November 28, 2012
BSC Super Special #14, BSC in the USA: Are We There Yet?
Mallory, stop being a dork
Summary: The premise for this book is incredibly dumb. Dawn’s father has a friend who’s moving across the country, and Mr. Schafer offers to drive his RV from Connecticut to California for him. He somehow convinces Dawn and Jeff to come along, even though they were supposed to spend the summer in Stoneybrook. Watson hears about this and decides he wants to cancel the Brewer/Thomases’ vacation so they can also drive across the country in an RV. And of course, Kristy can bring friends (but no one else can). So all of the BSC girls get permission to go along, and a trip that started out with three people balloons to include 15:
RV 1: Mr. Schafer, Dawn, Jeff, Kristy (her travel route didn’t match the rest of her family’s), Claudia, Stacey, Mary Anne
RV 2: Watson, Mrs. Brewer, Abby, Jessi, Mallory, David Michael, Karen, Andrew
Sam and Charlie are at camp, and the family is smart enough to leave Emily Michelle behind with Nannie. (Can you imagine two weeks in an RV with a two-year-old?) The idea is that everyone gets to pick a special place to visit, and there will be other touristy stops along the way. RV 1 goes north, RV 2 goes south, and everyone meets up in California.
Highlights/lowlights from RV 1:
- Kristy wants to visit as many baseball stadiums as possible and buy hats from them (plus go to some games, obviously). It’s something she once discussed doing with her father. At a Giants game, she sees him on a Jumbotron and manages to track him down. They talk briefly but he promises to write. Notably, he doesn’t ask about any of the rest of the family.
- Dawn wants to go to a ghost town, but the one she picks is corny. The group ends up having fun there anyway.
- Claudia goes to the Art Institute of Chicago, but nothing interesting happens. Later she stops at a flea market and buys a sketch that reminds her of Georgia O’Keeffe’s work. When she gets to California, she looks at the back and discovers that it is an early O’Keeffe. Mr. Schafer’s friend, an art appraiser, offers her $500 for it, but she decides to keep it.
- Stacey has a not-that-funny comedy of errors in Seattle when she tries to meet up with Ethan at a coffee shop. Also, she thinks Claudia read her diary and spends most of the book mad at her.
- Mary Anne has no imagination and only wants to go to Maynard, Iowa, to spend time with her grandmother. (They end up meeting at the Mall of America instead.) She spends most of the book on edge because Mr. Schafer keeps making snarky comments about her and her father. She finally confronts him and he apologizes.
- Jeff wants to go rock climbing in Yellowstone, and also get away from all the girls. I kind of feel bad that he has to spend his vacation with drama queens.
- I don’t remember what Mr. Schafer wants to do, and I don’t care since he’s annoying in this book. He also runs out of gas in the Badlands and leaves the girls and Jeff alone in the RV so he can get help.
Highlights/lowlights from RV 2:
- Abby is apparently obsessed with Elvis, which I don’t remember hearing about before, so she wants to go to Graceland. There’s some uninteresting stuff with an Elvis impersonator.
- Jessi first takes everyone to her grandparents’ home in New Jersey and briefly suspects that Mallory is racist. (Um, what?) Her grandmother points out that Mallory is just uncomfortable because she’s with a bunch of people she doesn’t know, and she wants to make a good impression. Jessi’s other destination is Dalton, Mississippi, where some of her relatives were slaves. She sees firsthand how horrible that point in history was for black people.
- Mallory wants to go to Chincoteague, because she’s still obsessed with horses. She does nothing interesting the rest of the book.
- Watson has a college friend in Oklahoma, so the group stops at his house for lunch before going to a rodeo, David Michael’s pick. A tornado hits and everyone has to hide out in the bathroom. It might have been interesting if there was any possibility that someone could die.
- Karen wants to go to Four Corners, the spot where four states touch. Karen is boring.
- Andrew is obsessed with the pandas at the San Diego Zoo and has a full-on meltdown when he hears that one that’s supposed to give birth has been sent back to China. Then it turns out she wasn’t. I don’t know.
