“I do think we’ll always be friends”……BSC Friends Forever Special: Graduation Day

Recap

This is the last BSC book ever….that seems so weird to say.  It is not my last entry, because I’m going to be reviewing the California Diaries series next.  It felt unfinished to not try them.

Anyway, it’s the end of the school year and this time, the girls are actually graduating 8^th grade and moving on to high school.  They all feel a little differently about this, but each has their own emotional angst to deal with.  Mary Anne seems excited about graduation, but feels like she still has unfinished business with Logan.  It’s kind of annoying that almost all of Mary Anne’s books in the Friends Forever series have had her angsting about Logan.  Get the hell over it already. Be the independent person you claim you want to be. At the end she and Logan talk and decide they don’t like avoiding each other all the time and I guess they’re going to try being friendly-ish.  We don’t actually see this conversation, so it’s kind of hard to tell for sure. 

Meanwhile, Claudia’s angsting about whether she’ll pass her finals.  Ultimately, she passes everything except Science.  She’s still allowed to participate in the graduation ceremony, but will get a blank diploma and have to go to summer school.  Stacey’s angsting about her parents both being at the graduation ceremony and thinks they’ll fight, or that things will be awkward with her mom and Samantha.  But they all manage to be adults about the whole thing. Kristy’s nervous/scared about change in general, but is mostly just angsting about whether the BSC will stay intact and how much it will impact her life if doesn’t.  We don’t get much closure on this, but it’s clear that all the other girls don’t feel as strongly as Kristy about wanting to keep the club going.  Realistic, but sad. I don’t like change either, Kristy.

We also get a whole subplot surrounding the kids in the neighborhood.  While I’ve enjoyed the way the Friends Forever books spent more time on the teenage storylines, I did kind of miss hearing about the kids in town.  I think it’s fitting that they get something to do in the last book.   They’re putting together a time capsule they say is about the neighborhood, but is mostly about the BSC.  The plan’s to open it in 7 years, because that’s when their oldest clients (the triplets) will be graduating high school.  Super weird to think about that. 

We get to read letters that Jessi, Mal, Abby, and Dawn wrote with the items they put in the time capsule, where they talk about what Stoneybrook means to them.  It’s nice that they get to have at least a small voice in the last book.  Jessi put in a newspaper article about racial intolerance a few towns over, Mal puts in a pamphlet for the Stoneybrook Chamber of Commerce, Abby puts in pictures of the BSC, and Dawn puts in ads from the Stoneybrook town paper (to show how airline (and other) prices changed). Those are all pretty fitting. We also get to read letters the current BSC members wrote with their submissions. Mary Anne puts in a piece of burnt wood from the fire, Stacey puts in the flier for the BSC talent show they did awhile back, Kristy puts in the original flier for the BSC, and Claudia puts in a flier about the upcoming celebration for Stoneybrook’s 250^th anniversary.

We also get to read letters/submissions from a few kids…Jackie Rodowski puts in a softball and a note about how important Kristy is to him and the Krushers.  Claire puts in her teddy bear, because she doesn’t understand what a time capsule is.  Then the day after they bury it she freaks out and they have to dig it up to get it back to her (but they rebury the capsule right away).  Charlotte Johansson puts in the Stoneybrook Elementary School newspaper, featuring an award-winning essay she wrote about Stacey (the most important person in her life).

Meanwhile, the girls are also writing letters to themselves, meant to be opened in 4 years.  It’s this school tradition where they hand in these letters at 8^th grade graduation and are have them mailed back to them at high school graduation.  They are handed in sealed, so no one else will read them.  This is really hard for everyone to do, but ultimately they all write nice letters summarizing the big things that have happened to them and predicting the future.

High/Lowlights

• In her journal, Kristy asks if it’s possible to just have a do-over and do 8^th grade again.  I think she’s already gotten a few of those.

• Okay, I may have a hard time being snarky about this book because I’m feeling sentimental right now.

• At the start of the book no one knows if Charlie’s going to college because he “dropped the ball” and didn’t send in applications early enough to go to any big school.  He was waiting to hear from a smaller state school that had a later deadline (and ultimately gets in).  He also plans to transfer to UCLA next semester/year.  Now….this is a common plot on TV shows. But I don’t understand how any high school students could just forget about applying to schools.  When I was a senior in high school, there were constant reminders about getting in applications, meetings with the guidance counselors about it, etc. The school also had meetings with parents.  I don’t buy Watson and Kristy’s mom not checking in on Charlie about this.

• Early on, Mary Anne’s telling the Pike kids about the letters to themselves they’re writing, and they decide it would be cool to make a Pike time capsule.  Then Mary Anne’s all, “hey, I have a great idea! Let’s do a Stoneybrook/BSC time capsule.”  But she’s pretty much just stealing their idea.  Then all the Pike’s participate in that, so I don’t know if they still did their own.  But I’m kind of curious about it.

• They talk about the time capsule being about the neighborhood, but Kristy and Abby live way across town.  They should have just called it a BSC time capsule.

• It’s really annoying that we don’t get to see Mary Anne actually talk to Logan.

• Apparently there are over 1,000 kids at Stoneybrook High School.  That includes kids from multiple middle schools in Stoneybrook and from a couple other towns.  Now that doesn’t seem like what we’ve heard in the past.  They said in an early Kristy book that there was another middle school in town, but the kids from other towns is a surprise.  Why is it called Stoneybrook HS then?

• Okay, what’s really weird is this book is that it takes place before graduation, when the last two Friends Forever books happened in the summer.  It’s like they decided to end the series after they wrote those books and went back in time so it ended with graduation.  The only part that makes it really noticeable is that Mary Anne’s already living in her new house and that Dawn and Jeff come home for the graduation.  In her last book, Mary Anne moved into the house in the summer, and Dawn and Jeff came home with Sunny.  Oh, and Claudia has to go to summer school but she wasn’t spending any time there in her last book.

• Claudia says that Kristy used to make her answer her phone “Baby-Sitters Club” during non-meeting times, but we saw Claud answer her phone a lot and she never gave the club greeting outside of meetings. 

• You know when I finished middle school we weren’t allowed to wear caps and gowns.  They made a big deal out of telling us we weren’t graduating anything, we were just being “promoted” to high school.  That we’d only graduate when we finished high school.

• It’s interesting to hear that Claudia failed science.  We’ve heard her have issues with math and with English, so it’s a nice change.  I’m glad she’s so well-rounded.

• We get to read the letter Charlie wrote to himself 4 years ago.  He talked a lot about wanting to be responsible and there for his family, the way his dad never was. I don’t think we ever got his perspective in a super special, I would have liked that.

