“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.

“You’re only eighteen, yet you command the entire New York fashion industry”…..BSC Mystery # 29: Stacey and the Fashion Victim

Memory Reaction

This book came out after I stopped reading. I’ve been saying that a lot lately, mainly because I’ve recapped almost all the books that I read when I was a kid.

Revisited Reaction

Stacey goes to work with her mom on Take Your Daughter to Work Day, and gets invited to take part in “Fashion Week.” In this case, Fashion Week’s a few small fashion shows, one big fashion show, and photoshoots for Bellair’s national catalogues. They are looking for some “fresh young faces” to go along with the professional models.

The main models we meet are Sydney (the latest it girl), Cynthia (the previous it girl), Harmony (girl with a crazy stage mother), and Blaine (some other girl from Stoneybrook). Cokie Mason is also there, being surprisingly friendly with Stacey.

Stacey notices right away that modeling’s a pretty competitive thing. Then, some “pranks” start to happen. First Harmony’s tea is “poisoned,” giving her stomach cramps. Then someone destroys the clothes for the photoshoots and starts writing creepy messages on mirrors. The culminating event’s when Stacey and Harmony are posing on the roof and a railing comes loose, causing them to fall down to another section of the roof (only about a foot below where they were). Stacey, Claudia (who’s acting as an intern), and Mary Anne, and Mallory (who are working at the store’s “kid center”) try to investigate by roaming around the set watching people, but don’t really come up with anything.

The day before the last event, the director announces that Harmony will be “Princess Bellair,” and get to marry Will Smith. Or maybe she just gets to star in the big fashion show. Stacey notices that Harmony looks disappointed when she hears the news, and realizes Harmony has been trying to sabotage herself. So, the next day, Stacey, Claudia, Mary Anne, and Mallory show up early to catch Harmony in the act of writing on a mirror. It turns out Harmony wanted to quit modeling, but was too scared to tell her mother. But, of course, Stacey gives her the strength to do so. She ends up giving the “princess” role to Blaine, and I guess this is good news, but I can’t remember a single thing Blaine did, so I’m not really sure if she deserved it.

Subplot: Even though this has never been mentioned before, a whole bunch of parents in Stoneybrook smoke (which is probably realistic). Kristy’s siblings get the idea to have a “Stoneybrook Smoke Out” to get Watson to quit for a day, and hopefully more. They also reach out to their friends, who extend it to other people in Stoneybrook. And of course, everyone they ask goes along with it and is grateful. We’ll probably never find out if people quit for more than a day, because the books won’t mention it again either way.

High/Lowlights

• Stacey says she once entered a modeling contest at Bellairs, but it was a bad experience. I don’t remember this happening…does anyone know what book it was? I know one of the videos had her getting into modeling, but they generally wasn’t connected to the books.

• The over-the-hill model’s 16. Now, I get that modeling celebrates the young, but 16 being old? Really?

• Would the hottest model of the moment be involved in a fashion show at a department store in Connecticut? Or a catalogue shoot for the store?

• How come the culprits in stories always stand around explaining what their crime was and why they did it? This isn’t a problem specific to the BSC books, but it’s still annoying.

• Harmony’s mother says she knows her daughter was poisoned on set, because it’s late afternoon and she hadn’t eaten anything since dinner the night before. Yup, that’s something she should be proud of.

• They tell us early on that all the events are after school hours so that they don’t interfere with the models’ educations. But then we hear the models (other than Stacey and Cokie) talk about not being in regular school.

• Harmony’s last name’s Skye. Harmony Skye seems a bit like a porn star name or something.

• There are a ridiculous number of outfits in this one, since modeling’s basically the only thing that happens. I’m only going to mention the crazy-ish ones. For instance, “a raspberry-colored ROMPER….accessorize[d] with white sneakers and a white baseball cap.” The emphasis on the romper’s mine, because who the hell wears a romper?

• Stacey spends a whole bunch of time trying to pick out an outfit to impress the woman running Fashion Week. And it was all a waste, because she has to take it off right away to get into her clothes/makeup for the shoot.

• Isn’t Claudia too young to be an intern? I know they’d make exceptions for models being young, because they need people to fit certain clothes. But there are plenty people over the age of 16 who would be happy to intern at something like this.

• It’s kind of bizarre how these books almost never mention cigarettes unless it’s to show that someone’s “bad,” then suddenly have this book where we hear about a bunch of regular characters who smoke. I understand why they wouldn’t mention it, and I think it’s realistic that adults in BSC-land do smoke, but it’s still jarring.

• We only see one Claudia outfit, “A pair of white jeans with drips and squiggles of colorful paint all over them, a smocklike denim shirt, her favorite red high-top sneakers, and a hairdo that said ‘creative’ – a loose bun held in place by two red lacquered chopsticks.” If she has a favorite pair of red high-tops, does that mean she has multiple pairs of them? That seems excessive.

• Mallory’s such a dork (and I say that with love). She hears about the drama at fashion week and complains that she doesn’t have the Mystery Notebook to take notes in.

• Stacey tells us the mystery notebook was Kristy’s idea. Was that really the case? I can’t find my copy of the Mystery Super Special where they started it, so I can’t check. But I thought they all came up with the idea together. Maybe these girls are just brainwashed to think that Kristy’s the only one with ideas.

• Early in the book, Abby catches Buddy Barrett and Lindsay (his step-sister) about to try one of Franklin’s cigarettes. The say how they were tempted to try smoking because the “ads make it look so cool.” I can’t believe anyone would say those words outside of an after-school special. It’s horrible dialogue.