- Mrs. Brewer wants to see the Grand Canyon, and Abby is secretly freaking out about it. It turns out that her father loved the Grand Canyon, and her family was planning a vacation there just before he died. When they arrive, Abby is sad at first but manages to enjoy the experience, feeling like her dad’s spirit is with her. She later writes in her journal that her dad once gave her a pep talk based on that “teach a man to fish” saying, and she sees the Grand Canyon as a huge fishing pond. She plans to fish a lot and bring her mom and sister back there one day. It’s really sweet and a little sad and I totally did not get a little misty-eyed, someone was chopping onions, shut up.
They also keep running into this annoying girl, Liz, who’s traveling with her grandparents. It’s dumb. There’s also a brief stop in New Mexico, where they meet some of the Stoneybrook kids’ pen pals. It’s actually too bad Dawn didn’t get to make that trip, since she was the force behind that whole thing.
Thoughts: I know I’m definitely, for real an adult because I can’t help wondering how expensive this trip was. Gas, food, baseball tickets, admission fees to the rodeo and things like that, souvenirs…that’s a big chunk of change.
Also, how do they all get home? Does Watson have to drive the rented RV back?
Also also, if I had to spend two weeks in an RV with anyone, I would probably never want to see them again.
Andrew whines a lot in this book. I don’t remember him being so annoying before. Maybe he’s just in a super-bad mood the whole two-week trip.
Watson’s college roommate’s last name is Romney. Um…
Who would you least want to be stuck in an RV with for two weeks, Karen or Dawn? Death is not an option.
October 6, 2011
BSC Super Mystery #1, Baby-sitters’ Haunted House: Ghostbusted
I don't care if that house is haunted, I want to live there
Summary: Karen’s mother and stepfather are planning to spend some time in Maine with some friends, the Menderses, who have four kids. They want one of the BSC girls to come along to look after Karen, Andrew, and the Menders kids. All of the BSC girls want to go, and for some reason, the adults agree to bring Kristy, Claudia, Dawn, and Mary Anne along. Jessi and Mallory stay back in Stoneybrook to take on running the club.
There’s this whole back story about the house where everyone’s staying in Maine – it belongs to Mr. Menders’ family, and the guy who owned it may have died, and his wife might be haunting it. If the Menderses want to, they can move there. The kids don’t want to move, but the parents are all excited about opening a health-food store, so they spend their time in Maine researching. The BSC girls try to get the kids excited about possibly moving to Maine, even though there’s weird stuff going on in the house.
It’s typical haunted-house stuff: weird noises, a woman in white, etc. The butler and maid, Mr. and Mrs. Cooper, are also a little shady. Mrs. Cooper supposedly can’t talk. There’s a fourth floor of the house that the Coopers claim they don’t have a key to, and the gardener, Georgio (who’s in college but totally has a crush on Claudia), keeps telling the girls it’s not safe to go up there. After the girls see a “ghost” in the hallway with a candle one night, they get suspicious of Georgio. It turns out the “ghost” was the oldest Menders kid, Lionel, who wants to scare his family away from moving into the house. But then the girls see a light going on in a window on the fourth floor, which supposedly no one has access to.
Mary Anne does some investigating and learns that there’s a dumbwaiter in the house. The woman she talks to at the historical society tells her another woman was in asking questions about the house; the only thing memorable about her was that she spoke with an accent. Claudia and Dawn check out the dumbwaiter and find a tape recorder, which they realize is where the weird noises have been coming from. Dawn winds up having to hide in the dumbwaiter when the Coopers come home, and she discovers that Mrs. Cooper can, in fact, talk.
More digging and research turn up the fact that the Coopers, who claimed to have lived in the town their whole lives, lied about that. The news also comes out that Mr. Menders has a cousin in Scotland who will get the house if the Menderses don’t want it. Thanks to Dawn, who remembers that Mrs. Cooper has an accent, and Lionel, who’s an aspiring actor and can do all sorts of accents, the BSC girls figure out that Mrs. Cooper is Scottish. They put this together with a photo of one of Mr. Menders’ relatives, who Claudia realizes looks like Mr. Cooper, and figure out that the Coopers are the people who stand to get the house (and the possible treasure on the fourth floor).
A storm hits while the adults are all gone for the day, and the BSC girls and Georgio get stuck in the house with the Coopers. But then it gets all anticlimactic and the Coopers just leave the country, apparently thinking the house is really haunted. Disappointing. Also, there wasn’t really a treasure. Also also, the Coopers don’t kill Karen before they leave. Like I said, disappointing.