• There’s this weird moment where Claudia gets a wrong number for “Elios.”  I thought it was going to end up meaning something, but it was never mentioned again.  I guess it was a way to work in the line about not answering the phone with the club greeting, to show Claud’s not as into the club?  Maybe I am reading too much into it because I’m thinking of Alias, where the wrong number was a code that it was time to have covert meetings.  Because why else would you bother showing a wrong number?

• Jessi’s going on a world tour with a dance company, she and a few others at her school were selected.  I’m kind of surprised her parents would let her do that, but good for her.

• Stacey has this stupid subplot about how she may not be able to graduate because she has an overdue library book and can’t find it.  She doesn’t even remember checking the book out, so thinks it must have been back in 7^th grade.  Now, my high school had a similar rule about library books and graduating, but I’m pretty sure they bugged people about them at the end of every school year, not just your graduation year.  So you’d think Stacey would have been asked about it before now. But anyway, Stacey finally just buys a new copy of the book (Risby) and gives that to the librarian. 

• For a Science paper, Claudia does an experiment about whether plants grow better if they listen to different types of music.  Now, Charlotte did this same experiment for the science fair way back in an early book (and won I think). Claudia gets a D+ on the paper though. It doesn’t really surprise me, she’s apparently working on a 4^th grade level.

• When talking about how fast the kids are growing up, someone says “can you believe Charlotte will be in 4^th grade next year?”  Which I can’t.  Because Charlotte has been in 4^th grade for about 200 books now, ever since she skipped a grade.  So, I can’t imagine she suddenly got stupid and would need to repeat a grade while everyone else (even Claud) moves up.

• Regarding the time capsule, apparently the Pike triplets will be responsible for digging it up in seven years.  Some of the BSC girls say they don’t know if they’ll be there.  Which I guess makes sense, but I would think part of the fun is thinking of what it would be like to be there in the future.

• I can’t picture 17 year-old guys wanting to make that effort for some crap they buried as kids.  Especially since it’s buried in Mary Anne’s yard.  Are Richard and Sharon just going to let the kids show up and dig next to their garden?

• Mary Anne’s listing the people most important to her, and in this order we get “Dad, Dawn, Sharon, her grandparents, Jeff, Kristy.”  I’m surprised Dawn gets second when she’s still in California and Sharon lives with her.

• Mary Anne may want to study psychology someday. Not what I expected from her, but I guess I can see it.  She’ll need to learn not to cry at other people’s life stories if she wants to be a therapist though.  I don’t think that would be helpful to the patients.

• Kristy says when some of the girls dropped out of the club she felt like her world was falling apart,  but if I remember correctly, she was still okay with easing up on the whole thing.

• Mallory mentions that she only wants 2-3 kids when she grows up, but I know she said she wanted to have 8 like her mom at one point.  Maybe she smartened up.

• We spent the whole Friends Forever series seeing Claudia bond with Erica Blumberg, but she doesn’t get a single mention in this book.  Even when Claudia’s talking about her friends and the most important people in her life.

• They do some of the letters in this book in the girls’ handwriting and some as typed (but typed on a computer and a different font then the rest of the text).  So, there were like 5 full pages in Claudia’s handwriting, which I always thought was the hardest to read.

• Now the very first page of the book was a journal entry of Kristy’s.  But this one wasn’t in her handwriting and it wasn’t in the font used in other chapters for emails/typed letters.  So, for that one page I thought this book was going to be like the first Friends Forever book that was told entirely through journal entries.  But luckily it was just that one page.

• The book ends with the girls (all 8 of them) having a graduation party in Claudia’s room.  It seems like a lame place for a graduation party (do something special!), but they were clearly going for the nostalgia of being in BSC headquarters. They talking about whether they’ll be friends as adults and how friendships may be different when they’re older and it’s actually kind of sad.  I’m a sap, I can’t help it. But they think they’ll still be a part of each other’s life, even if they don’t see each other very often.

• Oh they also promise to have a reunion in 12 years, no matter what they are all doing, and even sign a pact about the whole thing. 

• There are a bunch of random BSC factoids at the end of the book.  For instance: there are 213 BSC books that have a total of 31,570 pages.  It says assuming you read one page a minute it would take 21.9 days of continuous reading to read them all. That doesn’t sound like so much when you say it like that.  I mean, that's condensing a huge part of my childhood into 2 weeks.

• There 176,539,000 BSC books in print (as of this book’s release in 2000).  That includes Little Sister books.  If you lined them up vertically they would cover 21,000 miles.  Now that DOES sound like a lot.

• The book is dedicated to all past, present, and future readings of the BSC.  I guess that means us.

“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.

“I felt so stupid writing in the BSC journal”…..BSC Super Special # 15: Baby-sitters’ European Vacation

Memory Reaction

This was my first time reading this one.

Revisited Reaction

In the latest edition of completely unrealistic class trips, Jessi, Mallory, Stacey, Abby, and Kristy are off to London and Paris. SMS is traveling with a group from another middle school from Toronto.  I didn’t catch how or why this partnership happened, but I don’t think it really matters.  Anyway, the girls each have their own little adventure.

Jessi finds out that the group she danced with in NYis performing in London.  She gets tickets for herself and the BSC members.  While backstage saying hello, a dancer – who just happened to be dancing a part Jessi knows – injures herself.  Since her understudy’s also sick, they ask Jessi to fill in and perform.

Mallory has dinner with some second cousins that live in London.  They show her a family tree stating that William Shakespeare is a distant relative (great x17 grandfather).  I guess they thought this book wasn’t unrealistic enough.  Or maybe it’s not unrealistic, since great x17 works out to less than a hundredth of a percent.  Lots of people must be related to him that much. Anyway, Mal’s inspired and spends the rest of the trip working hard on some story, and doesn’t pay attention to what she’s actually seeing until Jessi points it out to her.

Stacey’s got a couple of things going on.  First, her mother’s a chaperone, which she finds super embarrassing.  Understandable for a 13-year-old. Then she picks up the wrong suitcase at the airport, which I feel like has been done before, but can’t think of when.  I may be thinking of Sleepover Friends.  This lets her whine about clothes a bit and go shopping.  But, then we get to the real point: The bag she grabs includes an urn with the ashes/remains of someone.  When they reach the owner of the bag, they find out he’s a WWII vet, and was traveling to Europe to spread his army friend’s ashes on the beach in Normandy.  Mrs. McGill tells the guy that she and Stacey will bring the ashes to him in person when they get to Paris, to make sure the airline doesn’t lose them again.  Stacey starts reading up on WWII and gets interested in it.  She ends up going with the guy (and her mother) when he spreads the ashes on the beach in Normandy.

Abby gets to be the focus of our interactions with Victoria. All of the BSC members go visit her, but Victoria only invites Abby to come along when she’s in some ceremony where she gives flowers to the Queen.  Abby thinks this means she will meet the Queen, and gets all nervous about it.  But really, she’s only in the back of the very large room.  Later, she manages to accidentally step on the feet of some prince.

