“Well, let’s see, what shall we have for dinner tonight? Barbecued kitchen or broiled living room?” BSC Portrait Collection: Dawn’s Book (1995)

Time for another collection of random babbling about a specific sitter!

West coast Beginnings: Dawn is a baby and a bratty little kid.

The New Girl on the Block: Dawn hates Sunny when she first meets her and thinks she’s a weirdo, but of course they become friends.

The Golden Anniversary: Granny and Pop-pop are having their 50^th wedding anniversary in San Francisco. Jack and Sharon keep pointing out how old they are, so they keep trying to give them rest breaks and take it easy, but the grandparents would rather do interesting stuff, the kinds of things Dawn and Jeff were suggesting. Dawn also worries about them because they aren’t glued together the way her parents are, holding hands and doing everything together.

Fire!: Dawn becomes obsessed with fire safety and then a fire starts and she has to come to the rescue.

A New Life on the East Coast: Dawn babysits for a little girl in Stoneybrook and accidentally tells her a secret. The mom’s so upset she stops using the BSC; Dawn never tells anyone what happened.

Interesting Tidbits

You know Dawn’s from California because there are seashells and the beach and San Francisco on the cover. Or, because, you know, she reminds you on page one, in the second line.

Apparently Jeff’s idea of showing Dawn he’s glad she’s back is to scare her with a Halloween mask.

Conveniently, Dawn’s school is also making all the eighth graders write autobiographies. I’d make fun of this, but two cousins and I all had to write autobiographies when we were in eighth grade…in three different states. (I also wrote one in fourth grade.)

Interesting. Dawn says Jill reminds her of Mary Anne, because they’re both serious and quiet. What’s intriguing about this is that Dawn, Sunny and Maggie outgrow Jill, leaving her behind in the California Diaries. What does that say about what will happen between Dawn and Mary Anne as they grow older?

Heh. Dawn was a week overdue. That’s pretty typical of first babies, though. She was born first thing in the morning, at dawn. I wonder if they named her that because of her birth time or if she just conveniently arrived at the same time as the name they’d chosen. (A friend of mine decided to name her firstborn August. He obliged by arriving two weeks early…on the last day of August.)

Chapter two makes me want to roll my eyes because Dawn took her first steps at the beach…and walked until she reached the water (rather than taking two or three steps and plopping down like normal babies do). Oh, and her first words included water and beach.

Dawn muses that Jeff learned at a very early age how to gain and keep adults’ attention. I think that’s a) a very ‘big sister’ thing to say—I say the same thing about my younger sister—and b) it’s probably very true, for both Jeff and my younger sister.

Little Dawn was a bit bratty though—between throwing playdoh in the chili and calling it sour cream and throwing things at baby Jeff—but she reaches the apex when she and her friend glue the blocks together at preschool because they’re tired of their tower getting knocked over.

Dawn says Jill and Maggie were her first friends at Vista, but I’m pretty sure she says she didn’t know them well before they joined the We Heart Kids Club.

Continuity: I know Dawn mentioned her parakeet before, though I can’t remember what book that was in. Was it the petsitting one?

It’s kind of funny that one of the things Dawn finds so weird about the Winslows when she first meets them is that they eat kelp soup for lunch. Sounds like something that would be right up her alley.

Sunny has a tie-dyed bedspread, and seven-year-old Dawn contemplates the fact that it doesn’t look as if it were made of dead ties.

Honestly, all the stuff that makes Sunny so ‘odd’ to Dawn when they first meet is the sort of thing that makes Dawn an individual when she’s older. The Winslows won’t give Sunny toys made of synthetic materials because it’s bad for the environment, and Sunny doesn’t like the fact that Jeff and his friend are playing with toy weapons.

Ooh, look. Neglectful parenting! Sharon and Betsy (Sunny’s mom) leave their seven-year-olds alone in the toy department and go to the other floor of the store.

When her mother gets stuck in an elevator, Dawn calls her dad and starts giving him instructions, such as the fact that he should call Mr. Winslow and the family Jeff is staying with. He tells her he’s proud of her for such good thinking, but it sounds so out of place. Sometimes these stories make the younger versions of the BSC members sound like miniature adults.