Mallory and Jessi’s plot is really boring, and also something we’ve seen before: They have to turn down jobs because the two of them, Logan, and Shannon are the only sitters in town, and then people stop calling. They think the club is losing business, but people are just out of town or don’t need sitters.
In other news: Andrew’s obsessed with frogs and boats; one of the Menders girls, Jill, is obsessed with Dawn; Karen’s obsessed with getting the other girl, Martha, to make friends; and Claudia has to tell Georgio she’s 13 in a letter. But at least he didn’t go to jail.
Thoughts: There was a lot about this book I forgot, but I did remember the scene with Dawn and Claudia hiding in the dumbwaiter, and the scene where the BSC girls have Lionel speak in different accents so they can figure out where Mrs. Cooper is from.
It’s weird to read a BSC book where everyone gets a chapter except Stacey, since she wasn’t in the club at this point.
Shannon’s a jerk in this book. She shows up late to a meeting, stays for only 15 minutes, and tells Mallory and Jessi that they need to end meetings on time. Why did she even bothering coming?
“Elton Cooper grilled burgers, hot dogs, and chicken for us.” But what did Dawn eat? WHAT DID DAWN EAT??
Andrew wants to know the difference between a frog and a toad, so Dawn looks it up in the dictionary. How quaint.
Claudia follows Georgio to a dark shed even though he makes her nervous. Someone get this girl a copy of The Gift of Fear.
Kristy: “Why would he have a candle in the toolshed?” Mary Anne: “For light?” Thank you, Mary Anne, for teaching us all what candles are for.
Mrs. Pike complains about everyone leaving town and not being able to get a sitter, saying they “should have planned better.” Hey, maybe you shouldn’t have had eight kids you never want to take care of.
September 20, 2011
BSC #86, Mary Anne and Camp BSC: Act Your Age
Is that Karen on the left? Shut up, Karen
Summary: It’s summertime, and the BSC girls decide to hold a day camp since there are a few weeks between school getting out and other day camps starting. They call it Camp BSC (so original) and decide on a circus theme. Speaking of circuses, that’s what the Schafer/Spier house has turned into: Richard’s out of town for two weeks, and Sharon and Dawn are going overboard in their bachelorette pad. They order in every night, don’t clean up, and basically exemplify the saying, “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.”
Mary Anne is nowhere near as happy as her stepmother and -sister are. She misses her father, to the point where she can’t be bothered to do anything fun. It’s 141 pages of Mary Anne moping, basically. Then she sprains her ankle and mopes some more, mostly because she asks Richard to come home early and he doesn’t.
Alicia, a four-year-old camper, is also moping, as she’s not used to being away from her mother so much. She won’t go to the playground with the other kids because she’s afraid her mother will come back and not be able to find her. Mary Anne’s fine with staying back with her, babying her and letting her do whatever she wants. Eventually, Alicia realizes that everyone’s having fun without her, so she decides to let go of her separation anxiety. Mary Anne realizes that the four-year-old is better adjusted than she is, and she needs to let herself have fun, too.
The not-really-B-plot (because both plots get about equal time) is that Karen and some other kids have gone to a real circus camp, and they keep complaining that Camp BSC isn’t as good. Karen pretty much leads an anti-lameness brigade, and somehow, the BSC girls manage to refrain from locking her in a closet all day. Ultimately, while putting on an end-of-camp circus, the anti-lameness kids realize that they don’t have any idea how to put on a real circus, so they should just shut up.
Thoughts: Mary Anne’s sadness strikes me as a little weird. We know she’s a daddy’s girl, but she’s been away from home before, and she’s usually pretty mature.
I understand leaving your kids with 11- and 13-year-olds for a few hours, but all day? I don’t know about that.
The girls also mention that campers can attend for a full day or a half day, but we don’t hear about anyone only attending for half a day. Why didn’t Alicia’s mom try that out for her until she got more comfortable? Eight hours is a LONG day for a four-year-old.
Sharon really does order take-out every night. I guess the Schafer-Spiers are made of money.
Dawn makes the girls get turkey hot dogs for a camp cookout. So remember, kids, if you hate your dinner, blame Dawn. Who would never eat turkey, so whatever, ghostwriter.
People aren’t sawed in half at circuses, Karen. That’s magic shows. Go sit in the corner.