Kristy gets the vacation romance story in this book, which I think is a first for her, at least in a Super Special. She meets this guy Michel, from the Toronto middle school, who she “hates” on site.  They spend the whole trip fighting and driving each other crazy.  Then when they get separated from their group in Paris, they decide to “pretend” to get along until they meet up with everyone else. They end up having a lot of fun and people they see on the street call them a cute couple. On the last night of the trip they kiss goodbye.

Back in Stoneybrook, the rest of the club’s working at a playground camp.  Cokie Mason’s also working there, trying to get her hands on Logan, who’s totally not interested. So, nothing new there. The head counselor at the camp’s Janine’s ex-boyfriend Jerry, who’s kind of a jerk to her.  This makes Janine take out her anger on Claud, making her miserable.  But in the end Janine tells off Jerry, and she and Claudia come to a bit of a truce.

High/Lowlights

• In the backstory chapter, Jessi says that Stacey has a normal life, other than having to give herself daily injections.  I have to say, that’s not exactly a minor detail.

• Someone mentions that Elvis was in the army and may have been “overseas.”  Then Abby guesses that it was for the Civil War.  Seriously?  Has Claudia been tutoring her or something?

• I’m guessing there was another book between the Playground fight one and the actual Super Special one, because they give no explanation whatsoever about how Stacey’s mom ended up as chaperone. I know I said I liked having a set up book, but having two seems to be pushing it.

• There’s this ongoing story surrounding the fact that the teacher chaperoning the trip (Mr. Dougherty – Mallory’s creative writing teacher) keeps disappearing on his own to look at things and always shows up late.  So, Mrs. McGill ends up having to cover for him.  Now, they don’t say how many kids are on this trip, but only two chaperones?  That seems seriously low.  There are teachers from the Canadian school, but they are watching their own kids.

• I remember in the Hawaii Super Special, it was a big deal when Abby wanted to go to the beach to shoot that commercial, because people needed to stay in the group.  But in this one, all the girls have side trips on their own, and it doesn’t seem to be an issue. 

• Claudia says she’s never worked as a camp counselor before.  I guess technically that’s true, but what about when she was a CIT?

• Alan Gray purposely acts suspicious at the airport, because he thinks it’s funny.  It’s just a thing that jumps out at you reading, because the scene wouldn’t have played out that way in current times.

• I can’t believe everyone was cool with Mallory just going (alone) to the house of some people she’d never actually met, just because they’re related. 

• I’m surprised more teachers wouldn’t want to chaperone.  Yes, they’d be working on their vacation, but they’d be in Paris/London for crazy-cheap prices.

• When the SMS students meet the other school they are traveling with, their chaperones make them do this lame icebreaker where they all put one shoe in a pile, then take someone else’s and walk around trying to find the owner.  Kristy’s actually thinks this is a great idea and is all excited about doing it.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone excited about that kind of thing. 

• At camp, they have to move things inside because of a rain storm. Mary Anne ends up going back outside, because she’s looking for a camper that Cokie lost track of.  When she comes in soaking wet, Cokie says ”Is this a BSC wet T-shirt contest?…not that anyone would notice.”  Is she saying what I think she’s saying?

• At first, I thought the Jessi dancing thing was ridiculous, but they did give her a little time to practice at first, and she mentions not doing everything perfectly, so it’s somewhat realistic.  Especially since she was just one person in a group dance scene.

• The BSC all thought Victoria lived in a castle, just based on her telling them that back at home.  But I would think they knew Victoria well enough to know she exaggerates…she’s in a relatively normal house.

• Abby mentions how she and Mary Anne were the closest BSC members to Victoria. However, this isn’t really how I remember it, considering Mary Anne narrated the two books where Victoria was featured.  I bet Mary Anne would have known Victoria was lying about a castle.

• Robert gets a chapter because he’s contributing to the trip journal the BSC’s doing.  I’m not sure how Stacey convinced him to do this AFTER they stopped dating, but whatever. 
•                                                                
• One day, Dawn ends up missing a day at the Playground Camp to fill in at this other camp for kids with disabilities. They should have had Dawn have reference her experience with cerebral palsy. I actually thought they would make a point of saying she was picked to fill in because of that experience, but I guess I was too optimistic. They do reference her experience with Down’s syndrome, so I’ll give them some credit.

• At the camp, we get a run in with Susan Felder, from way back.

• Dawn’s an idiot.  The camp head tells her about this machine Susan has, and says that kids with autism use because it comforts them physically without having to touch other people (which they usually don’t like).  Then, when Dawn brings Susan to the machine, and sees it “touching her,” she calls the person back all worried.  The councilor’s all, “I thought you got that it was a hugging machine.” Really I don’t know how Dawn could have thought something else.  I was surprised that she was confused, because it was so obvious what the councilor was saying.  It’s like in the second Twilight book, when I couldn’t understand how Bella didn’t get that Edward left to protect her.

• How come Mallory always writes stories where the main character is her?  Seriously, it’s annoying. 

• Abby thinking for even a second that she was going to meet the Queen was ridiculous.

• Every room in their Paris hotel has a balcony looking at the Eiffel tower.  Is that even possible?  Don’t some rooms need to be on the other side of the building?

• I understand Stacey getting interested in WWII based on what happened with the suitcases, but it seems a bit pushy when she asks to go with the guy to spread his friend’s ashes.

• In the Playground Fight book, they say that the Europe trip is in the middle of the camp session.  But in this book, the camp starts at the same time as the others leave for the trip.

• Kristy and Michel get separated when touring the Louvre with their group.  They say the backup plan for when this happens is to go to some group meeting place at the end of the day.  So, the two of them just go off on their own for the afternoon.  They leave a message at their hotel that this is what they are doing, and the teacher leaves them one back saying that it’s okay.  Now…what the hell kind of chaperone would be okay with that?  I can’t believe they would even leave the museum without doing a head count.

• Apparently, Janine broke up with Jerry, got back together with him, then dumped him again.  Which, leads to their tension at the camp.  I would like to know which book this happens in, cause I want the story about this breakup.

• Michael (Kristy’s love interest) plays a “prank” on her, that Kristy claims humiliated her.  Basically, he told the girl working at the counter of a café to pretend that she doesn’t speak English, so Kristy had trouble ordering. Then she’s embarrassed when she finds out the girl really spoke English. I don’t get what’s so humiliating about that.  Isn’t it sort of expected that communicating will be hard when you don’t speak the native language? The girl didn’t yell at her or anything. 

• Jessi convinces Mallory to stop working on her latest story and enjoy the trip.  You would think she would mention how she went through the same thing in Hawaii, but she makes no reference to it.  Maybe she was purposely avoiding it because she thought it would make Mal feel bad (since Mallory was the person Jessi was writing everything down for)?  Or maybe the ghostwriter completely forgot.  I’ll let you decide.