• One additional outfit that Stacey has to model’s a “flowery, ankle-length dress” that she “likes,” but it doesn’t sound at all like something she’d normally wear. It actually sounds more like those Laura Ashley dresses they’re always talking about.
  

• Stacey criticizes another one of her outfits as “too trendy.” But isn’t she all about being trendy?

• Jessi says how she couldn’t be a ballet dancer if she smoked. But don’t a lot of dancers smoke? Or am I just thinking of an episode of the Simpsons?

• So Watson, who changed his entire life style after his heart attack, didn’t bother to stop smoking? And no one commented on this when he was trying to become healthy in all sorts of other ways?

• So, other smokers in Stoneybrook - Aunt Cecelia, Franklin DeWitt, Mrs. Hobart, and random guy who works at the hardware store. The Aunt Cecelia one surprised me….apparently she tried to be “sneaky” about it and not do it in front of Jessi and Becca, but they knew anyway.

• On the day of the Stoneybrook Smoke Out, Watson puts on a tux, asks the rest of his family to dress up, and then proceeds to bury and say good-bye to a bunch of expensive cigars. I’m picturing that scene and it just seems hilarious.

• Stacey’s staking out the food table at Bellairs to see who drinks tea (to try and figure out if Harmony was the real target of the “poison”). No one’s taking any, and Stacey’s all, “hmmm, I wonder if people are avoiding tea because of what happened with Harmony.” And this is right after she said she didn’t want tea for that very reason. So, shouldn’t she assume others would feel the same way?

• Stacey and Harmony are doing a shoot on the roof, and it’s supposed to be them sitting on lawn chairs. Harmony suggests they pose by the edge instead, because it seemed more natural. Really, it was just a way to make herself look like a victim of the prankster (and make it really obvious she was the culprit). But, they made it seem like it’s the easiest thing in the world to change the angle of a shot. In reality, they would have needed to change all kinds of lighting and camera set ups before making a switch like that.

• I really like that they don’t have Stacey being all gung-ho over modeling. She has fun, but she doesn’t want to drop out of school to become a star or anything.

• Stacey makes a couple comments about how she’s glad her mother’s busy and hasn’t heard about any of the accidents, because then she would make Stacey quit. Now Mary Anne and Mallory both hear gossip about this when they’re working at the store’s day care center, so the gossip’s clearly going around the store. Are we really supposed to believe that no one mentions anything about it to Mrs. McGill? When they know her daughter’s involved?

• You know, when I was a kid I never noticed how these books tend to encourage lying to your parents. The BSC acts all goody-goody most of the time, but in all the mysteries they don’t let their parents now how they’re spending their time, and acknowledge that they wouldn’t approve of all the detective work.

“My Nancy Drew books have taught me to notice things like that”……BSC Mystery # 11: Claudia and the Mystery at the Museum

Memory Reaction
I don’t completely remember the circumstances for how Claudia meets the artist she admires, but I do know that she starts running around the museum with her, looking for something and hiding from some guy she suspects. And he’s just totally amused by it and goes along with her (amused in a good way).

I also remember how the thief had hidden what he stole in some secret compartment of a statue. I always thought that was kind of a cool concept. I actually used it as inspiration for a story I wrote in college. The rest of the story was totally different though.

Revisited Reaction

There’s a new museum in Stoneybrook, with a special exhibit by an artist Claudia really likes. She brings Corrie Addison and the Arnold Twins to see it, because it just wouldn’t be fun if she wasn’t baby-sitting. They all have a great time, but some ancient coins are stolen and they don’t get to see the sculpture Claud was interested in. Of course, Claudia’s obsessed with solving this “mystery” and gets the rest of the BSC to help.

She goes back to the museum to investigate and gets to see the art exhibit. It’s one where people are allowed to touch the sculptures, and Claudia thinks that one sculpture feels different than the time she saw the same thing in New York. She thinks it might be a fake, but when she tries to tell the curator he basically throws her out. Then of course, the BSC suspects him. They even do research and find out that several museums he worked at in the past were also robbed. But that is all a red herring.

Meanwhile, Claudia calls the artist of the sculpture (he’s from Stoneybrook, amazingly enough), and he actually takes this call from a random 13-year-old. When she tells him about it, he says a lot of his sculptures had hidden compartments that he used to hide toys for his (now grown) kids. He thinks maybe one of the toys got left in, and that’s what Claudia was feeling. But Claudia has a working brain in this book, and points out that hidden toys from a long time ago wouldn’t explain why it feels different from last year. This gets the artist curious, so he invites her and her parents to some fancy party the museum’s having, saying they can check the sculpture together.

At the party, the artist and Claudia go to look at the sculpture, but it has already been packed up to move to another museum. They head to the storage area, and they just happen to get there when a custodian’s taking the missing coins out of a compartment in the statue. Apparently, he found the compartment while setting up the exhibit and used it to pull off the theft. The night of the party was the first chance he got to retrieve the coins. After reaching this climax, we skip ahead to Claudia and the rest of the BSC writing a letter to Dawn (in California) about what happened, because it’s not an important part of the story or anything. Exposition is much more interesting than seeing actual events. Anyway, it turns out the curator wasn’t involved, another guy they suspected was really a federal agent, and Claudia gets a whole bunch of credit for “solving” the crime.