March 15, 2011
BSC #74, Kristy and the Copycat: Mighty Kristy Had Struck Out
Karen's shirt has Krushers with a C! Yay for continuity! Yaaaaaay!
Summary: Kristy misses playing softball, so she decides to try out for SMS’s team. She makes it, but the girls who are already on the team aren’t very happy to welcome her and the three other new players, Bea, Tonya, and Dilys. The new players are told that they’re going to be hazed, or the girls already on the team will make them look like bad players in front of their strict coach. Kristy and the other new girls reluctantly agree to the initiation, which involves spray-painting an old equipment shed on school property. The girls do it, and Bea and Tonya celebrate by smoking cigarettes. The next morning, they all discover that the shed burned down overnight, and a man who tried to put out the fire was badly injured.
Kristy feels horribly guilty about the fire, especially since she can’t find her can of spray-paint and worries that it contributed to the fire. The other girls just don’t want to get caught. They all get I Know What You Did Last Summer-like notes, then notes demanding money, which makes Kristy feel even worse about the situation. And then she feels worse again when the boys’ baseball team is accused of starting the fire.
Kristy eventually tells the BSC girls what happened and announces that she’s going to confess. But before she can, some high schoolers come clean, admitting to setting the fire on purpose. And it turns out that Dilys sent the threatening notes, trying to get the girls to ‘fess up, so no one other than the four little vandals and the BSC girls knows what they did. They decide to keep quiet, which isn’t really the kind of message you want to send to this book’s audience, but whatever. And Kristy isn’t sure if she wants to keep playing softball, partly because it takes time away from coaching the Krushers (more on that later).
The book title actually comes from the B-plot. Karen wants to be a 13-year-old, so she starts imitating the BSC girls, mainly Mary Anne (yes, really) and Stacey. It’s kind of annoying but mostly pathetic. Kristy gets mad at her for hanging around all the time, then tells her to stop trying to speed things up so much because being 13 sometimes sucks beyond the telling of it (TM Buffy).
The C-plot involves the Krushers: Claudia and Stacey volunteer to take over coaching for Kristy. They suck at it.
Thoughts: Claudia has sunglasses with round wire frames and square green lenses. Wouldn’t those be annoying to look through? Wouldn’t you see the sides of the lenses in your peripheral vision?
Shannon’s still around. For some reason, I thought she was filling in while Mallory was sick; I forgot it was because Dawn left.
Karen’s quick series of questions for Mary Anne makes me think of Vanessa Bayer as Miley Cyrus on SNL. But I guess that’s pretty cool.
Claudia’s Krushers practice outfit: “a red satin baseball cap, purple sweatpants that were cut off just below the knees, purple high-tops with neon pink laces, red-and-white-striped socks, and a red and pink tie-dyed crop top shirt.” There is not one item of clothing on that list that sounds attractive.
Stacey wears a white shirt over a black bra. I can’t believe her mom let her out of the house wearing that. She also wears a Dodgers cap, which I find strange. Wouldn’t she wear a Yankees cap?
I really like how Sam and Charlie treat Kristy in this book. They’re very encouraging and helpful with their softball tips. It’s nice to see Sam not being an annoying older brother for once.
January 2, 2011
BSC Mystery #9, Kristy and the Haunted Mansion: Spoiler – It’s Not Really Haunted
You should definitely send Karen in there first
Summary: Kristy, Bart, and Charlie are accompanying a bunch of Krushers and Bashers (AKA the Krashers) home from an away game when a huge storm hits. The group is stuck in some nearby town thanks to a washed-out bridge, and they decide to find a place to spend the night. They come across a huge mansion kept by a caretaker who says they can spend the night there. They start looking around the house and read a diary, which belonged to a girl named Dorothy who lived there back in the 30s. She disappeared when she was 18, the day before she was supposed to elope with a guy named Will, who her father disapproved of.
There have been stories about the mansion being haunted, so the kids are a little freaked out (as is Kristy), and knowing that a person who used to live there may have died under mysterious circumstances doesn’t help. I’m not sure who people think haunts the mansion anyway, since Dorothy didn’t die in the house. But it doesn’t really matter, since nothing really weird happens anyway. The story’s more about the fact that Kristy and everyone disappears and their families don’t know where they are.