“Why couldn’t they have planned it on a different weekend?”…..BSC Super Special # 12: Here Come the Bridesmaids!

Memory Reaction

I remember reading the back of this book in the store and thinking, “why the hell would Mary Anne be a bridesmaid in Dawn’s father’s wedding?”  Except I may not have actually said “hell” since I didn’t curse that much as a kid.  But, in the actual book, Mary Anne isn’t a bridesmaid, which made me feel a little better about the whole thing.  I also remember thinking it was unrealistic that the BSC was so involved in Mrs. Barrett’s wedding.  That of course, does not get any better when you actually read the book.  Which may be why it was the last Super Special I read when it first came out.

The most important thing from this book though, is that it’s when Dawn came back from her “six month” stay in California.  Only a year-and-a-half had gone by in book time, and I was all proud of myself for being able to figure that out.  Looking back it was pretty obvious (she left at the beginning of the school year, was there in winter, summer, and then was going home on Christmas).

Revisited Reaction

Dawn’s father’s marrying his girlfriend Carol (in California).  After the wedding, Dawn’s coming back to Stoneybrook after her extended vacation with her dad.  Kristy, Claudia, and Mary Anne are flying out for the wedding, because all 13-year-olds fly across the country for weddings of people they barely know.   Back in Stoneybrook, Mrs. Barrett’s getting married too.  Since not all the girls can be at both weddings, Dawn decides to make a "wedding journal" about the whole thing. 

California:
Dawn’s a bridesmaid in the wedding and she somehow gets it in her head that Mary Anne is too, although she forgets to share this information with Mary Anne.  So, when Mary Anne gets out there, Dawn just gives her the dress she picked out and Mary Anne’s all annoyed/stressed.  But as soon as she gets used to the idea, Carol and Mr. Schafer announce that Dawn and Jeff are the only two in the wedding party, and Mary Anne’s rightfully pissed at Dawn again.  But she gets over it, and she wears the dress that matches Dawn’s, even though she’s just a guest.  Which makes the cover fairly accurate.  

Stoneybrook: 

Stacey was hired to help watch the kids at the Barrett/DeWitt wedding.  But then Mrs. Barrett asks Stacey to be a bridesmaid because the old friend who was supposed to do it no longer can make it.  Stacey’s thrilled of course, and Shannon and Mallory end up watching the kids at the wedding.  It’s pretty drama-free.

Un wedding related events:
Jessi gets roped into being the Santa Claus at Bellairs (since this is all happening in the weeks leading up to Christmas).  It’s not as weird as it sounds, she’s just walking around the store in costume chatting with kids.  And it's a volunteer spot, so it’s not totally bizarre that they'd have to resort to the BSC when the guy who was supposed to do it backs out.  She’s super nervous, but ends up loving it.

Mallory and Ben Hobart make plans to go Christmas caroling with some kids.  At the last minute Mal gets asked to help at the Barrett wedding, so she has to cancel.  Ben’s mad at her for agreeing to do the wedding after agreeing to go caroling, and they have a big fight.  But they make up at the end and go caroling on a different day.  Thrilling, huh?

Jeff gets a couple chapters in this one.  He’s worried that his father will fire their housekeeper now that Carol’s moving in, and he’s annoyed that Carol’s bringing her “ugly” furniture into their house.  But since Carol’s a “slob” they are keeping the housekeeper and the moving van with Carol’s stuff gets stolen, so things all work out for him.  He's also annoyed by how much Dawn and her friends talk, which doesn’t stop, but you can’t have everything.  My summary sounds boring, but he's actually one of the more entertaining narrators.

Suzi Barrett gets to narrate as well.  She’s less entertaining, but she’s a step up from the usual Karen chapters.  She doesn’t want to move because she doesn’t like the new house.  She’s also worried that the new place doesn’t have a chimney and that Santa won’t know they moved.  She writes him a letter but doesn’t think he’ll read it in time.  Logan gives her the idea to put a trail of cookie crumbs from the old house to the new one, which Mrs. Barrett actually helps her do.  And of course, Santa shows up.

In California, Kristy's busy criticizing the We Love kids Club for being too lax.  Because there's no reason to come up with new storylines when you can revisit such an exciting old one.  Everyone sort of ignores her.  Then Sunny says she wants to throw a surprise going away party for Dawn, but hasn't really thought it through.  Kristy jumps in with her super-planning skills and helps make it happen.

High/Lowlights

• Slightly unrelated, but did anyone else catch this article on the BSC? 

• They try and pretend that Stacey’s the BSC member who’s closest to the Barrett’s because she was a mother’s helper “lastsummer” and happened to be sitting when they picked out their house.  But it was really Dawn who had that specialconnection.

• Stacey has a sitting job watching the Barrett/DeWitt kids at the new house they're moving into, while their parents are busy supervising workers.  She's supposed to keep the kids out of the way.  But I don't get why they brought all the kids.  If they were hiring a sitter anyway, why not have her stay at home with the kids? It'd be much easier to keep them out of the way.  Maybe it was because they could only get one sitter?

• Also, Stacey has to keep all the kids outside so they don’t disturb the workers.  But it’s December.  It’s rather cold on the east coast around then.  You can certainly play outside, but it’s not the best time to spend a full day there.

• Mary Anne has a to-do list for getting ready to go to California.  She actually wrote “kiss Tigger goodbye” on the list.  Seriously?

• Did people not always need to get to the airport ahead of time?  Cause Kristy describes getting to the airport an hour before her flight as “early.”  But that seems pretty reasonable to me.

• Quote from Jeff….”if you want to fight you can just do it with your friends.  Then you can go home and chill and not have to kiss and make up”….It sounds like something a ten-year-old boy would say.

• Claudia’s parents originally say she can’t go to California because it’s too much money.  So, Mr. Schafer offers to pay for half if she helps with the wedding.  Cause they need her artistic genius of some crap like that.

• Mary Anne’s surprised that Mr. Schafer and Carol are getting married on the beach.   I can buy that she’s never heard of a beach wedding before, since she’s kind of young and they’re not that common.  But wouldn’t she have heard that from Dawn?  Did they not have any conversations about the wedding?  At all? How did that not get mentioned?

• It sounds like the wedding’s literally on the sand, not on some deck overlooking the beach like some weddings I’ve been too.  But I have to say, I was once at the beach when a couple came in and got married right in the middle of the crowd sitting there  People literally turned their chairs around to watch these complete strangers get married.  It seemed very unappealing to me.  Those pictures won’t be so scenic with random people in the background.