Math time! Like the last book, it involves Sharon’s age. She says her parents are celebrating their 50^th anniversary and are ‘almost eighty.’ Depending on what book timeline you go with, Sharon would be somewhere in the vicinity of forty at this point. (In the early books, she’s described as being 42 when Dawn is 12; Dawn is 10 at this point.) So Granny and Pop-pop married when they were approaching 30 and had Sharon when they were closer to 40. My father’s parents were married in the late 40s when she was in her mid-20s and he was three years older; she was considered to be an ‘old maid’ by the time of her wedding. Honestly, though, if Granny and Pop-pop spent years trying for a baby before Sharon was born, it would explain why they were so overly involved in her love life in her teens.

Granny and Pop-pop spend their whole vacation weekend sniping at each other. He calls her old lady and she makes fun of his interest in model boats.

Pop-pop’s name is Charlie, and Granny’s is Rita. Jeff’s middle name is also Charles.

Dawn creates evacuation routes for every room in the house. Sharon asks her how she’d escape from the hallway. I can’t tell if she’s doing it to help her calm down about it and relax, or because she’s just kind of egging her on. (That’s what Jack seems to believe.)

Sharon makes the title quote as a joke. Even though she doesn’t find it funny, Dawn ends up laughing because Jeff proceeds to explain in detail why he does find the comment funny. Which should be even less funny than the joke itself.

When Dawn’s able to get Daffodil and Clover Austin to agree on one activity, their mother calls her a good negotiator and suggests she run for office. That’s not the only skill she’d need; I don’t think Dawn’s any good at being crooked and taking bribes, for example.

Part of the reason for Dawn’s obsession with fire is that it’s an easier, less painful fear than worrying about her parents’ marriage. That’s actually pretty realistic.

Mr. and Mrs. Austin are Ted and Jenny.

Dawn’s picture was in the paper along with another ‘community hero’—a woman who was the foster parent to 20 children, all of whom grew up to be successful college grads. The photo’s in the book, and the woman (Mrs. Hughes) looks just like Rue McClanahan from Golden Girls. Plus, Dawn’s smelling smoke and exiting the building with two little girls is nothing compared to a lifetime of foster kids.

Kristy goes over the basics of sitting with the club, and one of them is to make sure you have all necessary emergency numbers. Stacey suggests that one of them is the number of the nearest pizza place. Kristy doesn’t find that funny, but I do. Kristy knows the other sitters know these things; she’s just taking herself far too seriously.  (A few minute later, Claudia jokes about knowing about the kids’ séance preferences.)

The reason for this ‘review’ is that they discuss not snooping at the clients’ houses. Dawn breaks this rule almost right away when sitting for a new client, the Lazans. She reads a paper from the school that says that Sandra is getting held back a grade. Not knowing this information was not common knowledge, Dawn mentions it to Sandra…whose parents hadn’t told her she was being held back yet. Whoops.

You know I love seeing the BSC make mistakes, but this one is pretty horrible. I can’t imagine any circumstances when talking to a kid about something so massive would be appropriate…unless the parents had mentioned how bummed the kid was about it and then the kid brought it up.

Dawn gets an A- for content and a B for presentation.

Outfits

Seven-year-old Sunny: ankle length hippie dress, no shoes

New characters

Sandra Lazan (7)—27

Next: #91

“For Claudia to spell only one word wrong on five posters is pretty close to a miracle.” BSC Mystery #22: Stacey and the Haunted Masquerade (1995)

 Oh, look. It’s Halloween again. Various people are trying to stop the masquerade from happening because the last time one was held, twenty-eight years, a tragedy happened. Everyone assumes that it was some minor issue, but a girl actually had a meltdown after some boys played a prank on her. She killed the lights and pulled the fire alarm; a teacher died of a heart attack in the aftermath of the resulting stampede. Weird things are happening all over school as the Mischief Knights perform harmless pranks like switching locker contents and filling an art cabinet with marbles, but some other pranks relate directly to the dance, like decorations being shredded. It turns out the mentally disturbed girl from the earlier dance came back to seek revenge on the school and on a new sixth grade teacher, Mr. Rothman, who knew her back in the day.

Meanwhile, the movie Ghostbusters has been playing non-stop on a local movie station and all the kids are crazy about busting ghosts.

Interesting Tidbits

The cover. It’s been a while since I’ve read this, but that has to be Stacey and Mary Anne as Morticia and Dorothy, looking properly outraged at the mysteriousness of this mystery. Why is MA taller than Stacey, though?

The book starts with Stacey waxing philosophical on the meaning of homeroom, aka creative doodling class. She says it’s nothing like home; for example, her mother almost never takes attendance.

