Theresa Basile

#6 – Kristy’s Big Day
Early in the book series, Ann M. Martin seemed to have decided, “You know what would make the best Baby-sitters Club book ever? If we have a story about Kristy’s mom’s wedding and have the book focus very little on the actual wedding, and instead have the baby-sitters run a sort of day camp for a bunch of kids who we’ll never see again!”

And that is exactly what happened with Kristy’s Big Day. Most of the kids they baby-sit will never be seen again (she said ominously). Meanwhile, the actual wedding ceremony takes place in, like, half of one chapter. It’s ridiculous. The wedding also takes place on Watson’s lawn, and in continuing with the “Stoneybrook has very little religion” theme, we have no idea what kind of ceremony it is.

Also noteworthy about this book: we learn that Stacey’s favorite movie is Mary Poppins. She thinks it makes her less sophisticated. I disagree, Stacey – what makes you less sophisticated is the fact that you keep calling yourself sophisticated.

I read the Kindle version of this book and the Kindle version was pretty badly edited. At one point Claudia makes a comment that clearly was supposed to come from Kristy, as she talks about her mom’s marriage and wanting to look after her brother David Michael. I mentioned to my fellow BSC-loving friend, and she said, “Maybe the editor of the Kindle version was Claudia.” Well played, friend – well played.

#7 – Claudia and Mean Janine
Spoiler alert: Janine is not really that mean. She’s just really weirdly characterized and she looks about forty years old on the book cover. (Proof.)

Seriously, though, Janine’s characterization is so over-the-top and hilarious. Martin seems to have decided that people with really high IQs speak in outrageously convoluted sentences filled with jargon and verbosity all the time. Instead of asking how the club is going to deal with Kristy living on the other side of town LIKE A NORMAL PERSON, she asks, “May I ask how your agency plans to function once your founder is residing in a different district?” Granted, I don’t know that many people who have 196 IQs – especially because that IQ level is SO EXCEEDINGLY RARE that Janine apparently is smarter than ISAAC NEWTON (source) – but really smart people are not entirely clueless about functioning in social situations.

She’s not mean, though. “Claudia and the Insufferable Janine” would have been a more accurate title. The “meanest” thing Janine does is not tell Claudia about Mimi the very second she steps on the soil of Stacey’s backyard. Um, what a bitch?

Part of Claudia’s narration: “Presently a car pulled up and Janine stepped out.” LOL, yes, I am sure that Claudia knows how to correctly use the word “presently” in a sentence.

Another part of Claudia’s narration: “When Dawn and I stand next to each other, we kind of look like a photograph and its negative.” Um, what? Is that racist?

Ah, a sign of religion in this book: Lucy is going to be christened at some kind of church. We don’t really know what kind of church, but it’s one of the only hints about religion we get.

This is also one of many books where the narration uses the not-so subtle foreshadowing of Mallory Pike being a really great helper and she’s going to make a great babysitter herself someday! Oy. I’m looking forward to her joining the club so we can stop with the foreshadowing.

I’m not sure how realistic the depiction of Mimi recovering from a stroke is. Sometimes it seems a little heavy-handed (heavy-handed?! in a BSC book?! Pull another one!) but it doesn’t seem entirely unrealistic to me that Mimi might remember Japanese words before English words sometimes.

Finally, the kids groom Louie the collie and tie ribbons into his fur, and Kristy worries that her neighbors won’t realize that Louie is a boy dog. She jokes about nicknaming him “Louella.” Kristy, I get that gender politics can be difficult to navigate sometimes, but Louie? IS A DOG. I don’t think he CARES if humans think he might be a girl dog. Yeesh.

#8 – Boy-Crazy Stacey
Ah, it’s only Stacey’s second book and she’s already prioritizing boys over friends and baby-sitting. One would think that she’s a normal thirteen-year-old or something.

Anyway, if the point of this book was that Stacey becomes a really bad babysitter because she’s obsessed with the lifeguard, the point is a little lost on me. This is part of the “showing vs. telling” problem in this book. Stacey tells us that she spent entire days on the beach flirting with Scott while Mary Anne looked after the Pikes, but that explanation takes up about a paragraph. Meanwhile, entire chapters are devoted to Stacey and Mary Anne’s adventures with the Pikes at restaurants and going miniature golfing. And when she’s on those outings, Stacey seems as attentive of a babysitter as Mary Anne is. So while I believe Stacey spends too much time flirting with Scott, it’s hard for me to really process that when the flirting takes up very little space.