• Why the hell would Dawn assume Mary Anne was a bridesmaid?  Seriously, that makes no sense.  First of all, Carol barely knows Mary Anne.  Secondly, she's the groom's ex-wife's step-daughter. I don't even get why Mary Anne WENT to the wedding.   In one of the later super specials, Mary Anne talks about how Mr. Schafer sometimes “jokingly” insults her father.  Which is a much more realistic scenario, no matter how mature people are being.  (And I don't think Dawn's parents were very mature about things).

• Honestly, I’m surprised Carol would even want Dawn to be a bridesmaid, let alone her maid of honor.  They don’t exactly have a friendly past. Mr. Schafer must be great in bed.

• Dawn claims she assumed she was "in charge of bridesmaids," but again, this makes no sense.  Also, why is Dawn picking out her bridesmaid dress with only her friends, two weeks before the wedding?  No matter how low-key the wedding is, I'd think the bride would want to see the dress, or have input on the color scheme or something.

• Jessi talks about how dancers need to watch what they eat, but she doesn’t go too overboard with that.  But she adds…"I don't go crazy about my weight yet….I'll do that when I'm older."  I think I know what she meant, but it sounded like she's planning on eating disorder or something.

• One of the kids Jessi talks to as Santa is a little girl who says she wants her pregnant mother to have a boy, so that he won't take her toys.   Jessi convinces the kid that a sister would be nice because when the baby’s old enough to play with her toys, she'd have outgrown them.  Then the mother whispers "how did you know," implying that the baby is, in fact, a girl.  But shouldn't Jessi have convinced her both would be okay?  

• Buddy Barrett and Lindsay DeWitt are the only two kids in their parents’ wedding.  The others sit in the back of the church with Mallory and Shannon.   Now, that seems a bit mean to me.   I get that those kids are young, but if you’re getting married about have 7 kids age 8 and under, wouldn’t you try and make it a bit more kid friendly? 

• They acknowledge that there are two people named Ryan DeWitt in BSC-land (a kid in California and Mrs. Barrett’s new stepson).  Want to bet that someone who worked on the books used the name of a real-life friend, but forgot and did it again?

• Real children’s' literature shout out....someone's reading Freckle Juice.  I remember reading that book when I was little.  Cute story.

• Dawn ate cake that was served at her going away party and she says she actually loved it.  

• At the wedding reception, Claudia takes a picture of the girls in We Love Kids, shaking their fingers at people slicing the duck.  But if they eat fish and chicken would they really have a problem with duck?

• Also, Dawn was originally a vegetarian because it was healthier not because of animal rights.  I can deal with them changing history on that, but since they did, they shouldn't have them still eat fish/chicken.  Because it makes sense for someone to only eat fish if it's for health reasons, but not if it's for animal rights?  Do fish and chickens not get the some courtesy as cows and pigs?

• Fun fact: Mrs. Barrett guesses that Stacey’s a size 6 (when ordering her dress).   We don’t hear if it’s accurate though.

• Mary Anne explains some of Dawn's idiocy about the bridesmaid thing by saying she’s being scatterbrained like her mother.  But Dawn was always the organized one who helped keep her mom sane.  That’s not just a continuity error, that’s changing a person’s whole character.  

• Now, Mrs. Barrett, I can buy not remembering to ask Stacey about being a bridesmaid until the last minute (which she does).  

• I’ve never actually been a bridesmaid, but I know many people who have.  Is it believable that Mrs. Barrett could order a bridesmaid dress for Stacey just a couple of days before the wedding?  I guess if it’s a standard-ish dress and doesn’t need any alterations it could work.

• On the flight to California, Claudia, Kristy and Mary Anne get served Chicken Cordon Bleu.  Would they really do that on a plane?

• Dawn and Jeff fly back to Connecticut ON Christmas.  That seems like an awful way to spend the holiday.  And with a six-hour flight, plus losing three hours for the time difference, I don’t get how they had time for two big celebrations.  But whatever.   

“It had been a merry, scary season”….BSC Super Mystery # 4: Baby-sitters’ Christmas Chiller

Memory Reaction

This was after my time. The fact that I’ve already covered most of the books I actually read, is sort of messing up my format lately, but there’s not much I can do about that.

Revisited Reaction

This book really has three mysteries that only intertwine slightly. But they all take place in the days leading up to another Christmas in BSC-land.

First: Someone’s breaking into homes in Kristy’s neighborhood, trashing them, and leaving messages that say “naughty” painted on a wall somewhere. Someone also tries to break into Abby’s and Mrs. Porter’s houses, but just leaves a note saying “nice.” Of course, the BSC has to jump in and try to investigate. They even volunteer their baby-sitting services to the families who’ve been victimized as an excuse to poke around. They help figure out that it’s a gardener that several families in the area had recently dropped for a different company. And because it’s the BSC, they end up helping the police set the guy up, by having Watson fire the guy, then pretend to go out of town. So the police catch the guy and everyone (except the culprit) is happy.

Meanwhile: Mallory and Jessi are walking home from a rehearsal for their church Christmas pageant, and they find a woman on the street with no memory of how she got there, and no ID or belongings. She’s also pregnant, because regular amnesia isn’t dramatic enough for a Super Mystery. Anyway, this woman (who they’re calling Mary) ends up staying at the Pike’s for a few days. Then she goes into labor. During a snowstorm. The only surprise is that it happens the day before Christmas Eve and not midnight on Christmas. Anyway, Mallory helps track down the woman’s identity by tracing a label in her clothes and sending the picture of a ring to a jewelry store near it. Or something equally ridiculous. It turns out the woman was taking train to travel after visiting some friends in Boston, but before going home. Her husband was in Australia on business, so no one was really looking for her. She got off the train and was mugged or something. But giving birth started bringing her memory back, because otherwise it’d be too depressing for a Christmas story.

Lastly: Stacey and Claudia are visiting Mr. McGill in New York and are being harassed by someone. Weird things keep happening in the apartment building…the lights go out in the hallway outside their door, they get stuck in an elevator, someone dumps red paint in the elevator that looked like blood, etc. Also, someone leaves a creepy note on their door and a picture of Stacey that was taken by someone following her. The worst thing is that Stacey almost falls/maybe was pushed in front of a subway (but was fine, obviously). At first they think it may be Ethan, but they finally confront him. It turns out that his ex-girlfriend, Cybil, lives in Stacey’s building and has been stalking them. She leaves them a note to meet in the basement, and like idiots they go. There’s a whole dramatic confrontation, complete with a power failure, but at the end Ethan just brings her to her parents to get her help. It’s really anti-climactic.

High/Lowlights

• Claudia outfit: "She had braided her long jet-black into a single braid with narrow red, blue, green, yellow, orange, and purple ribbons woven in. Her short red turtleneck dress had a braided yellow belt, and she was wearing purple tights, yellow scrunch socks, and black Docs. Her earrings were in the shape of Christmas trees, but they were painted in rainbow colors, instead of just green. On some people this might have been too much, but on Claudia...it looked fabulous." - of course it did.