Stacey’s new favorite song is “Sister Sally” by the group Great Blue Whales. A) That band sounds like something Dawn would get into. B) I now have that 80’s song “Sister Christian” stuck in my head, only I keep putting Sally into the lyrics. “You’re motorin’… what’s your price for flight?” I don’t know if those are the right lyrics or a mondegreen, though. (They’re right! Usually I can’t get lyrics correct without looking them up.)

Apparently, Mr. Kingsbridge has no fashion sense. I’d honestly be more worried if Stacey, who likes Claudia’s fashion sense, thought he did have some.

I’m trying to figure out why this Halloween Masquerade is any different than any other Halloween dance that they didn’t call a masquerade. Maybe at this one, costumes are required? I mean, Bart and Kristy once dressed as lobsters, and Logan and Mary Anne have dressed as cats before. Not really any different, if you ask me. I know they just had to have not had the Masquerade in 28 years because of what happened ‘last time’ but honestly. I can’t think of a single way this plot would have worked if it were a non-Halloween dance, though, so I’ll let it go.

Hmm. Logan is sitting with the BSC at lunch. I’ll buy that. But so are Pete and Alan. What are they doing there? (Unless they have little crushes on someone else at the table…yes, I’m totally talking about Logan.)

Stacey says there will be a quiz on the information about the BSC. Chapter two would have been a lot more interesting if she had ended the chapter with a minutiae quiz regarding the members. “What color shoelaces was Claudia wearing today? What order were the Pike triplets listed in this time? Which member was described first, Kristy or Mary Anne?” Instead, you get a quiz on whom/what each BSC member will be going to the masquerade as, which is boring because you would have found that out later anyway.

Claudia misplaced a pair of purple orange and green paisley leggings and finds them during the meeting. Kristy: “How could you miss them?” I think she misplaced those in 1990, because I swear I had a pair just like that someone gave me for Christmas when I was nine.

Anyone surprised that Stacey writes with a purple felt-tipped pen? Nope. I didn’t think so.

Oooooooooh! I’m so excited. Ladies and gentlemen (if any are reading this), I’m proud to introduce my favorite non-sitting charge character in the entire history of the BSC: Mr. Cary Retlin. I didn’t realize this was his first appearance. Mr. Retlin proceeds to be one of the most entertaining characters throughout the rest of the series, on into the Friends Forever/Forever Friends/Whatever the Hell That’s Called series.

Stacey is a girl after my own heart. She says that the BSC has been ‘Cokified’ a few times. I just recently was referring to a day with my least-favorite coworker as being ‘Jessinfected,’ but I may have to use ‘Jessified’ instead.

When Abby arrives at the Pike house, Adam and Byron are ‘ghostbusting’ with the aid of a plastic ray gun and a vacuum cleaner hose. I was always the kid who had the gun made of vacuum cleaner tubing or the fairy wand that was really just a stick. I think a lot of the problem with kids these days is that they don’t play imagination games, and when they do, their parents buy them the toys. Little girls playing Frozen with their mom’s old blue dress and winter gloves and a homemade Olaf have so much more imagination and fun than those whose parents buy them a $50 costume and all the expensive toys.

When Cary unleashes the Mischief Knights on the school, one of his earliest pranks is to write messages on various blackboards. When MA asks what the message says, Kristy cracks that it said not to eat the Salisbury Steak that MA had just taken a bite of.

I love that no one can figure out who is responsible for the Mischief Knights, despite the fact that everything starts right after Cary shows up. Of course, it’s also right after Abby shows up, too. In fact, she suggests she could be responsible…and Mary Anne also says she could be the prankster, which makes everyone laugh, including me.

I love that Grace sides with the majority against Cokie during the dance committee meeting. I know these characters aren’t real (I know you may not be able to tell, but I do! I do!) but I really want to see Grace break free from Cokie altogether.

I love it! Abby pulls apart a Twizzler pull and peel and then braids it back together during one of the meetings. I used to do that all the time.

Ooh, suspect list time. Mr. Wetzler, the guy who keeps writing to the editor about how the school shouldn’t be having a masquerade at all. Grace, who’s just being ‘too nice.’ Cokie, because she didn’t like the red and purple dance color scheme (and so far, the decorations and posters are the only thing that have been vandalized). The Mischief Knights, because, well. Mischief.