Subplot: Claire Pike has decided she wants to be a star. At the mall she gets to make a video of herself singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” in front of a Wizard of Oz backdrop, and she keeps showing it to everyone she can. Claudia takes her to see Rosie Wilder to get advice, and Rosie gives Claire the name of some talent agents. But later, Jessi tells Claire the downsides of show business, and Claire decides she doesn’t want to go through with it. She’s still a little upset when the agent rejects her though.

High/Lowlights

• One nice thing about Claudia books is that they almost always start with an outfit. This one is, “a red-and-white striped shirt that hung down almost to [her] knees, red leggings, and black high-top sneakers.” It actually sounds kind of cute.

• Janine’s talking to Claudia and starts going off on some tangent about Greek and Roman mythology, so Claudia just leaves the room and goes upstairs. Which seems a bit rude, but maybe Janine’s used to it.

• Janine also gets to be surprised/impressed by Claudia talking about art, and sounding like a critic. It’s nice when Claudia does get recognition by her family…..I think she doesn’t think they’re proud of her at all.

• There’s actually something (relatively) interesting in the backstory chapter – Claudia tells us which animal each BSC member would like to be (if they had to). Apparently, they talk about stuff like this. Here are the picks: Claudia, colorful parrot; Kristy, dog; Stacey, panther; Mary Anne, koala; Dawn, dolphin; Shannon, cat; Logan, Hawk; Mallory, horse (shocking, right?); Jessi, some kind of stallion that can dance.

• Speaking of koalas, does anyone else remember a Nickelodeon cartoon where a stuffed koala came to life, and had adventures with it’s owner? The girl (Jenny?) just had to rub noses with it. And she just happened to have a eucalyptus tree outside her bedroom? Oh, and because the internet is awesome, I found a clip. (I apologize for the randomness of this comment if no knows what I'm talking about).
  

• Claudia’s outfit for visiting the museum: “Pink lace leggings and a long black sweater. [Her] hair was tied back with a pink ribbon, and [she] was wearing pink ballet-type flats.” Again, not too bad, at least for the 80s. But she claims she’s “dressed up,” and she totally isn’t.

• The day of the theft, Claudia notices a custodian with a mop and pail, the guy with one blue eye and one green eye, and a brownie troop. She suspects the guy with two eye-colors, but not the custodian, which I thought seemed pretty obvious, since he could have hid the coins in his pail. But I think I may have subconsciously be remembering the end. I am guessing I don’t need to say that she doesn’t suspect the brownie troop.

• Claudia wants to go to the museum with someone, so she arranges to take Carrie and the twins. In a situation like this, do you think she charges? Cause it seems kind of weird for her to call up Mrs. Arnold or Mrs. Addison and ask to get paid to take their daughters somewhere.

• Before leaving for a trip to the mall, Adam Pike tells his mother that Mallory’s making Nicky change his socks, because he’s been wearing the same ones for three weeks and will be trying on shoes. But would they not have made him change his socks if he wasn’t trying on shoes? Three weeks is a long time.

• The BSC thinks the coins must still be inside the museum, since everyone who had been there the day of the theft had been searched. They think maybe the coins were mixed in with the fake coins sold at the gift shop, but it turns out those were actually chocolate. However, they’re arranged in a locked display case. Why the hell would CHOCOLATE coins be locked in a display case?

• The BSC also tries to find the coins in a fountain by the front of the museum and the donations box by the entrance. I’m not sure why that seems like an important detail to me, but it does.

• Rosie suggests that Claire make copies of her video and send it to a bunch of agents at once. Claudia convinces Claire to only send it out one at a time, so they don’t need to make copies (since this is pre-digital). So, Claire dictates a note to Claudia and they send it off. But isn’t it A) a bit reckless to not even make a copy for herself in case the agents don’t return it, B) not really professional to have a five-year-old compose the note, and C) a bit inappropriate to just send out the tape without talking to Claire’s parents?

• Why would a random custodian have keys to the display cases with valuable artifacts? Wouldn’t they have more security about that?

• The day of the crime, Claudia sees that the case with the coins is covered with shattered glass, and thinks that the coins must have been taken before it was broken, therefore being an inside job. Now, I would hope that the cops also knew that and were checking on the employees, but I guess that’s silly, since the cops can’t really do anything without the BSC’s help. But my more pressing question is, how does a girl that can figure that out have so much trouble passing eighth grade?

• The outfit Claudia wore to school, that Kristy thinks is acceptable for a formal party: “Bright red leggings topped by a white man-tailored shirt and a vest that used to belong to [her] father.” I feel like all of Claud’s outfits in this book are the same.

• All the Pikes just watch Claire’s video again and again so she doesn’t have a temper tantrum. That’s a way to not spoil a child.

• Claudia’s father tells the reporters who write about the incident that he had no idea his daughter was a detective (or something like that). But this isn’t exactly the first time the BSC has gotten attention about “solving” mysteries. I guess this may be earlier in the series, but I know they at least got mentioned in the paper with the dog-napping case, and MAYBE the counterfeiting one.

• The back of the book says that “Claudia can’t wait for the new museum in Stoneybrook to open….” But that isn’t really true. The museum has already opened, and Claudia can’t wait to get to see it.

• When Claudia gets credit for catching the thief, she at least acknowledges that there was a lot of luck involved. Something other BSC members fail to do.

• The tagline on the front of the book says, “What kind of thief would steal art?” Now, first of all, it was ancient coins stolen from the museum, not art. But even if it WAS art, that’s not exactly an unheard thing to steal.

• Towards the end, we find out that the guy with two different colored eyes is a federal agent. But the last chapter also includes a letter to Dawn, where Kristy says that he was a private eye. I’m wondering if that was a last minute change in the manuscript or something.