In the morning, the group figures out that Will is the caretaker. He confirms this and admits that he bought the house and kept it exactly the same as it was when Dorothy lived there. Later on, Karen admits to Kristy that she swiped a picture of Dorothy from the mansion, and when the other BSC girls see it, Mary Anne recognizes Dorothy as the woman who owns a nearby sewing shop. The BSC girls and Karen go to see her, confirm that she’s Dorothy, and hear her side of the story: On her way to meet Will so they could elope, she decided she liked her freedom so much that she took off alone. (Girl power!) The girls tell her where she can find Will, because they just can’t help playing matchmaker.
Thoughts: I’m not sure I’d let my eight-year-old ride in a van driven by a 17-year-old, who happens to be the oldest person in the group.
Trivia: Kristy’s afraid of lightning.
Bart doesn’t come home, so his father calls…Claudia? Huh?
“Charlie was turning out to be great.” I believe I’ve been saying that for months.
Why does Kristy care if Karen reads a diary from 1935? She didn’t seem to care about someone reading another person’s decades-old diary in Mallory and the Mystery Diary.
Patty, one of Bart’s Bashers, says that when she grows up, she wants to be a carpenter, ride a motorcycle, and be president. Rock on, Patty.
November 28, 2010
BSC #62, Kristy and the Worst Kid Ever: The Baby-Sitters vs. Childhood Trauma
The Thomas-Brewers have horrible taste in home decor
Summary: The Papadakises take in a foster child named Lou (short for Louisa) who is an unholy terror of a brat. She does have her reasons – her father recently died, her mother left when she was younger, and she’s been separated from her brother – but the fact that no one takes her to a psychiatrist or tries very hard to get to the bottom of her behavior doesn’t help. She’s rude to everyone, she teases animals (future serial killer?), she makes fun of the playhouse Karen and her friends are building, and she won’t follow any rules. She’s a little power-mad monster, is what she is.
Various BSC girls sit for Lou, and Kristy dubs her the worst kid ever. Dawn, however, thinks she’s just the saddest kid ever, thanks to her childhood traumas. Lou’s social worker finds relatives for her and her brother to live with, but she’s unhappy about this because it means she has to give up her dream of her mother returning. She runs away, Kristy finds her, and suddenly everything’s okay. No, really, there’s no breakthrough or anything, it’s just…done. And then Lou leaves.
In the B plot, SMS organizes an auction to raise money for computers. The BSC girls get celebrities to donate various items, but they bring in the most money by donating 24 hours of free sitting.
Thoughts: I hope the BSC girls get paid extra when Linny, Hannie, Nancy, and Lou come to visit the Thomas-Brewers – that’s eight kids to look after.
I didn’t rememeber the Craine girls from Mallory and the Ghost Cat ever making another appearance, but here they are. Doing nothing and serving no purpose.
I thought I couldn’t care less about Karen and her friends’ playhouse, but then, suddenly, I did. (They’re surprisingly nice to Lou, though, even when she’s nasty to them.)
“Nannie, Charlie, and Sam were out doing Saturday night things.” Hookers and blow?
Dawn “never could watch the scary part in the beginning” of The Wizard of Oz. First of all, I never realized there was a “scary party in the beginning” of that movie. (Someone clarifies that she means the twister.) Second of all, the girl reads ghost stories before bed but she can’t handle a Hollywood tornado?
Jessi, chocolate-covered popcorn is not gross. It’s delicious. You’re gross.
So Lou’s father’s brother didn’t know she and her brother existed? That’s…not good.
November 1, 2010
BSC Super Special #9, Starring the Baby-sitters Club!: Jessi Ramsey is Better Than You. At Everything. EVERYTHING
Is it just me, or does Stacey look like a dude?
Summary: Stoneybrook Elementary, Middle, and High Schools put on a production of Peter Pan, and some of the BSC girls, their siblings, and their charges try out. And then there’s drama. Lots of drama.
Jessi thinks she’s a shoe-in for the role of Peter, since she’s a dancer and has tons of stage experience. She is wrong. Kristy winds up with the role, and Jessi is told by the director, Mr. Cheney, that even though she’s a good dancer, she’s no better at singing or acting than Kristy. Jessi is, to put it mildly, murderous with rage over the turn of events, and when she’s cast as an Indian, she withdraws from the show. She’s further disappointed when the other BSC girls, especially Kristy, refuse to put up with her crap. (It’s awesome.)