• The funniest part’s that when the police arrest the gardener, the BSC runs out of Abby’s house to watch, and Watson, Mrs. Brewer, and Mrs. Stevenson keep calling out telling to them to stop. As though they’ve finally decided to set limits with their children’s crime fighting.

• However, these same adults don’t have any issue with their kids helping to organize a neighborhood watch.

• Ethan tells Stacey her Dad’s apartment building was built over an old graveyard. Really? Why is everything always built over a graveyard?

• When Mal goes to the police station to give her statement about finding Mary, they tell her to bring her parents. And Mrs. Pike goes! Someone in the Stoneybrook police department actually treats the BSC members like the minors that they are. I’m shocked.

• Most of the BSC goes to Abby’s house for a Hanukkah party and after giving us all a lesson about the holiday, they hang out with Anna. But it seems weird that Anna wouldn’t also invite her own friends to it. I don’t think this is the first time this has happened with an Abby book.

• What’s worse is that when they hear that the Papadakises house was robbed, they all take off to “investigate” and just leave poor Anna behind.

• One weird thing’s that Kristy finds a note in her mailbox that says, “nice” and she writes it off as some girl who may have a crush on Sam or Charlie. But then later, the guy actually breaks into Abby’s house and Morbidda Destiny’s house to leave them “nice” notes. Why the switch?

• Stacey and Claudia go to a coffee bar in the city…they seem young for that, but maybe people do start drinking it at that age now.

• I don’t mean to judge, but what was Mary’s husband doing going to Australia when his wife was 9 months pregnant?

• Two of the homes that were broken into happened when the people were on vacation. Now, this is in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Do most people go out of town the week before Christmas, but come home before it? I usually hear about people leaving for the holiday itself.

• Who uses a gardener in December anyway?

• Apparently Mal and Jessi put random facts about horses in the club notebook, so Stacey and Claudia know that horses in harnesses only appear in Central Park. Or something like that. It makes Mallory and Jessi sound really lame, and maybe that’s the point. But seriously, they like horses so much they can’t do anything without mentioning them?

• A salesperson at Tiffany’s lets Stacey and Claud try on jewelry. That seems very kind of her. Oh, and of course Stacey’s dad has already promised her diamond earrings after she finishes high school. I wonder if he told her that before or after she asked for a diamond ring?

• Mallory mentions saying grace before eating dinner with her family. Now, I remember a lot of scenes with the Pikes eating meals, and I don’t think they’ve ever mentioned saying grace before them. I guess they did that to support this new backstory about the Pikes ALWAYS helping out with their church’s Christmas pageant. Because I don’t think we’ve ever heard them talk about church before.

• Dawn’s in this book, since she’s visiting for the holidays. She says she wants a "bi-coastal" sleepover with all her friends someday. Which has already happened.

• Also, does Dawn think the word “bi-coastal” sounds cooler than it is?

• The entire Prologue and Epilogue of this book is done as a notebook entry from Jessi. It’s really annoying, I hate her handwriting.

• Most of the girls are at a sleepover at Kristy’s when Mrs. Porter’s house is robbed. Watson and Kristy's mom don't let the girls run out and play detective when it happens (in the middle of the night). However, they do go the next day, and I think she’s amused by the girls’ detective act. She keeps smiling as they subtly try and ask questions. It makes me like her a little.

• It was really obvious that Ethan had an ex-girlfriend in the building, and that she was the one behind everything. I wish they had just made her bitchy, instead of out-and-out crazy.

• So apparently, Cybil tells the doorman in Stacey’s building that she’s friends with Stacey and they like to play jokes on each other. But I can’t believe that the doorman wouldn’t speak up when the “jokes” involve dumping paint all over the building’s elevator.

• If you’re wondering how the girls have so much time on their hands…SMS closed for winter break a few days sooner than expected because of issues with the heat. Only in BSC-land can they get extra days off and not have to make them up at some point down the line.

“Tell me you didn’t go and solve the mystery without me”……BSC Super Mystery # 3: Baby-sitters Fright Night

Memory Reaction

This is the first time I read this one, so memory doesn’t really apply.

Revisited Reaction

Stacey, Mary Anne, Kristy, Abby, and Mallory are spending a few days in Salem, Massachusetts on one of their school’s cool but unrealistic field trips. They’re supposed to do a history project about whatever they learn there, but the girls really spend the whole trip solving a mystery.

The case revolved around a famous diamond called the Witch’s Eye that’s rumored to have a curse on it. The current owner’s loaning it to a museum in Salem for display, and it’s immediately stolen. Stacey and Mary Anne are there at the time, and Stacey finds a piece of paper with what she eventually realizes is a safe combination. Later, Mary Anne and Abby find a disguise in some bushes outside the inn they’re staying at, and decide the culprit must also be a guest there.

The suspects are Martha Kempner - a famous mystery writer, who’s writing an article on the diamond, Harvey Hapgood – a guy who offered to buy the diamond a day before it was stolen, and Sean Knowles – who the BSC thinks is spying on the diamond’s owner, but is actually an insurance agent. They briefly consider Mrs. Moorehouse, the diamond’s elderly owner, and/or her nurse, but take her out of the running since she didn’t have insurance and wouldn’t benefit from the theft.

So, for the next few days, the girls talk about the clues while sightseeing, going to a Halloween parade, and dealing with middle school drama. Alan Gray and Cary Retlin both play a bunch of pranks on Kristy and Cookie Mason keeps picking on Mallory’s roommate Eileen. At one point, Abby’s waist pack’s stolen, and the room she and Stacey are staying in is broken into.

At the end of their trip there’s a big storm and the power goes out in the inn. Stacey, Abby, Mary Anne, and Mallory realize that since the room doors are opened with electronic key cards, anyone who left their room after the power went out wouldn’t have been able to lock their doors. They decided to just go ahead and enter the rooms belonging to their suspects, to see if their safes open with the combination Stacey found. Martha Kempler’s opens, and the girls realize she must be connected to the crime. Instead of calling the police or telling their chaperones, they decide to go off to stop her from escaping. But it turns out Martha and her partner (Harvey Hapgood) was watching the girls. The final confrontation happens in a dark hallway. It turns out that Martha had hidden the diamond in a ceramic pumpkin in the gift shop, which Abby had bought, so Marha’s trying to get it back. After a ridiculous scene where Abby physically fights with the culprits the police show up and arrest the thieves. In the middle of all this, the diamond “glows,” in what is supposed to be a sign of it having supernatural powers, or something.

While all this is going on, Kristy was off dealing with her prank war with Alan and Cary. Cary had tricked her, as part of a plan to scare her and Alan Gray. Instead, Alan and Kristy scare each other, then team up to get Cary.