• This book takes place when Dawn is in California, but I totally didn’t even notice she was missing. I only realized it when they talked about Mallory feeling sick, and figured out it was build-up to her having mono.

• Because she helped catch the thief, Claudia’s named an honorary trustee of the museum. At first I thought this was just a meaningless name-only thing. But apparently she’s allowed to go to any open night parties the museum has, and the curator wants her to help him display local student work. That seems a bit excessive as a reward for what she did. Not that we ever hear of her being involved with the museum in later books, or even that a museum exists.

• Claudia wore a kimono that used to be Mimi’s to the formal party at the museum. The scene where she’s figuring out what to wear was a really familiar one. I remembered it as soon as I started reading it.

• This museum has a discovery room, a science center, a music exhibit, art rooms, an Egypt room, and possibly more. How big a museum is this exactly? I can buy Stoneybrook having an art museum or a history museum, but one that has everything listed above? Unlikely.

“Shouldn’t we go through something like this together?”……BSC # 104: Abby’s Twin

Memory Reaction

This is another book I didn’t get to as a kid.

Revisited Reaction

Stoneybrook Middle School’s testing their students for “health checks” – hearing, vision, and scoliosis. When Abby’s checked, she gets a letter telling her mom to have her checked by an orthopedist. Anna gets a similar note. Abby’s very upset and scared about what this means, but Anna seems a bit calmer.

When they go to the doctor, Abby’s told her scoliosis is very minor and she doesn’t need to do anything about it. Anna, however, is told she needs to wear a brace, although it’s a “low-profile” one that’s worn under her clothes and doesn’t show. Abby feels a little guilty that she’s okay and Anna isn’t, and thinks that since she and Anna are twins they should be going through this together. She vows to be by Anna’s side and give her all the support she needs, even though it’s obvious she’s annoying the crap out of Anna.

Since Anna will need slightly larger clothes to go over the brace, Abby goes out and buys her a whole bunch of new clothes with money her mom gave her. However, Abby picks out stuff that she likes (a jogging suit, sweats, etc), that Anna would never wear. She also tries to cheer Anna up by making her play a “fun” video game instead of watching some “boring” classical music performance on TV….even though Anna was enjoying the concert. This all ends up driving Anna crazy. The two girls get into an argument at school, when Alan Gray accidentally knocks Anna down in the hallway and Abby starts yelling at him about it.

Later, Abby sees Anna sledding down a hill (at a BSC event), and is worried for a minute, until she sees that Anna’s fine. Then the girls make up. Anna admits she was acting cold because she was dealing things in her own way, and Abby realizes she was going overboard with all the help. Abby also admits that she feels worried that because Anna needs a brace and she doesn’t, it seems like they aren’t twins anymore. She fails to recognize that she and Anna are already different medically speaking, because of her asthma/allergies.

The subplot’s about a winter carnival, yet another annoying BSC event. However, this plays out a little different than usual. Instead of Kristy having the idea, then getting several chapters of the BSC meeting with kids to bake cookies, or practice a talent, or whatever, we get chapters of the BSC and their charges shoveling snow to earn money for the carnival. Unfortunately, this change doesn’t make the chapters any better. They finally get everything they need, but at this point there’s almost no snow left on the ground. The girls think they’ll have to cancel, but it starts snowing that morning, just in the nick of time to make a great event.

High/Lowlights

• Stoneybrook must have really crappy weathermen/women. In the blizzard super-special, snow had been predicted for ages with none arriving, which explained why everyone was so unprepared when it actually happened. In the Sea City one, they didn’t believe predictions of a hurricane until the last minute. And here, they don’t know that it will snow the day of the carnival.

• The back of the book says that Abby and Anna weren’t dressed alike as babies, but still have stuff in common. Except there was a whole section of Abby’s autobiography about them dressing alike. I don’t know which book came first, but one of them’s wrong. Probably this one, since I think the back cover of a book isn’t written by the same people as the ones who write the actual content.

• Hey, some consistency. Abby tells us how she hates January (and February). Which is the same thing she said in one of the mysteries. But, I think other characters had the same complaint, so I’m thinking it was really Ann Martin or a ghostwriter with the problem.

• The health checks are run really badly. They cancel classes for all the 8th graders and send them to the gym, where they all wait in line for their turn to be checked. I remember having these in elementary school (not middle school) and they just sent a few people to the nurse’s office at a time. Sending everyone at once is just a waste of time.

• Claudia outfit: “Multicolored, tie-dyed painter’s overalls she’d dyed herself over a blue, hand-beaded long-sleeved shirt. Five colorful, bead-studded papier-mâché bracelets clattered softly on her wrist whenever she moved her arm.” I’m not really surprised Claudia dyed her overalls herself, cause where the hell would she buy tie-dyed overalls?

• Haley Braddock has “short blonde hair (with a long tail down her back).” Have we been told this before? It totally changes my vision of Haley.

• Abby can be really annoying. I didn’t read that many of her books, but from what I did read, I think she had a tendency to be a bit it obnoxious. Not all the time, but enough to be annoying.

• I’m not sure why, but the BSC first tries to make money shoveling snow in Kristy’s neighborhood…where the driveways are longer and most people hire a plowing service. Also, most of the people doing the shoveling (The rest of the BSC, some charges) have to be driven over (in the snow) to do any work.