Jessi becomes the assistant choreographer, but then gets mad when Mr. Cheney won’t recognize that she’s basically his righthand gal and he would cease to exist without her help. On opening night, Pete Black, who’s supposed to be playing Nana and the crocodile, breaks his nose and can’t play his parts, so Jessi agrees to fill in for him. I’m sure she wishes she’d thought of breaking Kristy’s nose so she could take her place.
Kristy actually wanted to be Nana and the crocodile, so she’s really surprised when she lands the lead. Her plot mainly involves her struggling to memorize her lines, and having to deal with Cokie and her issues. (Cokie’s playing Tiger Lily.) Kristy wins this round, singing all of Cokie’s solo lines with her.
Dawn is cast as Wendy and takes it upon herself to modernize the play, since she finds it sexist. No one puts up with her crap either.
Stacey is Mrs. Darling, and Sam is cast as her husband. He keeps joking around, which drives her crazy, and he finally admits that he was just trying to show his friends how much fun he has with Stacey, since they’ve been teasing him about dating a middle-schooler. They actually solve their problems through communication, which is amazing.
Mary Anne becomes the “backstage babysitter,” looking after all the kids in the play. Mallory is working on costumes but finds herself bored a lot, so she tries to impinge on Mary Anne’s territory. Mary Anne awesomely stands up to her, getting her to back off.
Claudia helps design the sets. That’s it.
Jackie Rodowsky is Michael Darling, and he inadvertently causes all sorts of problems by complaining that they’re not allowed to really fly and by being scared of Pete in the crocodile costume. He gets straightened out with a good talking-to from Mr. Cheney, and he overcomes his herpetophobia when he finds out Jessi will be in the costume.
Karen whines her way into the role of Tinker Bell and is generally a little gnat who never shuts up.
The play goes well. Happy ending!
Thoughts: This was one of my favorite Super Specials when I was a kid – I was big into theater, especially musicals, and I loved books about people putting on plays. I also watched the Mary Martin version of Peter Pan numerous times when I was younger. (Hey, just like Squirt!)
Why is Jessi, not Mallory, writing for the school paper?
Do we really have to call the play a “musical extravaganza”? It’s…not really that exciting.
I’m surprised Dawn wants to play Tiger lily, considering the unPC-ness of the role.
Stacey sings “Mack the Knife” at her audition. I’m going to need a ruling from Simon Cowell. What’s that, Simon? Boring, old-fashioned, and forgettable? I agree.
Why would Dawn waltz at her audition? I haven’t seen Peter Pan for a little while, but I’m pretty sure Tiger Lily doesn’t waltz.
Uh, Cokie and I watch the same soap opera. I bet Carly is her favorite character.
You know why Karen’s so annoying? Because people keep enabling her. Mr. Cheney should have ignored her and not given in to her demands to be Tinker Bell. Let her learn at an early age that life isn’t fair. (Though points to him for giving her a non-speaking role.)
So they cast a bunch of elementary-school kids in the play but don’t get anyone to look after them? This seems like a top-notch production.
Mary Anne: “Peter promised her and her brothers an adventure, didn’t he?” Dawn: “Oh, that’s just like a man. They always say stuff like that.” Dawn. You’re 13. The only man you know is your father, and his promises all involve Disneyland. On the other hand, I don’t exactly appreciate Mary Anne saying, “So what if the play is sexist?” Uh, you should, actually. Anyway, if Dawn has such a problem with the play, why did she audition in the first place?
The actors are expected to start memorizing their lines after about two rehearsals. Seriously?
I love how they skip over all the boring stuff and suddenly it’s, like, a week before the show opens. Makes sense to me.
Aw, my high school choir director/theater teacher said, “Sing out, Louise,” too. I miss him.
Dawn’s dad can’t come to the play, so Richard tapes it for him and gives her flowers. Aw, Richard’s all right.
September 10, 2010
BSC Super Special #8, Baby-sitters at Shadow Lake: Nothing Happens
Hey, where's Mallory's beekeeper get-up?
Summary: Watson’s aunt and uncle want to leave him a cabin at a lake in their will, and they invite him and his brood to check it out for a couple of weeks to see if he likes it. Kristy, of course, invites the whole BSC. There are numerous “adventures”:
Kristy makes everyone keep a diary of the trip to convince Watson that they really like the cabin. This includes much popping into other people’s diary entries to drive the point home. She also learns to drive a speedboat.