Jessi, Claudia, Shannon, and Logan are keeping the fort down back in Stoneybrook. They end up helping the kids put on a Halloween parade, and deal with Jordan Pike thinking he has magic powers. There’s not much else to say about that.

High/Lowlights

• Claudia doesn’t go on the trip because her parents are too worried about her grades, and Jessi doesn’t go because she is in a Halloween dance at Stoneybrook University. Claudia I can understand, but what exactly is a Halloween dance?

• Stacey outfit: “Black jeans, black boots, black turtleneck, silver cropped top over that, black boots with silver side buttons and silver X earrings.” I’m not sure why (or how) she was wearing two pairs of boots, but other than that it sounds decent.

• When talking about the Scarlett Letter, Stacey comments about how awful the movie was. This was written in 1996, so I’m assuming she means the Demi Moore one. You know you’ve made a bad movie when it gets trashed in a kids book.

• Now for a little game….which of the following outfits was worn by Claudia, and which was worn by the poor-fashion-less girl everyone makes fun of? Answer at the end of this post.

1. “Doc Martens with pumpkin stickers, a hand-batiked shirt in orange and black, plus one orange sock and one black sock.”
2. “A huge purple dress, a puffy orange windbreaker, and these really clunky shoes. Her hair stuck out in spikes beneath a wool hat that had a pattern of white snowflakes on a red background.”

• Why would a thief carry around a piece of paper with a safe combination when they’re stealing a diamond? She wouldn’t need the combination until she got back to her hotel room.

• The museum the diamond was stolen from, is part of a complex of museums/historic buildings. A group from SMS is there, with kids splitting up to go to various sections. After the theft, Mary Anne and Stacey are separated. Mary Anne ends up outside and sees that the complex is closing. The police are taking everyone’s name, and they tell her that everyone else from SMS went back to the inn and she should do the same. Now, what the hell kind of chaperons just leaves the area without all their students? Especially when a crime has just taken place.

• As soon as theft occurs, Mallory decides she HAS to have the mystery notebook to write down clues. Writing them in another notebook’s just not an option for her. It seems a bit out of character for her to be so obsessive about it, but whatever. She has Jessi give the notebook to the spouse of one of the teachers, who’s joining the trip a day later. How Jessi gets it to this person, I don’t know.

• Kristy’s upset that she wasn’t around when the theft occurred, or when Abby and Mary Anne found the disguise. So, when she finds what she thinks is a clue, she sneaks off by herself to investigate, hoping to solve the thing herself. It ends up being Cary’s trick, and Kristy ends up annoyed that they “solved” the case without her.

• For part of the trip, Mary Anne’s watching the daughter of one of the teachers on the trip. I guess they needed to have some baby-sitting in there (even though we got some in the Stoneybrook chapters).

• Martha wanted to steal the diamond from the museum, because she had previously tried to buy it from Mrs. Moorehouse, and didn’t want a connection being there. So, why did her partner offer to buy the diamond from Mrs. Moorehouse (in public) right before the stole it? That’s just calling attention to yourself.

• The girls come up with some relatively cute last-minute costumes. (Claudia helped via the phone):

• Kristy wore her collie hat, a necklace made of dog biscuits, and went around with a magnifying glass and a name tag reading “Sherlock Bones.”

• Mary Anne went as a boring cat like she always does.

• Stacey went as Mother Time (all black and numbers painted on her face).

• Abby went as the women’s soccer World Cup (a soccer shirt, and a blow-up globe and plastic cup tied to her arms.

• Mallory was a pumpkin patch, which is more creative than just a pumpkin I guess. She dressed orange, and pinned pumpkins cut out from orange paper all over her, tied with green yarn.

• Apparently Stacey’s so good with math, that when she sees a set of numbers, she instantly memorizes them (which is how she remembers the safe combination after giving the piece of paper to the police). I don’t remember hearing about that skill before.

• Why do these kids always write letters to each other when the person out-of-town will be home in a day?

• During the Alan/Cary incident, Alan’s trying to scare Cary and tells him Kristy’s baby-sitting, but might have followed him. But Cary’s all, “oh no. Kristy’s way too responsible a baby-sitter to put a child at risk like that.” Now really, what 13-year-old boy says stuff like that?

• After Martha’s safe opens, Mallory does some actual thinking and remembers that on the morning of the theft, Martha wore sneakers (to run away quietly), and every other time they’ve seen her she’s been in high heels (that make a lot of noise). So, they don’t completely luck into solving this one.

• I’m trying to figure out how these girls avoided getting into trouble with their teachers for wandering off during the storm and getting so mixed up with the thieves.

• I also can’t believe these girls actually walked into other people’s hotel rooms and tried opening their safes.

• At the end, Mrs. Moorehouse tells the girls how Abby ended up with the diamond because the theft took longer than she thought and didn’t have time to get back to her room before the police came around….so she hid it in the pumpkin in the gift shop. But how would Mrs. Moorehouse know that? The last we saw of Martha was her telling her partner not to talk to the cops and asking for a lawyer. I don’t think she was ready to confess.

• After Martha’s been arrested Kristy suddenly shows up, and the rest of the girls ask how she found them. And she’s like, “oh that doesn’t matter.” Which seems like the ghostwriter’s way of admitting it doesn’t make sense but she put it in anyway.

• Answer to the fashion game? Claudia wore the stickered Doc Martens and Eileen (the fashion disaster) wore the purple and orange ensemble. I think they're both pretty awful.
  

“Aren’t we all supposed to get leis?”……BSC Super Special # 13: Aloha, Baby-sitters!”

Memory Reaction

I didn’t read this book as a kid, but I do have a memory of seeing it in the store. I was flipping through it and was tempted to buy it, but decided not to. I think I was trying to go cold-turkey since I was too old to still be buying them. The specific thing I remember is Abby being in a commercial. I can’t remember if I thought it was unbelievable or not? Let's just say I thought it was unrealistic, just cause I like to think I wasn’t a total idiot as a child.

Also, and this is a little embarrassing, but I went to Hawaii a couple years ago…..and I remember thinking that the trip would give me an interesting perspective for reviewing this book. I know, it’s sad.

Revisited Reaction

Most of the BSC’s going to Hawaii on the most ridiculous school trip ever. It’s summer and Stoneybrook Middle School’s organizing a trip with 50 kids and 6 teacher chaperones. Most of the BSC parents agreed the kids could go if they paid for half. And for some reason, Dawn gets to go too, even though this is after she moved to California for good. The only BSC members not going are Shannon, cause she’s at summer camp and doesn’t go to SMS anyway, Kristy, who’s already going to Hawaii with her family later in the summer, and Mallory, who can’t have good things happen to her. And whose parents can’t afford it.