Time for some awesomely bad spelling! Wuld, thouhgt, eigth, coud, gohst, beleive, becuase, gohstbusters.

Consistency: Mrs. Arnold goes crazy decorating for holidays, including decorating herself.

The Arnold girls have been building an ‘ectoplasmic turbulence detector’ in the basement. Or, as Marilyn calls it, a ghost finder. They do, indeed find a ghost…or at least a squirrel.

Ha! Best line of the entire book: “Twenty-eight years ago? You’re asking a lot. I can’t even remember what I had for dinner last night.” This is what Sharon says when Mary Anne, Logan and Stacey ask her about the last masquerade.

Richard does seem to remember, though. I’m trying to do some math again. The dance was 28 years ago and Richard says he was in sixth grade at the time, making him 39 or 40, but in an earlier book he was 43 or so. I think it would have been more interesting if he’d actually been at the dance and knew these people instead of the BSC falling into the information.

In 1995, 28 years ago would have been 1967. So I’m not too surprised that the name of the band that played the masquerade is The Groovy Tangerine. But, honestly? I know I’ve said it before, but…a band at a middle school dance? They can’t have been very good.

Abby would be the one to suggest that the teacher who died, Mr. Brown, is the vandal. I mean, Dawn’s no longer around to bring up ghosts. (After she says that, Mary Anne tells Stacey to turn the yearbook page because she doesn’t like the way Mr. Brown’s photo is ‘looking at her.’)

Stacey actually calls the nutcase, Mr.Wetzler, who keeps going on about waste in the school budget. She lies that she’s a reporter for the school paper to get more information about the last masquerade out of him. All she’s able to find out is that a girl got jilted and then never came back to school.

When Logan says Alan once showed him a bunch of old records in the basement, Stacey thinks he means old vinyl records, ‘like the BeeGees.’ Where has Stacey ever heard of the BeeGees?

The BSC figures out that the girl, Elizabeth Connor, lived in Charlotte’s house at the time of the ‘incident’ in 1967. Isn’t that convenient? Stacey brings the Braddocks over so that the kids can all ghostbust together and she and Mary Anne can do the kind of snooping you normally need a warrant for. There’s a mistake in among that, though: Charlotte has both a spirit collector, like Abby made with the Pikes, and a ghost detector like the Arnolds created. But it says that Arnold made the ghost detector.

Costumes:

            Robert and Stacey: Gomez and Morticia Addams                  

            Mary Anne and Logan: Dorothy and the Scarecrow

            Mal: ballerina

            Jessi: cow girl

            Abby: Lucy Ricardo

            Kristy: Amelia Earhart

            Claudia: giant Twinkie

            Grace: Snow White

            Todd and Rick: Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble

            Mr. Rothman: football player

            Sabrina Bouvier: Cleopatra

            Cary: a knight chess piece

Heh. Grace isn’t talking to Cokie because Cokie thinks that Grace’s boyfriend is imaginary. It’s the stupidest D plot ever, but almost realistic.

So Elizabeth Connor had been unpopular and the butt of jokes back in the day. She had a giant crush on Mike Rothman (who is now a new sixth grade teacher and the dance committee’s supervisor.) His friends bet him he wouldn’t take her to the dance and last the whole night. He didn’t tell her what was going on, but she figured it out when she saw the exchange of money. She went outside, the fire alarm got pulled…you can make the connection.

Oh, I figured out the way they can get away with the dance issue. This isn’t a Halloween dance. It’s a Mischief Night dance, on October 30^th. Because that’s such a big difference.

“It was like something out of a bad horror movie.” Funniest, most ironic line in one of these books.

Stacey still considers the fact that the ghost of Mr. Brown could be behind all the vandalism.

Lame-o. The story leaves off at the end of chapter 14 when Liz Connor removes the cape she stole from Mr. Rothman’s date, revealing a fairy princess costume—which is what she was wearing the night of the dance years ago. The next chapter starts with Shannon asking, “And then what happened?” It spoils all the drama because you know all the BSC members are okay. It's a (Like any of them would actually get injured or anything. This isn’t a Temperance Brennan book, where the main character nearly dies in every one of her adventures.) It's a total copout.

Grace and Cokie make up and go back to normal. I’m so sad about that.

