“Did a dinosaur follow you to school and sit on them?” BSC Special Edition Reader’s Request: Logan’s Story (1993)

This story gets the special distinction of being the only book in the whole series I’m going to refer to as both Extra Stupid and Extra Awesome.

Logan makes friends with a guy named T-Jam who is part of this gang of bad boys (cleverly named the Badd Boyz). They steal from lockers and shoplift at local stores. He starts hanging out with them and defending them to Mary Anne and company. Because he’s so clean cut, the Badd Boyz use him as a distraction to help them steal. Eventually, re catches on, so they blackmail and threaten him. He finds tickets to the ‘concert of the year’ in his locker, which MA sees and thinks he bought for her. He finally tells the truth and turns the Badd Boyz in.

Meanwhile, the eight and nine year olds in town are being demonized by a bully named EJ. The not-so-clever-or-original twist? EJ is a girl.

Interesting Tidbits

The cover: Who are those kids supposed to be? And why isn’t the one kid playing?

Also, the tagline says, “Is Logan too cool for babysitting?” Maybe Logan’s not cool enough for babysitting.

Apparently, breakfast at the Bruno house is chaos personified, with his parents yelling and his siblings arguing. Sounds rather normal to me, actually, but what do I know? My mom used to leave before I got up in the morning and my dad didn’t get up until after I left.

The first few pages of this book are chock full of awesome. First Logan refers to himself as Draculogan (which is totally how I will now refer to him for the rest of time. Or maybe just the rest of my lunch break at work.)

Then he says he’s a jock but not a stereotypical jock who can’t talk and walk at the same time and who carries a football to bed. I totally thought of Kevin from Daria, who is rarely ever seen without his football pads and pigskin, even when he’s wearing a suit. This photo was the closest I could find:

Finally, he describes his looks and says MA says he looks like Cam Geary (so we know a little of what he looks like…but since Cam Geary doesn’t exist, I can pretend he’s 4’4” and has orange hair!) Logan doesn’t want us to think he looks like Garth from Wayne’s World, which makes me laugh for so many different reasons. Party on, Logan. Party on, Mary Anne.

OMG! More dying of laughter: Nicky Cash, the subject of Mary Anne’s musical crush, used to be in a boy band called 2 Hot 4 U. He’s like a combination of Justin Bieber and one of the boys in 1Direction. He can’t really sing, but he’s cute, he can dance and he sings love songs. (Confession time: I actually kinda like 1Direction. Not enough to buy their albums or go to their concerts, but enough to know the lyrics to a couple of their songs and enjoy them. I can already feel the judging….I feel the same way about Taylor Swift, too.)

Oh, and Nicky Cash’s real name is Reginald Fenster.

The Badd Boyz (did Claudia name them?) members’ names: T-Jam (apparently, his real name is Theodore James), Skin, Ice Box, Butcher Boy, Jackhammer, G-man, D, Remo.

BSC Meetings = Nicky Cash Fan Club Convention, as Claudia, Dawn and Stacey are singing his songs when Logan shows up. Logan makes a point of saying how bad a singer Claudia is. I wonder if he has a problem with Dawn and Stacey’s singing? They must be decent singers, since they had roles in the play. He lets them know his feelings by howling like a dog while they sing.

Logan refers to Richard as Richard, which seems really wrong. I imagine he’d be the type to insist upon being called Mr. Spier by MA’s dates. (I’m picturing her imaginary future-husband having to call his father-in-law Mr. Spier and it’s really funny.) I just mean that Richard’s a little old-fashioned and traditional, and having non-related teenagers call him by last name seems more his style.

What I love is that they talk about how awkward BSC meetings are with Logan around, but this one makes the meeting seem extra fun. (I’m starting to be able to pick out which books are written by certain ghost writers, simply because they have distinctive styles. Peter Lerangis, who wrote this one, likes to have lots of joking around and food throwing.) Claudia answers the phone with a mouthful of chocolate and says ‘hewwo’ instead of hello, so Logan does an Elmer Fudd imitation of her babysitting job.

Logan’s dad once bought tofu because he thought it was cheese, and Logan says that’s as close to health food as his family gets. He also apparently thinks Dawn would fight a squirrel for an acorn. That’s a fight I’d like to see, because the squirrel would win. As someone who went to a college that almost changed their mascot to the Fighting Squirrels for good reason, I can attest that some squirrels are scary and potentially lethal.

Logan doesn’t understand why Shannon wears black eyeliner (or as he calls it, ‘outliner’) around her blue eyes. For some reason, when he points it out, I’m picturing Shannon wearing the whole ‘heroin chic’ look that went into fashion a few years later, with thick, heavy eyeliner that’s supposed to make you look like you have dark circles under your eyes, like a drug addict.

Dawn is apparently eating a bag of hay at the meeting. Can Draculogan narrate more of these stories? I kinda love him.

You know the Badd Boyz are bad because they say stuff like yo and ‘tsup. Oh, and they skip out during lunch and eat pizza in the parking lot.

