The plot? There's not
much too it. Shannon's mom feels left out now that her daughters are growing
up, so she's up in Shannon's grill all the time (sorry, just had to put it that
way.) When she decides to chaperone Shannon's French class trip to Paris,
Shannon purposely flunks the test so she's not eligible to attend the trip.
While her mom is gone, Shannon realizes how boring mom's life is and they all
decide to do more stuff together. I think it lasts only a little while,
otherwise #112 would probably never happen.
Subplot? Even less exciting.
Mother's Day is coming up again, and the BSC decides to hold a gift-athon and a
softball game, moms v. kids.
Interesting tidbits
On the way home from
school, Shannon, Maria and Tiffany are all sitting together. Shannon and Maria
play Gross Food, which is pretty self-explanatory.
When I was writing the
intro, I was trying to place this book in the series. I know it's after #70
where the subplot is all about Tiffany not having a hobby and deciding to take
up gardening--something that's mentioned on the second page here--but before
#73, the last book I read. I'm wondering if it's before or after Dawn decided
to do something really stupid in response to her parents' actions (#72). That's
what I was thinking of, by the way, when I said that Shannon's not as screwed
up as Dawn. But come to think about it, their actions are pretty similar.
Shannon does not steal her mom's credit card, however.
It's neat getting to
hear about how Shannon's family all resemble one another. If I remember
correctly, normally in the books, we just get to hear how Shannon is blonde,
has a ski-slope nose, and wears mascara every day. Here, we hear how her face
resembles her father's, and how Tiffany and her mom are also blonde, but they
wear it short and have long, dark eyelashes. Maria has dark hair and looks like
their dad. (Someone needs to talk to the person who designed the cover. It
shows three girls, presumably Shannon and her sisters, dressing up Astrid in
clothes. But all three are blonde. And Tiffany, the one with short hair on the
right, has dreadful fashion sense. She's wearing a white sweater with red and
green designs and a purple skirt.)
Shannon's dad is a
lawyer. So are Mallory's dad and Mary Anne's dad. Hmm.
Heh. Shannon’s parents
call her Shanny, and she's all embarrassed about it, like Dawn and Stacey get
about their "baby nicknames."
Ummm...Shannon gets mad
at her mom for not remember her BSC meeting, and she says this: "And why
did she sound so critical, as if my meeting was some weird indulgence of base
desires?" I'm not sure if they're trying to make Shannon sounds super
smart, but it just makes her sound weird.
Having Shannon give the
club intros is a little weird, mostly because she's not normally there for
meetings, yet she uses the exact same phrases to describe everything. (Lazy,
lazy, lazy)
Claudia says she's
multi-lingual (how does she know that word?) because she can say yes in
Spanish, French and Japanese. But apparently, not English.
When she has breakfast
alone during a lazy Saturday, Shannon takes all the flavors of jam out of the
fridge and starts playing with them. But at least she admits what she's doing.
(How many flavors of jam do they have, anyway?) Then she drinks some coffee
that's mostly milk.
Tiffany is growing sugar
snap peas, and Shannon wonders what Claudia would think of them, since they're
sweet.
A sign of how screwed up
Shannon's family is: when her dad comes home (first time you've seen him all
book, and it's page 48), Shannon tells him Maria's at a swim meet and Tiffany's
in her garden. And he's surprised that a) Maria has a meet and b) Tiffany has a
garden. He apparently spends so much time working he doesn't know anything
about his daughters.
Mrs. Kilbourne buys her
and Shannon matching dresses. What about her other daughters? They might not
make them in Maria's size (they're Laura Ashley, of course, and she's eight)
but Tiffany must be wearing adult sizes by age eleven, unless she's
particularly small.
Speaking of Tiffany
being eleven, I'm still trying to figure out why she's still in elementary
school and needs a babysitter at that age. Maybe SDS puts sixth graders in
elementary school. (My school did back in the day.) But I'm pretty sure that,
in #11, when Shannon and Tiffany are introduced, Shannon says Tiffany babysits.