I do, however, think Stacey is a complete whiny dumbass when she has to avoid the beach for an entire day because she saw Scott kissing his girlfriend. I was a highly sensitive teenager and I had romantic fantasies about boys, but I would not have needed to spend an entire day away from the beach when I was thirteen because a boy I liked had a girlfriend. I don’t know ANYONE who would have done that.

Also, supposedly sophisticated Stacey falls to the ground laughing hysterically at Toby’s supremely corny “Al Buquerque” joke. Nope, I don’t buy it.

ALSO, Kristy is such a control freak that she makes everyone update the notebook THROUGH POSTCARDS WHILE THEY ARE ALL ON VACATION. Kristy is seriously bored, people.

#9 – The Ghost at Dawn’s House
Ugh, this one is SO BORING. I know it’s a boring BSC book when the babysitting arc of whatever’s going on with the kids is more interesting than the main plot. I don’t care about Dawn’s stupid secret passage, I don’t care about her being scared of a stupid secret passage, and Ann M. Martin sucks at writing anything remotely “scary.”

I’m also annoyed that I can’t go for one book without an annoying appearance from Karen Brewer and her annoying fears and annoying Morbidda Destiny crap, BUT she does make me laugh here, after Kristy tells the “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana” joke and falls apart laughing. Karen and David Michael and Andrew give her the awkward silence and then Karen basically says, “So…anyway…” and it’s pretty funny. A rare moment where I like Karen.

At one point Dawn calls Mary Anne a ‘fraidy-cat for being afraid of the barn. This happens in a whole book where Dawn is scared of a hypothetical ghost in her house. Shut up, Dawn. (Wow, I’m really not used to saying that outside of watching Buffy reruns.)

I actually like Dawn’s description of her dad as a “Disneyland Daddy” – “you know, two weeks with a guy who hasn’t seen his kids in months and feels really guilty.” And Mr. Schafer isn’t even a deadbeat dad like Kristy’s father – he just lives on the opposite side of the country, so of course he can’t see his kids that often. It’s kind of a realistic, bittersweet moment.

Mary Anne is impressed that Gabbie and Myriah Perkins know all the words to “Hush, Little Baby” and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” because not even Mary Anne knows all the words to those songs. Yeah. Okay. Mary Anne is too easily impressed.

Dawn and Jeff are kind of assholes to their mom’s date “The Trip-Man,” which is not a funny nickname in the slightest. And Trip is really quite a decent guy if he’s willing to interrupt his evening to deal with the ghost fears of his date’s stupid kids. Aside from that, though, I rather like Jeff. He might be my favorite of the babysitters’ siblings, as he seems like a decent kid with enough pre-teen angst to seem realistic but not SO much angst that he becomes unbearable.

When the BSC has their slumber party, Claudia’s movie suggestion is Star Wars. Good for her, but does anyone else find that a little unbelievable? I can buy Stacey loving Mary Poppins over Claudia loving Star Wars.

#10 – Logan Likes Mary Anne!
One of the babysitters gets a boyfriend and this occasion is so monumental that it gets an exclamation point in the title!!!

In all seriousness, this is the beginning of eighth grade for the BSC, and the characters get stuck in this perpetual eighth-grade time warp for approximately one hundred books. It’s rather depressing.

Mary Anne when describing the babysitters: “[Kristy’s] mother got married again and Kristy was her bridesmaid! Honest.” Um, we believe you?

According to this book, Stacey is the vice-president of the school’s dance committee. I’m going to pay attention to the rest of the books to see if this detail ever comes up again.

This is the book where Mary Anne gets a bra and Kristy is fascinated and jealous. This is obviously one of many signs that Kristy is in love with Mary Anne, but I’m supposed to take it as her just being jealous that she doesn’t need a bra yet. Whatever. Later on, Kristy, like every other girl in the BSC, “can’t take her eyes” off of Logan, but come on – we all know she’s just scoping the competition for Mary Anne.

Mary Anne criticizes Kristy for not predicting what would happen when the babysitters expanded their advertising. She mentions that she’s shy and doesn’t criticize often, except we saw her be much more passive-aggressive and awesomely bitchy in her first POV book. Every chapter 2 of a BSC book should just say, “Mary Anne is really shy and quiet, except for every other book where she’s not.”