• The one job they do get on Kristy’s street is to shovel a very long, steep driveway. After the finish, the woman who lives there gives them $10, and half of that is because she liked a snow sculpture some of the kids did in her yard (they got bored shoveling). The BSC thinks it is too low, but shouldn’t they have agreed to a price beforehand. Also, this also happened in a Sleepover Friends book.

• Abby hasn’t heard of scoliosis before, which I find a little surprising. I remember schools making a big deal about it when I was in elementary school. That would have been before this book came out, so I assume the condition was in the public eye by then.

• The BSC gets the kids to help them shovel, which seems a bit mean to me. I don’t know if they split the money with them, but they do charge (albeit very little) at the carnival. So, the kids helped them earn money that’s then used to make things for them to buy?

• Abby’s sitting for the Braddocks on a day when they’re shoveling snow, and Kristy wants to start shoveling before the job starts. So, Abby calls Mrs. Braddock to see if she can start watching the kids earlier, and Mrs. Braddock’s thrilled. Parents in Stoneybrook really can’t stand being around their children, can they?

• Abby gets her hair cut at Gloriana’s House of Hair, which she tells us once butchered Karen’s hair. I’m not sure why Abby knows that when she wasn’t living in Stoneybook at the time, but it was the subject of a Little Sister book. Maybe the BSC has a secret sitting notebook where they laugh about all the bad things that happen to their annoying charges?

• The reason Abby gets her hair cut is because she’s trying to show support for Anna or something like that. I guess she is just doing it to make them seem more twin-like?

• Abby asks Stacey to go shopping with her for Anna, and then proceeds to ignore her advice. However, maybe this was because Stacey recommended Laura Ashley outfits for Anna. That seems a bit young for a thirteen-year-old, doesn’t it?

• For someone who supposedly has a connection with her twin sister, Abby sure seems clueless about how Anna’s actually feeling/thinking.

• Kristy tries to put an announcement on the radio about the carnival being cancelled. You gotta love how important she thinks a BSC carnival is.

• How fast was it snowing that it “saved” the BSC’s carnival? The snow was almost gone the morning of the carnival, then it starts to snow. By the afternoon there’s enough snow for sledding and making snow sculptures. It seems like that would need to be pretty heavy snow, in which case most people would not be venturing out.

“We thought you went hoody on us”….. BSC Readers Request: Logan Bruno, Boy Baby-sitter

Memory Reaction

This was the second Logan edition. I remember most of the plot, but my most specific memory’s that at the end, Logan and Mary Anne are supposed to be going to some concert. At dinner beforehand, Logan confesses that the concert tickets were given to him by some “bad” guys at school who probably stole them. And when Mary Anne calls the person they were stolen from the girl comes to get them right away and is super-excited about it. I know they also reference it in Stacey and the Bad Girls, which has pretty much the same plot.

However, the important thing is that I also remember that it’s hilariously ridiculous, which is always fun.

Revisited Reaction

Logan’s friends are still giving him a hard time for being in the BSC, and because he tripped at a recent track meet (making the team lose). Frustration with being made fun of makes Logan easily fall under the spell of some other kids at school, a group of guys calling themselves the “Badd Boyz.” They’re the “junior version of some high school gang,” with a reputation for smoking, wearing leather jackets, and potentially being criminals. Their leader, T-Jam, notices that Logan knew what he was talking about in English class, and sweet talks Logan into giving him his paper. He also seems to have noticed that Logan was friendly with the owner of a local CD store.

Anyway, T-Jam and the rest of the Badd Boyz defend Logan to his jock friends, and Logan starts to hang out with them. He meets them at the shopping center where the CD store’s located. Logan’s going there because he wants to buy Mary Anne a Nicky Cash CD – Nicky Cash being the latest teen idol/pop-star in BSC-land. T-Jam uses Logan to strike up a conversation with the owner of the store (a friend of Logan’s father) about when the next shipment of Nicky Cash CDs come in. Apparently, they keep selling out immediately.

Anyway, Logan’s enjoying hanging out with the Badd Boyz, particularly because they defended him against his jock friends and don’t laugh at him for being in the BSC. He also gets a bit of a rush from it. He doesn’t believe that they’re actually criminals and kind of tunes out the fact that there have been a lot of thefts at school. After a while, Logan realizes he’s wrong. T-Jam and his pals have actually been stealing from kids’ lockers.

More importantly, Logan finds out that the Badd Boyz stole a shipment of Nicky Cash CDs from the store and are planning to do it again. He’s upset about it, and T-Jam tries to bribe him by giving him his own Badd Boyz leather jacket, threatening him, and then bribing him again with tickets to the sold-out Nicky Cash concert. He knows they’re probably stolen, but is tempted to use them anyway to make Mary Anne happy. Before he can decide, Mary Anne sees the tickets and gets all excited, and Logan tries to convince himself they weren’t stolen.

They go out to dinner before the concert, and Mary Anne mentions the name of a classmate who’s tickets were stolen. At that point, Logan can’t handle it anymore and tells Mary Anne the whole story. She calls the girl who’s tickets they were and gives them back. Then Logan tells his parents, and then the cops, about the Badd Boyz plans to rob the CD place again. The police watch the store and arrest the guys involved in the theft. Logan goes back to hanging out with his regular friends, and buys some legit tickets to another upcoming Nicky Cash concert for Mary Anne.

Even though Logan doesn’t baby-sit in this one, there’s still a sitting subplot. There’s a new bully named EJ who’s tormenting all the kids in town. They’re all embarrassed to talk about it, but eventually decide they want to unite and stand up to EJ. They do, only to have EJ break down in tears….so then Kerry (Logan’s sister) invites EJ to her house. The “twist” is that EJ’s a girl. Isn’t that the most original plot twist ever? Who would have thought there could be a female bully?