Outfits

Mr. Fiske: yellow tie covered in punctuation marks (very apropos for an English teacher)

Grace: thermal leggings, blue plaid flannel shirt

Mrs. Arnold: black velvet skirt, white satin blouse, dangly pumpkin earrings, pumpkin pendant, dangly pumpkin bracelet

Jessi: fringed leather vest and skirt, cowboy boots, ten gallon hat (ooh, is she not wearing anything under the vest? racy!)

Kristy: leather jacket, high boots, long white scarf, helmet and goggle

New Characters:

Cary Retlin (13)—33

Next: Dawn’s Book

“Claudia Kishi, sports fashion consultant.” BSC #89: Kristy and the Dirty Diapers (1995)

Let’s Vlog! Doo-da-doo-da-da-doo!

There are three plotlines in this story that all sorta overlap. The title comes from the fact that a diaper company agrees to sponsor the Krushers. The new uniforms say Diapers and the owner feels that he has a stake in the Krushers now that he’s sponsoring them. Kristy eventually tells him to take a hike.

The other two plots relate into the Krushers at different levels. Mrs. Porter’s granddaughter, Druscilla (Dru), who was the subject of a Little Sister book, is staying with ol’ Morbidda Destiny because her parents are getting divorced. Kristy gets her to join the Krushers because she thinks it would be good for Dru, who’s drifting and ‘being difficult.’ She doesn’t like playing and quits, but makes friends with some neighborhood kids and starts a band.

Probably the most important part of the story, though, is that some new neighbors have moved in down the street, the Stevensons. Kristy doesn’t like Abby much at first. She does like Anna but feels they have little in common. Kristy asks them both to join the BSC, but Anna turns her down. Abby not only joins the club (duh) but becomes assistant Krushers’ coach.

Interesting tidbits

Gotta love Kristy’s cover sweater. Paging Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable…

When Emily Michelle watches Krushers practice, she yells ‘stike one!’ every time someone swings the bat. That’s probably both extremely cute and extremely annoying after a while.

There are construction workers updating the Stevensons’ house before they move in. David Michael calls them destruction workers, not because he doesn’t know they correct term, but because they’re knocking stuff down so they can build it back up.

Ooh, I knew this was a Peter Lerangis book the second Linny Papadakis started talking with his mouth full…to insult his sister. Linny: You throw like a girl. Hannie: I am a girl! Linny: That’s no excuse!

A moment later, DM hits Kristy with a softball. When she explains she’s fine because he didn’t throw it hard enough, DM’s insulted by that idea, so Kristy belatedly pretends she’s injured.

Kristy ponders a future as a sports reporter, but you’d think that was the last thing she’d want to be. Isn’t that what her deadbeat father (whom she just four pages before said she doesn’t like even thinking about) did for a living?

IOAG: It’s only a game. Shannon has the right attitude, but we all know Kristy ain’t gonna hear none of that.

Mistake: Shannon shows up to Krushers practice with the Barrett kids, for whom she was sitting. But she leaves practice with the Kuhn kids. Maybe that’s not a mistake; maybe she had a job for the Barretts that ended during practice and has a job with the Kuhns that starts during practice. But that seems weird and unlikely.

Claudia muses on the ‘flavor bouquet’ of year-old candy corn she finds in the back of her closet. I really wish PL had written all these books, honestly.

There’s this way Kristy describes Mal and Jessi joining the club that makes them sound like stray cats—she says they ‘took them in’. It’s a little odd.

Kristy has a dream about the BSC taking on an alien member that sounds very much like the plot line of a bad kids television show. The girl looks normal, but changes into alien form whenever the parents leave and takes the kids aboard her spaceship. The kids adore her and the parents never find out.

Oh, let’s make fun of Morbidda Destiny for a little bit. (Kristy even almost calls her that to her face.) But it’s okay, because we humanize her a moment later by having her tell Watson and Elizabeth that her daughter’s getting divorced and she’s worried about her granddaughter. She even sounds like she’s going to cry.

Heh. The diaper service man has the same name as the boy I had a giant crush on from fifth grade all the way through high school.

I think the diaper-related stuff would have been more interesting if the diaper company had been the same one that Kristy had called when she pranked Shannon back in #11.

The title quote comes after Claudia suggests Kristy demand veto power over the baseball ‘costumes,’ but obviously this wasn’t a bad idea. Maybe Kristy should have listened to her.