Oh yay, the introduction of Jackie Rodowsky! I really like that kid. He’s probably my favorite of the regular baby-sitting charges. That poor kid, falling into everything all the time. I’ll take Jackie’s mishaps over Karen’s stupid ghost stories and Claire Pike going “silly-billy-goo-goo” any day of the week. He has a male grasshopper named Elizabeth! I’m sorry – that’s just adorable.

“Every now and then our president becomes zealous and tries to run our club meetings according to parliamentary procedure.” This is an entirely realistic piece of prose from the inner dialogue of a character who is a thirteen-year-old girl.

Hey, I forgot that this is the story with Mary Anne’s surprise birthday party! All of the BSC decide to throw a surprise birthday party for Mary Anne, because apparently they have never met her.

Kristy wants Mary Anne to buy an outfit for the dance in the Sportswear department. Of course she does.

Stacey wants Mary Anne to shop in the underwear department. Of course she does.

Wait. Hold on. Morbidda Destiny’s real name is Mrs. Porter? Isn’t Porter the last name of Dawn’s mom? Morbidda Destiny is the great-aunt of Dawn Schafer! That’s my theory and I’m sticking to it.

This book has a whole paragraph explaining how to play the card game Memory. Thanks, book.

Well, that’s it for this edition of Stoneybrook Revisited. In the next edition, Stacey says “bye,” Mallory says “hi,” Kristy’s dog dies, and Claudia is the first to make a friend outside of the BSC and face consequences because of it. Stay tuned!

After Saturday’s post, you knew this was coming.

It’s official. I’m doing a reread of The Baby-sitters Club – excluding the mysteries, because who cares, and excluding the Little Sister series, because Karen is annoying. I will read all of the regular books, the Super Specials, the Portrait Collections, and the Friends Forever series (which I never read as a kid, but I’m curious to see what happened to everyone). I will read as many of these books as I can find from different libraries and I will post updates approximately “whenever I feel like it,” but those updates will always be on a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday at 5:30, in accordance to when the BSC had its meetings.

Ready? Let’s go.

#1 – Kristy’s Great Idea
There are four things I really like about this book.

The first thing I really like is Kristy’s snafu with her teacher, where he lectures her about not having enough decorum and she has to write an essay about decorum without knowing what the word means. She has to look at several different dictionary definitions before she realizes that her teacher was telling her not to be rude. I like this incident because it’s so age-appropriate and amusing, especially when Kristy walks back to her desk “with decorum,” showing that she understands the basic concept of the word but not quite how to use it in a sentence. I also like it because my mother, who reads this blog, used to criticize and lament about the amount of time I would spend reading The Baby-sitters Club and didn’t think I got anything useful out of reading the books. Well, Mom, I learned about the word “decorum” because of Kristy being rude to her teacher. So there.

The second thing I really like is that Kristy is a brat, but bratty in an age-appropriate way. I like that she gives so much crap to Watson even though he doesn’t deserve it (but I don’t believe that her little note to her mom would make everything better, especially after she called Watson a bad father). I like that her reaction to learning about Stacey’s diabetes is basically, “So? Who gives a shit?” Not very sensitive of her, but probably a relief to Stacey compared to other reactions she’s had. And I love her little rant about fashion and how she can never tell what’s “in” and what’s “out,” because that’s exactly how I felt at that age.

The third thing I really like is Kristy and Mary Anne’s flashlight code. How the hell did two twelve-year-old girls develop a flashlight code where different flashes stood for twenty-six letters? And we’re supposed to believe that they had WHOLE CONVERSATIONS through their bedroom windows with these flashlight codes? And that super-strict Mr. Spier never caught onto it? It’s ludicrous.

The fourth thing I really like is this line: “I have absolutely no interest in boys, of course.” Oh, Kristy. We know.

#2 – Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls
This book is dumb and easily the weakest of all of the characters’ “introduction” books. I feel bad that poor Claudia gets such a dumb introduction book, because her books are usually fun. But the mystery has absolutely no tension and drama, and it’s just about the girls getting spooked on every babysitting job they have. Boring.

There’s also that uncomfortable “stalking is romantic” subplot, where it turns out that Alan Gray and Trevor Sandbourne stole the record book so they knew exactly where Kristy and Claudia were on all of their babysitting jobs. Claudia thinks that Trevor stalking her is so dreamy, and Kristy is flattered by any attention from a beard – I mean, boy – so it’s all wrapped up in a happy little bow. NOT a good message to send, Ann M. Martin. Not a good message.

