didn’t really want to think about either of them dating. 

Revisited Reaction

The BSC has a new client, the Brookes.  Stacey has the first job for them and thinks the kids (Joni and Ewan) are adorable.  Her mom comes to pick her up at the end of the job, and meets the recently divorced father, John.  They kind of hit it off, and end up going out. 

Stacey's thrilled because she thinks the guy’s nice, cute, etc, and that her mom deserves to meet someone like that.  The problem's that Joni (age 9) and Ewan (age 5) are younger and are not thrilled with the idea, especially Joni.  They both want their mother to return - apparently she moved to Georgia to be a news anchor person because she thought her kids were holding her back career-wise.  But the kids don't know that part, so they think Mrs. McGill’s trying to replace her or something.

Anyway, Joni acts like a bratty 9-year-old and tries to wreck the relationship.  John's a writer who works from home, but uses a sitter so the kids don't bug him while he's writing.  She plays loud music, hides her father's computer mouse, and locks him outside so he can't meet his deadline, hoping that will get him to cancel his date.  It doesn't really work very well, and John just grounds her instead of talking to her about why she's upset (at least not that we see), and that makes her act out more.  Eventually, Claudia sits for the kids and manages to get Joni feeling better about the whole thing.  The Brookes spend Thanksgiving with Stacey and her mom, and it gets a bit rocky, but Stacey talks to Joni and makes her feel a little better about the whole situation.  And then Mrs. McGill dumps the guy.  Seriously.

Subplot:  Mallory hates school because kids ages 11-13 are assholes.  She wants to go to Stoneybrook Day, but it's too expensive, so she does some research and finds a boarding school where she thinks she can get a scholarship.  We know how all this turns out.

High/Lowlights

• Stacey and her mom are having a book club and are reading Pride and Prejudice.  They end up talking about women marrying rich guys, and Stacey’s amazed when her mom tells her that there are women who think like that today.  Which….seriously? I'm glad the idea never occurred to Stacey, but I'm surprised that she was so surprised by it.  Isn't she the sophisticated worldly one.

• When Stacey and her mom are talking about the book, they get into a discussion about the McGill's divorce.  Mrs. McGill admits that she started to resent Mr. McGill's long hours after he quit being a public defender and became a corporate lawyer.  The work “didn't seem as important.”  And Stacey's all, "wasn't that judgmental of you?" which seems a bit harsh to me.  She probably said it nicer than how I'm envisioning it though.

• Do people (who aren't on TV shows) easily switch from criminal to corporate law like that?

• Also, (and this is kind of a low blow), Mrs. McGill never seemed to have a problem spending the money her husband made at that “less important” job.

• Claudia outfit: “A pair of long shinny earrings dotted with small clay beads…a long beaded necklace…which had fallen beneath the bib of her tie-dyed overalls. (She’d dyed them herself)?”  Well, of course she dyed them herself.  Who the hell sells tie-dyed overalls?

• I’m trying to remember…have we ever seen Mrs. McGill, or any other BSC parent picking their daughter up after a sitting job?  And actually coming to the house and ringing the doorbell?  There have been some times where the parent of the kids drives them home because it’s nighttime, but I don’t remember the sitters’ parents picking them up. It’s probably realistic, but it just seemed a bit contrived.

• The Brookes want to watch a movie of Indian in the Cupboard, and Stacey tells us how it's a great book, but she hasn't seen the movie yet. This makes me feel old, because I read that book as a kid, and when the movie came out I couldn't remember the book because I'd read it so long ago.  And that was apparently forever ago too.

• Just once, I'd like to see someone in the BSC reference a book that totally sucked.  And to tell us that.  Saying the Kishis don't like Nancy Drew doesn't count. Something like, "Vanessa was reading Twilight again. If you've never read it, you're lucky, it's really ridiculous and poorly written."  I get that Ann M. Martin was trying to encourage reading, but it gets a little annoying.  And I was a total book worm as a kid.

• Although, it would be funny if one of the books with a positive reference was another one by Ann M. Martin.