“Shannon’s life was one big club sandwich.” After reading Shannon’s Story, I’ve always kind of felt that Shannon overbooks herself on purpose to get out of her house. I like the fact that Shannon’s family is a little dysfunctional, because it’s realistic. (It’s the same reason that I like that Stacey’s parents put her in the middle after their divorce.) Everyone knows a family where the parents don’t really get along/love each other anymore but stay together anyway. Both Shannon and Tiffany’s behavior throughout the series make more sense when you consider their family environment.

When Shannon meets Dru, she’s flipping through an old photo album of Morbidda Destiny’s. Shannon mentions that Mrs. Porter—who was pregnant with her daughter at the time—was beautiful, but Dru thinks she looks like “Barney with hair.”

Real books: Esio Trot (I LOVE Roald Dahl!) and Tiffky Doofky.

We finally meet Anna and Abby in chapter six…

The first descriptor we get of ‘the twins’ (Kristy doesn’t know their names yet) is that they are tall—5’6” or 5’7”. I was curious as to how realistic that is, so I dug up a growth chart. It’s always kind of bugged me that Kristy is described as 5’ even and the shortest girl in her class, when this growth chart suggests that that would be the 25^th percentile for 13 year old girls. 5^th percentile is 4’7”, so Kristy should be closer to that height. On the other hand, while 5’7” is 95^th percentile so it’s possible for Abby to be that tall. (Wouldn’t it be funny if Kristy were 4’7”? Abby would be a full foot taller than her!)

I love reading Kristy’s reaction to Abby. I know that Abby can be overbearing because that’s some people’s first response to books with her in them. But I kind of get the feeling that Kristy’s problem isn’t that Abby’s overwhelming or too much—because everyone else is enjoying her presence. Kristy just seems jealous because she’s not the center of things; she’s not running the show. (It’s double-funny because she says the same thing about Abby needing to be the center of attention.) I honestly think that’s half of Kristy’s problem with Abby, in addition to Abby’s lack of focus and inability to take things seriously.

When the Stevensons first arrive at their home, there are no services due to a mix-up. Because the Brewers aren’t insane enough, they invite the Stevensons to stay with them. Abby and Anna pack a night’s clothes, although probably in darkness. Anna and Kristy think it’s hilarious that Abby shows up to breakfast in a striped shirt and clashing paisley skirt. She should have gone ahead and worn it to school, because then Claudia would have gotten the idea and have been wearing a worse version of it next week. (And of course, it would have looked great on her.)

After half a day, some of the kids (boys) already know Abby (and have a nickname for her). Kristy suggests that sports isn’t Abby’s only skill. Not only is this rude—and presumptuous—but there’s almost a hint of jealousy in that arena, too. I wouldn’t have been bothered by this nearly as much if the guys had had at least one girl with them, so that Kristy was suggesting that Abby made friends easily…rather than that she was easy. (I do find it interesting that Abby’s naturally popular with the opposite sex but she’s not particularly interested in them.)

Real book: Mozart Season. I remember reading that when I was about eleven or so.

Before the Krushers became the Diapers, they beat the Bashers in game one of the ‘world series.’ In game two, they have their new uniforms. Several of them are okay with the outfits saying Diapers, but all the older kids (sans Jackie) hate them. Linny says his dog peed on his, while several of the kids show up with their jerseys inside out. Linny actually almost gets into a fist fight with the members of the opposite team. (Hey! That’s usually Haley’s job…at least to threaten fist fights.)

Abby actually corrects Mr. Davis when he calls Hannie at third baseman. He seems bewildered by the political correctness, but it shuts him up for a moment. Before that, he’d insulted Patsy, Jake, and Hannie.

Later she calls him on the horrible way he talks to the kids and tells him off enough to get Kristy on board. She sends back his supplies and makes Abby assistant coach instead.

Kristy calls Bart a dork. Look ‘dork’ up in the dictionary sometime.

The Krushers Quartet, Druscilla’s band, makes its debut in the last game of the World Series and becomes Kristy’s secret weapon. They’re so bad that the Bashers are distracted. (After the series is over, they change their name to Druscilla and the Dynamos.)

So my book was previously owned by a seventh grader named Sylvia who attended FOJH. (That would likely be Fort Osage Junior High, which no longer exists. Kids in that district now attend Osage Trail Middle School.)

Outfits:

Abby: U4ME t-shirt, baggy plaid shorts; striped shirt with paisley skirt

Anna: khaki pants, sandals, short-sleeved button down shirt

Next: Mystery #22. Hot dog!