Stacey finds herself the target of Sam‘s inability to flirt. He does that eight-year-old boy thing where he teases her because he likes her. It would be cute if, you know, he were actually eight, but he’s 15, so it’s just annoying. Thanks to Charlie, who is always awesome, Sam finally straight-out tells Stacey he likes her, so I guess they’re together now.
Dawn is obsessed with a Lake Monster she’s sure exists, as well as the story of a family who lived in town and vanished without a trace. She’s incredibly annoying (even more so than Sam).
Jessi meets a guy named Daniel and kind of develops a crush on him, despite the fact that she can’t think of one thing they have in common. Then she decides she’d rather be with Quint, but it’s okay because Daniel has a girlfriend back home.
Mallory is bitten and stung by every bug at the lake. She starts wearing mosquito netting and using way too much bug spray, which makes the other girls be nasty to her, for no apparent reason. I mean, I get that they’re embarrassed, but geez, she’s supposed to be their friend.
Claudia decorates a speedboat for a boat parade. It’s boring and dumb.
Mary Anne doesn’t actually have a plot. She just watches the little kids.
Karen and her friends (Hannie and Nancy) find a playhouse in the woods, which David Michael and his friends (Nicky and Linny) want to play in. The boys decide to build a fort instead, and the kids bet the performance of each other’s chores that each group will have the better playhouse.
Then there’s a dance, for some reason. And then they all go home, and Watson decides he wants the cabin. And amazingly, it does come up again in other books.
Thoughts: Watson tells the Brewer/Thomas kids they can invite friends to the lake “within reason.” Kristy hears, “We’ll take an extra car so you can bring six people along.”
Charlie jokingly suggests leaving Karen behind because there’s so little room in the cars. Again, I must ask Charlie to marry me.
Why the heck do they take the cat with them??
Sam tells Stacey she looks ravishing, then says he’s glad she arrived at the lake unscathed. Someone’s been studying for the SAT!
Mallory complains about having to share a room. Did she think there were 20 bedrooms? Now I get why the others are so mean to her.
Another vacation where the parents spend no time with the kids and the BSC girls are always watching them. This time, though, they sit for free. There really are no child-labor laws in Stoneybrook, are there?
David Michael’s handwriting is waaaaaay too nice for a seven-year-old.
I get David Michael and Karen doing each other’s chores, and Hannie and Linny doing each other’s chores, since they’re siblings, but what are Nicky and Nancy getting out of this bet?
I would call bull on Emily Michelle being able to write an E, but my two-year-old niece can write the first letter of her name. And I really just wanted to brag about that.
Why does the ghostwriter think kids don’t use contractions? It’s really distracting. Oh, sorry – it is really distracting.
Claudia doesn’t know what “gutsy” means. Y’all, she’s Kellie Pickler dumb.
Why is Dawn so afraid of the island when she lives in a supposedly haunted house? Oh, right, to annoy me.
Jessi thinks Daniel’s going to profess his love for her at the dance. I wouldn’t be 11 again for all the money in the world.
July 18, 2010
BSC Super Special #7, Snowbound: This is What Happens When You Ignore the Weatherman
Maybe Mallory wouldn't feel so dorky if she didn't wear such dorky glasses
Summary: The weather forecast calls for snow. Everyone ignores it and gets stranded. That’s what they get.
Stacey and her mom are on their way back from the mall when they get lost on a back road and run out of gas. They’re faced with spending the night in the car and trying not to freeze to death, but some random guy finds them and takes them to his house (don’t worry, he’s married and has a kid, so he’s not a serial killer or anything).
Kristy has invited Bart over for the afternoon/evening, and he gets stranded with her entire family. Karen is at her most irritating. Kristy doesn’t want Bart to see her as a mess in the morning, so she gets up super-early and curls her hair and puts on makeup. Her brothers make fun of her, which she totally deserves.
Jessi is at dance class when the blizzard hits, and there are a bunch of little kids there (they’re rehearsing for a production of The Nutcracker), so she gets to put her sitting skills to good use. Quint is coming to town for a school dance, and he winds up walking to the dance school when Jessi’s dad can’t make it to pick him up.
Mary Anne and Mallory are watching the Pike kids while Mr. and Mrs. Pike go to New York for the day. They run out of food, so Logan brings some over on cross-country skis.