• At one of the first jobs, Stacey hears John using a typewriter, and is all shocked that he's using such an old fashioned device. She thought everyone used much more modern devices like electric typewriters and word processors.  For the record, he uses the typewriter when fleshing out ideas, he does the actual writing part on a computer. Which seems weird to me, but whatever.

• Kristy gets upset that John calls for sitter outside of meeting hours.  He calls at 5:27 and 6:10.  Such a non-conformist.  The reason he has to do this is because his lateness is one of the things Mrs. McGill gets annoyed at later on.

• Interestingly, when he calls at 6:10 everyone’is still there hanging out.  Convenient for the story, since I don't think they ever talk about staying at the meeting past 6:00.  Especially Kristy, who gets a ride. 

• I appreciate the fact that they went to the trouble of setting up Mal's boarding school good-bye for a full three books.  She was around before even Dawn showed up, so her character deserved that.  I just feel bad that they had to make things so miserable for her.  She always hated her looks and a lot of the boys in her school, but she seemed pretty happy generally.

• On Thanksgiving, Joni doesn't like the classical music that’s playing.  Mrs. McGill asks what she likes, and Joni asks for Hansen.  Wow, I'd forgotten about that band.  Stacey doesn't have any, if you care.  I guess she has some taste.

• So, here are some of Mrs. McGill's reasons for ending things with John: She reread some of his books and thinks she disagrees with some of his world views, he's too hard on his kids, he's always either late or early, and he didn’t offer to help with the dishes after Thanksgiving dinner.  She also thinks he’s self-centered and is annoyed that the day before Thanksgiving (when she's cooking), he shows up with a draft of his manuscript and asks her to read it (she says she doesn't need another thing to do).

• I think it’s kind of weak that they had to paint Mrs. Brookes as a bad mother, who left her kids to further her career.

• Stacey tries to convince her mom not to break up with the guy right away (this is the day after Thanksgiving, but Mrs. McGill says she's supposed to go out with him the next day and can't do that knowing she's going to dump the guy.  They get into a bit of a fight about it.

• After the break up, Stacey goes to visit the Brookes, because she had gotten them gifts when visiting her dad in the city.  John’s all surprised to see her, but lets her in.  The kids are upset because they feel like Mrs. McGill dumped him because they were acting up.  Stacey convinces them this isn't the case and says she's still be there for him.  She adds that they can be "honorary siblings."  Which is nice, I guess, but it seems a bit disloyal to her "almost-sister" Charlotte Johanssen.

• So, do you think the Brookes kept the BSC as their sitter?

Final note:  So, the only book from the original series I have left to recap is the final book in the series, The Fire at Mary Anne's house.  That will be posted next.  But I have decided to also write up the Friends Forever books, and even managed to order all of them from Amazon.  So, expect to see that shortly.

“Sometimes Christmas wishes take awhile to come true”…….BSC Secret Santa

I didn't read this one as a kid, but it’s pretty much the same idea as that chain letter book. In this one, it’s Christmastime and the BSC’s doing a Secret Santa instead of regularly exchanging gifts.  They each wrote down their Christmas wish and then picked them out of a hat to see who’d grant each one.   We find out who wished for what and who grants it (and how) through a series of letters between the girls (and Logan).

The club also decided they don’t do enough volunteer work, and arranged to work with an organization where they respond to a kids’ letters to Santa, and give a gift to a child who’s family’s having trouble.

Wishes

• Mallory wishes to be remembered forever and Logan grants it by planting a tree in her name by the middle school, with a plaque in her name.  I think it’s a pretty appropriate gift for such a wish. 

• Jessi wishes to dance in the NYC Ballet and Shannon has a fake program printed with her picture on it.  And she says Jessi probably really will do it someday.  Again, a nice way to respond to a wish she can’t really do anything about.

• Logan wishes for three more wishes (smart ass), and Stacey gives him a 4 leaf clover, a penny, and a wishbone.  That’s probably the best way to grant that wish if you’re not actually some kind of genie.  But this one made me laugh because when I was six I wished for three more wishes when I blew out the candles on my birthday cake.  Then I forgot about them for months.  I can’t remember if I actually made other wishes when I did remember though.