High/Lowlights

• I can absolutely picture 13-year-old boys making fun of a guy who baby-sits. But making fun of a guy for kissing his girlfriend? Logan’s friends are a bit immature.

• So, of course, Mary Anne’s worried about Logan being “bad.” And Kristy’s worried that it will be bad for the kids or hurt the reputation of the BSC. She’s so sensitive isn’t she?

• One of Mary Anne’s complaints to Logan about hanging out with the Badd Boyz is that they smoke, and that could end up hurting Logan’s allergy-ridden brother. It seems so ridiculous that that’s what she would pick as a criticism.

• Logan describes Charlotte as being friendly and outgoing because Stacey came into her life. Now, I never really thought of Charlotte as being outgoing. Stacey helped her make friends and come out of her shell, but I didn’t think every became “outgoing.”

• Just like in Stacey and the Cheerleaders, one of the signs of how these kids are “bad” is that they go outside at lunch. Aren’t they rebels?

• I think my favorite part of this book’s that the BSC doesn’t suggest to the kids to unite and stand up to EJ. The kids just decide to do it on their own, and resolve their issue without any help from a baby-sitter.

• In this book people keep using the term “squank” when they’re making a joke/making fun of someone. I remember seeing “rank” used in other books, but I don’t think I’ve heard “squank” in another book, or in real life. Urban Dictionary does not have any definitions that seem to fit with this use.

• The names of these Badd Boyz are really hysterical. We have T-Jam, Skin, Ice Box, Butcher Boy, Jackhammer, and G-Man.

• When describing Stacey’s diabetes, Logan tells us that we shouldn’t feel bad for her because she can still “wolf down” pretzels and chips. But really, that’s not true. Someone with diabetes needs to be careful how much she eats, even if it has no sugar. They do a really bad job of portraying diabetes in these books.

• If Claudia was trying to write about the “Badd Boyz,” do you think she would spell it “Bad Boys” or “Badd Boyz”? Which is the incorrect spelling?

• Logan overhears the Badd Boyz talking about how they were really only hanging out with him because of his access to the CD store, because it wasn’t obvious enough with the plot itself. They also refer to him as “Ken Doll.”

• Mary Anne’s concert outfit: “She was wearing this incredibly sexy outfit with sequins on it…not a dress but a shirt and pants that are attached, whatever that’s called.” Logan, I believe the term you’re looking for is fashion crime.

• It’s slightly annoying that even though they have no problem painting Logan with flaws in the regular books, in his two books he basically worships Mary Anne, and only tells us how wonderful she is.

• The Badd Boyz have to go to juvenile court after they get caught stealing and they also get suspended from school. But can a school suspend someone for something that happened off school grounds? I was a total goody-goody as a kid, so I really have no idea.

• The threatening note Logan gets is so hilarious, I had to scan it.

“I thought they might be lucky and stumble on the key to the fortune”…….BSC Mystery # 26: Dawn Schafer, Undercover Baby-sitter

Memory Reaction

I didn’t get to this one as a kid, so no memory applies.

Revisited Reaction

Dawn’s in Stoneybrook for the summer and is taking some sitting jobs. At one meeting, the BSC gets two calls from different women, with different last names, and a different number of kids, at the same address. The girls are a little confused, but Kristy and Dawn both show up for the sitting jobs. It turns out that the two women are sisters from out-of-town, who are staying in their (somewhat) recently deceased father’s mansion while his estate’s settled. His house is called the “Livingston House,” because rich people name their houses, I guess. And I’m going to refer to the whole family as “the Livingstons,” because it’s not worth learning anyone’s real last name.

The sisters don’t get along and have divided the house in two so they don’t have to interact. Also living in the house is a third sister with no kids and a young man calling himself their butler. Richard picks Dawn up after the job and recognizes a colleague out running (she’s a neighbor of the Livingstons). The neighbor fills Dawn in on the sisters’ backstory----The father was a bit of an ass, and his will calls for his three daughters to each get a “clue” upon his death. Whoever uses the clue to find a specific code first will “win” and inherit the entire fortune. The neighbor’s the executor of the estate, and thinks the sisters should just share the clues, solve the puzzle together, then share the fortune. But the two older sisters resent each other too much. Apparently, their father encouraged them to be competitive as kids, which caused them to fight a lot until they were old enough to leave town. The younger daughter was spared from this because she was much younger, and she has been living in the house on her own. We’re also told that the sisters had a younger brother, but he died tragically when he was young.

Anyway, after the first sitting job the sisters decide that their kids should be able to see each other. They still hire two sitters, but tell the BSC to keep all the kids together. While doing this, Dawn gets the kids to talk some about the clues their mothers are looking for. They search the house themselves, but don’t find anything. When the mothers get home, the kids ask them to share the clues. And just like that, years of resentment goes away and the three sisters share their clues. However, they still can’t figure out what code they’re supposed to be finding. Lucky for the sisters, Dawn has the case on the brain. She figures out how the clues go together and the sisters all find the code, it’s written on the back of one of the many portraits of the father hanging in the house. We also find out that the “butler” is actually the thought to-be-dead-brother. So, the whole Livingston family gets a happy ending.