The framework of this Super Special’s that they’re making a trip journal for Mallory so she gets to experience what she’s missing. Overall, it’s kind of a boring trip. No one even falls in LUV which is usually somewhat of a given in a Super Special/Vacation book. Stacey and Mary Anne have some issues with Robert and Logan, but that’s not as interesting as a new boy.

Stacey and Robert are part of a small group that spend several days in Maui (everyone else stays on Oahu the whole time). Stacey’s been annoyed at him because some girl was flirting with him on the plane ride out. Then the helicopter she’s on (for a tour) crashes and no one knows where she is for about a day. She ends up in the hospital for a few hours because of her blood sugar, and her feet get sore since she wasn’t wearing the best shoes, but that’s pretty much the extent of the damage. Robert all worried, and they make up after Stacey’s found.

Mary Anne spends the trip trying to make a point of not being attached to Logan’s hip, because her friends had been telling her she spent too much time with him. She also takes a baby-sitting job on her vacation, because she wants to meet a “real Hawaiian” family. Then she feels a bit embarrassed because they are just like people back in Stoneybrook.

Claudia goes to Pearl Harbor, and starts to feel ashamed of the fact that she’s Japanese, and her “ancestors” were responsible for the attack. She’s worried that people will dislike her because of it. She also worries about the fact that Mimi was living in Japan at the time, and wonders what she thought of the attack. It’s actually the most interesting storyline in the book.

Other key plots: Abby talks her way into a commercial for sun lotion that’s being filmed on the beach. Dawn finds a beach that’s full of garbage and cleans it up, and gets some local kids to agree to keep it clean. Jessi barely gets any chapters herself, even though she’s the one who’s supposed to be leading the efforts in Mallory’s book. She just spends the whole time taking pictures/notes.

We also get to hear about Kristy and Mallory back in Stoneybrook, which sort of takes you out of the rest of the story. They’re both helping at some “farm camp” to help that woman in town that has a farm. It’s that’s so boring it’s barely worth mentioning. However, on a separate sitting job for Jenny Prezzioso, Mrs. P tells Mallory that she’s decided to start using discipline on Jenny. If Jenny has a tantrum, Mallory should just let her cry/scream until she stops herself. This happens at the park and some random woman tells Mallory she’s neglecting Jenny. She even calls the BSC to complain about it. But then Mallory sees the woman at the park, and her own kid has a tantrum. And the woman becomes a BSC client. Of course.

High/Lowlights

• I have this vague memory of a book where the BSC’s raising money for the trip and where Dawn’s on a waiting list to go (since she isn’t a SMS student). I thought that this was from some summary of the book, but I guess it was actually another book that I did read.

• The thing that’s weird, is that this must take place before the book where Stacey and Robert break up. That was the last BSC book I read as a kid, so I can’t understand how I missed the Super Special.

• I would have hated to be on the plane with the SMS group. There are fifty kids and they spend the whole trip switching seats so they can talk to each other.

• I do appreciate that they don’t have these kids staying in some resort right on the beach, and that they mention taking public buses. They don’t mention a cost for this trip, but if the BSC was able to raise half the cost, we can’t be talking about 5 star resorts.

• At one point they’re talking about food, and Claudia says she gave Dawn 3 of her Doritos. But since when does Dawn eat Doritos?

• At first I thought all the Stacey/Robert fighting was foreshadowing to the book where they break up, but Robert was apparently crying when Stacey’s helicopter went down, so I guess they didn’t want him to seem too dickish yet.

• Jessi took 13 rolls of film on the trip, and she mentions as least some of them having 36 exposures. That seems like a hell of a lot of film. I tend to take a lot of pictures, but that’s with digital camera. All that film and developing would get pretty expensive.

• I get that they wanted to have some baby-sitting in this book, but having these girls take sitting jobs on their vacation is really ridiculous.

• Dawn acknowledges the ridiculous-ness of coming to Stoneybrook over the summer, only to go to Hawaii. It would have been hilarious if she came back for a visit, only to see all her friends leave town.

• Mary Anne and Logan decide they both hated not spending all their time together, and decide to not listen to their friends about things like that. So….what message are we trying to send to young girls?

• Kristy gets everyone shirts that say “Baby-Sitters Club” with Claud’s phone number on them. And people actually wear them. Not just in Stoneybrook, but in Hawaii too. Good thing they don’t solve any crimes in this book, or else the culprits would have been able to stalk them.

• I was impressed to see that Claudia’s description of visiting Pearl Harbor was actually pretty accurate, at least compared to my experience.

• This must be the most boring trip to Hawaii ever. Maybe helicopter crashes make some things interesting, but not this.

• Karen’s attending the farm camp with a friend of hers that’s visiting from Nebraska. I remember the friend from a Little Sister book where Karen went to Nebraska, so I feel like this must overlap with another Little Sister book….it’s too random otherwise.

• Abby being in a commercial’s the most ludicrous thing ever. They’re filming some people playing a beach volleyball game, and are missing an actor. She just walks over and is all, “hey, I can play volleyball. And I’m totally 18.” And they just let her do it. They don’t even ask for proof of her age.

• We hear about these girls needing to ask permission from their chaperones more than we’ve ever heard about them asking their parents’ permission for stuff in other books.

• If you were Mallory and couldn’t go on vacation with all your friends, would having every minute of the trip documented make you feel better?

• At one point, a little boy gets lost in the hotel they’re staying at. And Mary Anne decides to just stay at the hotel to help look for him/watch his sisters while his parents look. And of course she finds him and saves the day.

• When Mary Anne asks one of the chaperones about whether she can baby-sit, the teacher’s all, “you want to baby-sit on vacation”? Now, she clearly has a point, but this is coming from someone who’s chaperoning her students on her summer vacation.

• The beach that Dawn cleans up has a for sale sign, meaning it’s private property. So, she’s encouraging these kids to keep on trespassing? It also says “swim at your own risk,” so it seems like a bad idea to be letting those kids swim there anyway.

• Stacey has bad luck in Super Specials, doesn’t she? In this book she’s in a helicopter crash, in the blizzard super special she gets stranded in the storm, and in the camp super special she spends half the time in the infirmary.

• At one point Dawn gives Logan a surfing lesson, but I’m kind of surprised they didn’t do any more of a surfing plot….Dawn’s all into it, and Stacey liked it the first time she tried it.

• Mallory’s surprised to find out that the judgmental woman from the park has kids. But why does she think this random person was hanging out at the playground anyway? Also, I don’t understand why her kid having a tantrum makes her understand what Mal was doing. Her whole point was about Mal’s reaction to the tantrum, not the fact that a kid was having one.

• This book seems a little weird, because everyone’s chapters are not evenly spaced out. Abby has chapters 2, 7, and 10, while Stacey has 11, 16, and 21.