• Mary Anne wishes that Cam Geary would write her a “real” note, not a form letter.  Dawn writes to him a couple of times with a blank card and pre-addressed envelope and he actually signs it and sends it back. Along with a personal note. I assume I don’t have to say how ridiculous this is.  Cam’s supposed to be super-famous right? You’d have to write a lot more than two letters to get a handwritten response like that.  And it would probably require a lot more lead time than what’s implied in this book.  Or else end with a restraining order.

• Shannon wishes for a better sense of humor and Jessi gives her a joke book and some tricks/prank stuff. 

• Stacey wishes she could be in NYC at Christmas time, so Claud arranges to paint a mural of it in her bedroom.  I hope she’s painting this on paper and not actually on the wall, because seeing a Christmas-y NYC in July would probably get annoying.

• Dawn wishes her CA friends and her CT friends could be better friends (this is during her first stay in CA), so Kristy makes her a scrapbook that includes stuff from Sunny (she and Kristy worked together).  What would actually work better would be if her CA friends made a book for the BSC and vice versa.  That way they would get to know each other.  But it’s still a nice gesture.

• Kristy wishes she didn't have such a big mouth.  Mary Anne thinks she can’t really do anything about this, so she decides to do something else.  She writes a letter to Kristy’s father telling him how much it would mean to Kristy to get a card from him. Kristy apparently sends one to him every year.  And her dad does, and includes a note that he loves her.  It probably wouldn’t mean as much to Kristy if she knew he had to be prompted to do it.  But whatever.

• Claudia wishes she could do something meaningful for someone, and Mallory writes her a letter saying Claud granted it for herself, because of the whole charity subplot.  Which brings me to……

Subplot

The letter from Eliza, the girl who’s letter they’re answering, says she wants a book and a doll, but also says how she wishes she could see her sister who ran away last year.  The BSC write to the girl’s parents because they want to return a friendship necklace Eliza included in the note, and get a reply that says the sister is actually living with a relative.

Claudia tracks them down and the family ends up reuniting for Christmas.  Just for Christmas dinner, the sister doesn't move back home.  It’s pretty sweet I think, but definitely pretty tame.  In most cases a story about a teenage runaway would be darker story with a less happy ending.  Also, we never find out why she ran away, which is really annoying.

Other Occurrences

• Mary Anne seems to kind of miss the point of the whole wish granting thing.  Everyone else managed to find some way of symbolically granting wishes if they couldn't literally be done.  But she just totally ignored it.  At least be funny and buy her a muzzle or something.

• We get to see Karen’s Christmas list.  Because you can’t have a book without a reference to Karen. We hear about her inviting her friend Nancy (who’s Jewish) over for Xmas dinner.  I know there was one Little Sister book where this happened, but I couldn't figure out if it came out the same year as this one.  At least not easily.

• Jessi thinks Stacey’s awesome.  Seriously, she sends her a letter/Christmas card where we hear that Becca’s on the verge of not believing in Santa Claus.  It’s kind of boring.  But at the end she adds this whole paragraph about how she thinks Stacey’s smart and terrific, and that she’s proud of how responsible Stacey is about her diabetes. It’s really random.

• Claire writes to Santa asking if he stops at McDonalds during his Christmas Eve run and to ask where the reindeer go to the bathroom.  I guess this was supposed to be comic relief?

• In the Chain Letter book, it made sense that the girls wrote letters to each other because they were all out-of-town.  But in this one everyone except Dawn is in Stoneybrook.  So it seems weird that they’re communicating via letters.  I guess some of them are Christmas cards with long notes, but it still seems odd.

• I want to say Mallory was sort of lame for not doing anything except telling Claudia she made her wish come true on her own, but she’s kind of right.

• One of the cards had all this green and red confetti in it, and now it’s all over my couch.

• When I was a teenager, my friends and I did Secret Santa gifts as well, but we didn't write down wishes or anything. We just gave gifts we thought the person would like.  The wish thing’s a lot more challenging, especially considering the type of wishes they all made.  I mean, wishing to dance in the NY Ballet and personal letters from Cam Geary?  It makes a more interesting story though.