I suppose it’s kind of interesting that The Baby-sitters Club has a prominent Asian character who is NOT a good student. That’s fairly atypical and different. Of course, Janine Kishi is a walking Asian stereotype, so maybe I shouldn’t give Ann M. Martin too many cookies for making Claudia atypical. It’s hilarious that Janine supposedly has an I.Q. of 196, and Martin demonstrates this high IQ by…having Janine correct the girls’ grammar and spelling. It takes a person with a 196 I.Q. to tell girls the difference between “can” and “may.” Riiiight.

#3 – The Truth About Stacey
I hold a special place in my heart for this book because it was the first BSC book I ever read. Diabetes drama and rival club drama all in one book! The evil Baby-Sitters Agency with those irresponsible, manipulative, slutty eighth-graders and high school girls! Stacey confronts her parents and her old demons in New York!

Anyway, Stacey becomes a big brat later in the series, but it’s interesting seeing how she deals with Laine in this book. Laine humiliated and ostracized Stacey over Stacey’s illness, and she gives one weaksauce apology and is easily forgiven. Meanwhile, later in the series, Stacey leaves the BSC after she thinks she’s too mature for them, and has to grovel twice as much to get back into the club. Stacey calling the BSC immature and babyish is treated with more gravity than Laine being horrible to Stacey after Stacey was going through a serious illness. Seriously, these books. Stacey might already be my new favorite character.

You can also tell that this is a really early BSC book because Martin doesn’t hammer the “best friend” partnerships as hard as she does in the later books. The later books are all, “Claudia and Stacey are best friends, and Mallory and Jessi are best friends, and Mary Anne has TWO best friends – Kristy and Dawn!” But this book has Kristy and Stacey wanting to go in one direction for the club, while Claudia and Mary Anne want to go in the other. Interesting.

#4 – Mary Anne Saves the Day
Hm. I might have to take back my comment about Stacey being my new favorite character, because Mary Anne may be shy and mousy, but she has a fabulous inner bitch, and when that inner bitch lets loose, she LETS LOOSE.

Seriously, I laugh so hard when Mary Anne is mentally composing her nasty notes to the other BSC members after the four girls have their big fight. “Dear Stacey, I’m really, really sorry you called me a shy, little baby. I hope you’re sorry, too.” “Dear Kristy, I’m sorry you’re the biggest, bossiest know-it-all in the world, but what can I do about it? Have you considered seeking professional help?” HA. When Mary Anne is snarky, she owns.

Meanwhile, supposedly sophisticated Claudia throws a Threat Level Red temper tantrum when Mimi calls Mary Anne “my Mary Anne.” Are you kidding me? *sigh* I still love you, Claudia, but you make it difficult sometimes.

Also, this book has Mr. Spier saying a big prayer before dinner, blessing Mary Anne’s dead mother, before they commence eating. Take note that Mary Anne’s mother is named Abigail (even though she was Alma in a previous book). And this is also the most religious any of the babysitters OR their parents get in the entire series, as we never hear of Mary Anne’s dad’s religious behavior again.

#5 – Dawn and the Impossible Three
This one is slightly better than Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls, but only slightly. Kristy, Stacey, and Mary Anne had MUCH better introduction books than Claudia and Dawn did.

Anyway, this is where Dawn has to babysit for the Barrett kids – Buddy, Suzi, and Marnie. They’re the “impossible three,” except the kids don’t behave that badly compared to the other babysitting charges we’ve seen. I like them more than Karen Brewer (though Andrew Brewer is cute). It’s more that Mrs. Barrett is a mess, and has to be lectured by a twelve-year-old about how to be a more responsible parent. UGH. On one hand, Dawn has every right to set limits and terms and decide what she’s going to put up with from her clients, but on the other hand, it’s a twelve-year-old telling a newly-single mom how to be a more responsible parent. Obviously Mrs. Barrett does need a talking to, and I like that the book emphasizes that she’s not a BAD mom, just overwhelmed, but I still cringe to see the parental advice coming from Dawn.

Oh, and this is also the book where Dawn’s mom and Mary Anne’s dad start banging.

That’s all for now. In the next installment of Stoneybrook Revisited, Kristy’s mom gets married, Claudia’s grandma has a stroke, Stacey likes boys, Dawn has a boring mystery plot, and Mary Anne gets a requited crush. And no, I didn’t have to look any of that up. There’s a reason why this post is in the “don’t judge me” category.