I remember being confused by this as a kid.
Heh heh heh. I'm always
into making words into adverbs when they aren't. Shannon says that Claudia
talked with her mouth full and it came out "gummy wormily." At work I
spend a lot of time doing things BOPUSily and Tervisily.
Back to the placement of
this story. Mallory is back after having mono, and Claudia references the time
she and Stacey coached the Krushers. The former happens in #73, and the latter
in #74, which I didn't read until 2009. That means this book must have been the
last one I ever bought as a child.
Mrs. Kilbourne shows up
at Kristy's during a Mother's Day planning meeting, and starts eating pizza
with them. The most amusing part is that, when she compliments the pizza, Jessi
tells her it's so good because it has green AND black olives.
When Shannon finds out
her mom is going on the Paris trip, she says she has to resist the urge for a
Claire Pike style tantrum. Nofe-air!
Claudia spelling time:
surprize, giftathone, terific, exxcept, brokken, refreshmints, turst, Jacky.
Apparently Jackie once
hit a baseball and knocked a branch off a tree, which removed a rearview mirror
off a car. Now, how'd that happen? Rearview mirrors are inside cars. Was it a
convertible, or did they mean a side view mirror?
During the Mother's Day
gift-athon, Jackie knocks over a table of refreshments all over Stacey, who, in
trying to prevent the mess, accidentally sprays pink lemonade all over
everyone. This I would pay to see.
Shannon lies to her mom
that the Laura Ashley dress is at the cleaners. A) Would Shannon really take
her own clothes to the cleaners? B) Why would she launder it when she'd never
worn it?
All hell breaks loose
when Mr. Kilbourne comes home from golfing on Mother's Day. He comes with a
gift for the occasion, but it comes with a card that says Happy Birthday, and
Mrs. Kilbourne realizes he kept it in his office as an emergency gift for some
time when he forgot a special occasion. Understandably, she's ticked.
Shannon's family reminds
me of one I knew growing up, where the parents thought it would be better for
the kids if they waited until they were all grown and out of the house before
they divorced, so the parents were always fighting or cold or fake friendly
with one another.
When Shannon decides to
flunk her French final, she does it on a whim at the last second, which makes
it more understandable and sane. If she'd planned it, I'd be a lot more worried
about it. (What I'm wondering is, how big of a percentage is the final exam to
her grade? It must be a really high amount, because she had an A prior to the
exam, and her final grade, not the exam grade, is what counts for getting to go
to Paris.)
Mrs. Kilbourne hints
that she knows Shannon flunked on purpose, and she sets Shannon up with a bunch
of responsibilities for while she's gone in exchange for that.
Apparently, the dress
code goes out the window on the last day at SDS. The principal wears a hat
shape like a pickle, and the math teacher wears a shirt that says 2 + 2 = What?
Shannon mentions the
first day of school photos her mom takes; these are mentioned in the memory
super special and my favorite moment in that whole book is when Shannon says
she once put them together like a flip book and tried to watch herself age.
(I'll be blogging that one next week, so stay tuned.)
When Mrs. Kilbourne
leaves, she tells Shannon to be careful. Shannon imagines that her mother
boobytrapped the house.
Mallory gets Tiffany to
help with refreshments at the softball game. Since Tiffany still seems sort of
mopey and depressed, I kinda wish that she and Mal had become friends. They
seem like they would get along pretty well.
This moment amused me.
Jessi and Stacey are watching Marnie and Lucy while their moms and big sibs
play baseball. Marnie wakes up from her nap and sees Lucy and says,
"Baby!" Since Marnie seems to be a baby herself, it was cute.
There were a few outfits
in this one, but I didn't get them. Most of them were what the moms were
wearing during the softball game (Mrs. Barrett in sweatpants! Horrors!) and
then they mention Stacey wearing all black at one point, and that's about it.
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