Meanwhile, Dawn also has a very busy social life because everyone in town’s trying to spend time with her before she goes back to California. She ends up having to cancel plans with Mary Anne multiple times because she accidentally made plans with someone else at the same time. So, she ends up organizing “friend day.” In the morning she hangs out with a bunch of kids/charges and in the afternoon she hangs out with the BSC and some other old classmates. Then she has “family day” to spend a lot of time with her family, especially Mary Anne.

High/Lowlights

• Does Dawn really need to have going away parties every time she leaves Stoneybrook? Not to mention getting presents.

• This book takes place right after the Hawaii super special, so most of the girls have just returned from that trip. Apparently, Kristy didn’t go, but leaves with her family for a trip there during this book. Dawn gets a letter from her that Mr. Schafer and Watson arranged for the Thomas-Brewer clan to stop and spend the night at Dawn’s house on their way back. However, in “Kristy’s Worst Idea,” Kristy tells us about her trip home from Hawaii, and a stop at Dawn’s house isn’t included.

• I hate when people complain about having too many people that want to spend time with them.

• Dawn makes plans with Emily Bernstein and Erica Blumberg, two eighth graders at SMS we hear of every once in a while. But how often did Dawn hang out with them when she lived in town? Now, I like seeing these girls hang out with people outside the BSC-clique, but at the same time, Dawn doesn’t live in Stoneybrook any more. So, it actually makes sense that she would only stay in touch with her closest friends.

• Claudia outfit: “A bright yellow pair of overall shorts over a tie-dyed baby-T in all the colors of the rainbow. She wore purple jellies, and her toenails, which showed through the plastic, were painted scarlet. A green scrunchie, holding her hair into a cool-looking Pebbles ‘do, topped off the look.” I actually don’t think this is so bad, considering it was the nineties. However, how do you combine “cool-looking” and “Pebbles ‘do” in one sentence?

• How come everyone in BSC-land has attics filled with all sorts of cool old stuff? I was always so jealous of not being able to go attic-exploring as a kid. At least in this book, they don’t find an old journal/letters in the attic to read. I was even more jealous of that.

• This book isn’t really a mystery. I know I’ve complained that some mysteries are way too unrealistic, but there’s something in between catching counterfeiters and a brainteaser.

• Is it weird that Dawn made plans to go to the local community pool with Haley and Matt Braddock? Not as a sitting job, just for fun?

• Why would you play “Marco Polo” when at a pool with a deaf child?

• While searching the mansion, Dawn and Abby find a signature of an “A Livingston” from two months ago, which is after Mr. (Arthur) Livingston died. And they’re all, “OMG, he’s really alive!” They totally ignore the obvious explanation that the third daughter’s named Amy Livingston, and is the owner of the signature.

• The kids were playing pogs. Remember those?

• They make a point of saying how it is weird that the “butler” is really young, so you know he’ll be someone significant.

• Arthur Livingston died a year ago, and there was no funeral because Amy (the younger daughter) and the executor of the estate were both out of the country. Which seems really weird. Wouldn’t she make a point of coming home when her father died? This is the daughter living in Stoneybrook.

• After the first job, Kristy and Dawn talk about only sending one sitter to try and force the Livingston’s to make up. But they decide not to. Not because it’s meddling, but because it wouldn’t be safe to only send one sitter for five kids.

• The Livingstons ask Dawn to be a “regular sitter.” And the BSC’s totally okay with it, like it hasn’t been against club policy for over a hundred books.

• It’s so weird that the executor of the estate says she can’t do anything about the “contest” part of the will, but then she just helps them share the clues at the end.

• When we first heard that the Livingstons had a younger brother that died, I thought they meant as a baby. But the father just started telling people his seventeen-year-old son died while mountain climbing, because he was mad at him. That’s a pretty crappy thing to lie about, at least in my opinion.

• The idea that the BSC managed to resolve a feud that has been going on with these two women since they were children in a matter of weeks is just….beyond words ridiculous.

• The executor says how the father would have liked seeing the daughters be competitive about the clues. But really, it would have been pretty hard for them to figure out on their own. The three clues were: The first is the most important; The signature tells all; and I didn’t do it, I was blank. (The blank is supposed to be framed, which points to the (signed) portrait and the “first” is because it is the oldest portrait).

“Why is Emily dressed like a clown?”……BSC # 45: Kristy and the Baby Parade

Memory Reaction

This is one of the books where my main memory’s one of Claudia’s outfits….she dresses with a watermelon theme. I actually thought that seemed cool is a kid. Embarrassing, I know.

Other than that, I mainly remember how much the float they put together sucked. And Charlie was all embarrassed to be driving it and wears a disguise, but gets recognized and made fun of by his friends.

Revisited Reaction

Mrs. Prezzioso needs a regular sitter for Jenny and Andrea for a couple weeks. But because Andrea is so young, she asks if that sitter can take an infant-care class at the town’s community center. Kristy gets the job, but all the club members decide to take the class.

Meanwhile, we find out that the bi-annual baby parade’s coming to Stoneybrook. It’s for kids under the age of three and entries can be strollers, floats, go carts, etc. Mrs. Prezzioso tells Kristy she’s going to enter Andrea (not surprising), and she wants Kristy’s help. Kristy agrees, even though she had also been thinking of entering Emily. Since Andrea’s being entered in the stroller division, the BSC decides to do a float, and enter Emily, Squirt, and some other kids they sit for – Lucy Newton, Laura Perkins, Eleanor Marshall, and the twin babies of a couple from their infant class. The theme’s “The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.”