Dawn and her mom go to the airport to pick up Jeff, but his plane is rerouted to D.C. and they have to spend the night in the airport. Dawn whines a lot.
Claudia is sitting for the Perkins girls and winds up having to spend the night with them.
The premise of the book is that Kristy wants the newspaper to publish an article about the BSC girls’ experiences during the blizzard. I’m pretty sure no one cares, Kristy.
Thoughts: The girls’ parents are apparently totally okay with their 13-year-old daughters spending the night taking care of kids. Are they even allowed to spend the night on their own, without other living beings depending on them?
Kristy’s totally invading Mallory’s territory by trying to write a newspaper article. She’s also annoying – she says to the editor, “If you want to pay me, I wouldn’t mind. How much do reporters earn? (I won’t be too picky.)” Shut up already.
Claudia spells disappointed “disapperntened.” Oh, come on, she’s not that stupid.
Claire hears about all her parents’ plans for their day in New York and asks,” Will you ever get to go to the bathroom?” Love it.
I call bull on Mrs. Pike almost running out of food. Wouldn’t she buy everything in bulk and have more than enough?
Bart looks nothing like I imagined. He looks kind of like the guy who played Alan Gray in the BSC movie. So I guess Kristy has a type.
All of the Pike kids sing in the morning. I would kill them.
I’m sure it’s totally a coincidence that Dawn and her mother, who are vegetarians, hit a mailbox shaped like a cow.
Apparently no one in Stoneybrook takes weather forecasts seriously. Around here, people mob the grocery store and stock up on rock salt when even an inch of snow is predicted.
“There was ice cream, too. It was behind the pie, where no one could see it, but Sam sensed its presence.” Heh.
Sharon says Mary Anne’s one bad habit is worrying too much. So crying all the time is a lovable affectation?
Quint, whose parents most likely don’t know where he is during the blizzard: “If my parents want to worry, that’s their choice.” Quint’s kind of a jerk.
Mallory seems to think global warming means it’ll never snow again. Stop talking, Mallory.
Hold up – David Michael, Karen, Andrew, and Emily Michelle all share one bathroom, and Charlie, Sam, and Kristy share another? In that ginormous house? I don’t think so.
May 22, 2010
BSC #41, Mary Anne vs. Logan: Use Your Words
How can such a pretty boy be so annoying?
Summary: Logan has become really clingy and controlling, and since Mary Anne is physically incapable of expressing her opinion or standing up for herself, she keeps giving in to whatever he wants. (If they were older, she’d so be pregnant and/or dead in a ditch.) Mary Anne’s father notices that they’re spending a lot of time together and it’s affecting her schoolwork and her relationships with other people, so he asks them to cut back. However, Mary Anne has already decided that she wants to cool things off a little, so she tells Logan that they need to take a little break.
Logan waits about five seconds before being annoying again, not getting the hint that Mary Anne might want their “break” to be permanent. She finally realizes that she has to, you know, say stuff to get what she wants, so she tells him they’re not the way they used to be, and they’re done. It would be sadder if they weren’t freaking 13 years old and he wasn’t so irritating.
In the B plot, Jenny Prezzioso is struggling to adjust to the idea of having a new baby sister, so the BSC girls try to help her out. Things end up turning out fine, so that was a waste of a plot. Also a waste of a plot – Karen makes a brief appearance, moping about her second-grade boyfriend, and then promptly disappears.
Thoughts: No way does Jenny have ratty sneakers. Stupid ghostwriter.
Who calls babysitters to plan a baby shower? And 13-year-old babysitters, at that? I can only imagine how my 13-year-old self would have decorated for a party. I’m sure posters of Jonathan Jackson would have been involved.
It’s wintertime in this book, but two books ago it was nice enough for people to go swimming (though in the book before that, it was Halloween). It’s Bizarro Connecticut.
“Dawn had gone over to Claudia’s to learn how to make jewelry.” Put the beads on a string, sprouts-for-brains. There, you’re done.
Claudia asks, “How come we always fall in love when we’re out of town and the relationship can’t last?” Because you’re all silly little girls being controlled bya predictable ghostwriter?
Karen tries to hire the BSC girls to watch her stuffed animals, since she thinks they get lonely, so Kristy suggests that she introduce them to Andrew’s stuffed animals. Okay, that was cute.