The girls aren’t as organized as they usually are, and the float ends up being a disaster. The “shoe” looks awful, the costumes look like clown outfits and clash with the float, the BSCers forgot about their own costumes, no one checked Claudia’s spelling, etc. They all blame each other and get into a fight, and are miserable the whole parade. The babies are also miserable and cry most of the time. And of course, they don’t win any prizes. But afterwards, everyone makes up.

Meanwhile, Kristy’s worried that Mrs. Prezzioso’s ideas for Andrea are too over-the-top…she’s using a “Queen Andrea” theme. Kristy thinks she may get fired if Andrea loses, but, it turns out everyone in a baby parade’s over the top, and Andrea wins first prize in her division.

High/Lowlights

• At the beginning, before getting into the back story chapter, Kristy say’s the explanation of the BSC’s a long story. But it really isn’t. Kristy saw her mom struggling to find a sitter, had the idea to make a club, and got together with some friends. We don’t need to hear about Janine’s IQ in every book to follow the plot.

• Apparently the BSC has club T-shirts. They all wear them to the infant-care class.

• So they pick “The Old Woman Who Lives in the Shoe” because it has to do with kids, but if you read the lyrics, it isn’t exactly the most pleasant nursery rhyme....I mean whipping babies?

• At the class, Jessi asks what colicky is, which is just another continuity issue, since it was established that Squirt had colic. They’ve made this mistake before. Or maybe they will in the future…I think this book takes place before the memory super special.

• At one of the infant care classes, someone’s baby starts crying. The teachers try to get everyone to suggest what the mother should do. After several non-helpful guesses, Kristy says that the baby may need a new diaper. Because no one else thought of that? I don’t have much experience with babies, but I’m pretty sure that’s one of the first things to check.

• Claudia outfit: “An oversized red blouse with black buttons, green leggings with white, tie-dyed streaks, and black high-top sneakers with all kinds of buckles and snaps on them…[Her earrings] were dangling watermelon slices.”

• Jamie Newton asks Claudia to help him make a pumpkin Halloween custom for him (even though it isn’t even close to Halloween). Brave kid.

• They have a little graduation ceremony from their class, and Shannon and Logan attend. Kristy makes this weird little comment about how it’s nice to see Mary Anne and Logan together again. I guess this was a hint for the next book?

• Of course, Kristy’s one of two people who gets a perfect score on the test in the infant-care class.

• Before coming up with the “Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe” idea, the girls each had another suggestion. All of them were ridiculous. Not because they’re bad, but because they all highlight each girl’s one personality trait. Kristy wanted to do a sports theme, Stacey wanted to do a NYC theme, Dawn wanted to do a surfing theme, and Mallory wanted to do a horse theme. Claudia wanted to do a “babies in space” thing, which is weird, but it least it wasn’t an art or junk food theme. Mary Anne wanted to do a “Three Little Kittens” theme, which inspires them to do another nursery rhyme.

• The ghostwriters seem to have forgotten about Jessi, because she didn’t voice an idea, even though Kristy says they all had their own suggestion.

• All the ideas are supposed to suck, but I actually think some of them would have worked better than the shoe thing.

• I’m kind of surprised all these parents are perfectly okay with letting their kid be in a parade with such an awful float. I mean, Emily and Squirt I can understand, because they’re family. But Mrs. Newton just hands over Lucy without checking to see what this float looks like?

• Kristy’s supposed to be responsible for the twins during the float. But she’s also watching Emily. So, with seven babies and seven sitters on the float, Kristy’s watching three of them?

• Dawn’s a bit of a bitch. After she sees the costumes Mallory made, she picks out a party dress for Eleanor Marshall to wear. Then she purposely lets the kid look different from everyone else on the float.

• Jessi writes a notebook entry about how she loves babies so much, that she even loves changing diapers – because it makes them happy. I don’t buy an eleven-year-old thinking it.

• The BSC says later that the reason the float was so bad, is because they weren’t communicating. Which is true. But it was really unnecessary. In one chapter, Claudia, Stacey and Mallory are working on the float. The other club members stop by with their sitting charges and see that the orange paint Stacey’s mixing won’t be enough for the float Claudia’s making, and that it will clash with the costumes Mallory’s making. They all NOTICE these things and comment on them to each other, but don’t bother saying anything to the people doing the work.

• The image of a big shoe as a float keeps making me think of the foot statue in Lost.

• Charlie swears he’ll never drive a float the BSC makes again, but I am pretty sure he sort of does this with a boat show in the Shadow Lake book.

• When Charlie sees the float, he insists on wearing a hat and sunglasses as a “disguise.” But his friends recognize his car and make fun of him anyway. I’d like to know what his friends are doing watching the parade. It doesn’t seem like a popular choice for high school kids.

• Shannon and Logan are spending the parade watching Becca, Jamie Newton, Jenny - a whole group of older kids who’s siblings are in the parade. Because there’s no way the parents of these children would be attending the parade. Why would anyone want to see their own baby in a parade?

• Isn’t building a float kind of hard for 13-year-olds? I think making a float would require building something that will be safe for a certain number of people to sit on. And Claudia does that herself? I can see her decorating one, but there’s no way I’d let my kid ride around on one she built.

• Originally, the girls ask Gabbie Perkins to be in the parade as well, but she doesn’t want to. I guess because she’s smart enough to know that a baby parade’s a ridiculous thing to have.

• After the parade, Kristy tells Charlie to take the float to the dump. Now, I know she doesn’t care about it, but it seems a bit wrong to get rid of it without consulting the other BSC members. They may have all been miserable at the parade, but they still helped make it.