Apparently, ‘crispy’ is a Badd Boy compliment.

Claudia spelling! She was siting for the twines, Maralyn and Caralyn, by the way. Twise, imposable (impossible), eigth, migth. She also uses ben for been.

The twins lost their lunches (before they were eaten!) to the bully, EJ, so they’re starving when they get home. Claudia’s suggestion on what happened to the lunches is the title quote. She also gets the twins trying to think of (serious) ways to deal with a bully, which turns into a conversation about dropping EJ in the sewer or bringing bombs to school.

Stacey says that, between the thieves at school and the bully at the elementary school, there’s a lot of bad karma going around. Claudia thinks she said bad caramel. You hear what you want to hear, I guess. (Claud makes herself feel better after her sitting job by finding and eating some good caramels.)

I’m beginning to understand the whole Dawn-is-an-individual thing that’s so rampant in this series because of something Logan says in this book. He admires the Badd Boyz for their ‘independence’ because they don’t care what others think of them and aren’t afraid of anyone. But they travel in a gang/pack and aren’t really independent. They’re as much of a clique as the other kids in school; they’re just counterculture rather than mainstream culture. But these kids are supposed to be middle schoolers. When you’re 13, being counterculture does seem to mean independence and individuality, even when you’re being as much of a follower and are as insecure as everyone else. Maybe I’ll stop being as hard on Dawn. Maybe.

Logan’s pretty clueless. Now maybe I’m saying this because I’m an adult, or because I work in loss prevention (or because I’d read the book before), but it was completely obvious that T-Jam (who goes with Logan when he buys the Nicky Cash CD for Mary Anne) is a distraction so that his two friends can shoplift. He keeps pointing the store owner away from the direction his friends are in by asking about jazz CDs.

Oh, and T-Jam ‘compliments’ Logan by telling him he’s ‘quality.’ Mary Anne thinks it sounds like a word you’d use on an appliance, not a person.

Ooh, there’s a spelling mistake! Memberes instead of members.

Logan suggests recruiting EJ to be a member of the Badd Boyz.

After Logan inadvertently helps the Badd Boyz steal a shipment of Nicky Cash CDs, he threatens to tell, so T-Jam turns the tables by threatening Mary Anne. He realizes he’s being blackmailed. (Logan’s also afraid of the loss of reputation and potential legal consequences involved in telling the truth.) They buy his silence with Nicky Cash concert tickets (stolen, natch). Logan wants to return them, but MA sees them before he has a chance.

This would make a really bad afterschool special, which is, of course, the best kind.

I’d join the We Hate EJ Club, but only if it has a secret handshake.

The club gathers together to have a “stragedy” session on how to deal with EJ. They also deal with the triplets, who (well, at least Adam and Jordan) keep taunting the younger kids about EJ. Apparently, the fact that EJ is a girl is highly embarrassing, not just to Nicky, Buddy and the Hobart boys (the only boys at the “stragedy” session) but to all the kids.

Ha ha ha! The Badd Boyz have started calling Logan Ken Doll. It’s appropriate. It’s also what makes him decide to make sure the gang gets caught stealing.

Logan and MA are going for a candlelight dinner before the concert…and Charlie agrees to drop them off. (He is just too nice.) Kristy: “Charlie, have you ever tasted candlelight? It’s magnificent.”

Logan doesn’t tell MA the truth about the tickets until she mentions that some seventh grader had her tickets stolen. Suddenly the victim of the crime becomes real and he can’t go through with it anymore. MA is understandably mad…not because they aren’t going to the concert, but because he didn’t just tell her all this (and return the tickets) right away.

Here’s my REAL question at this point: Why did this seventh grader have her tickets at school anyway? 1. They’re not cheap and the concert’s sold out. 2. The thefts from lockers is one of the biggest topics going around school. I’m not blaming the victim, but if she had used common sense, she wouldn’t have been in this spot in the first place.

Logan’s dad refers to the Badd Boyz as “fellows.” And I laughed for absolutely no reason.

Kerry starts playing the Nicky Cash CD early the morning after Logan was supposed to go to the concert:

            Mr. Bruno: This is what you were going to hear last night?

            Logan: Pretty terrible, huh?

Even though it is the oldest BSC joke ever, I always laugh when Logan orders food when Kristy calls the meeting to order.

“Flourless, yeastless, sugarless, and probably tasteless ‘walnut fudgie bars.’” I wish those were real, because they sound like something I could actually eat. Later, Dawn threatens to feed one to Logan when he’s a smart aleck.

Dawn points out that it’s sexist to assume that a bully is a boy. Honestly, in my experience, girl bullies are worse than boy bullies. I used to teach school at a locked facility with kids that were basically the worst of the worst, and we all used to say we’d rather have a room full of boys than a room full of girls. The girls would stoop to any level and they fought viciously.

Outfits

Mary Anne: sequined “shirt and pants that are attached.” EWWWWWWW! I think I’ll throw up now, if that’s okay with y’all.

Next week: We’ll celebrate the holidays with some counterfeit money (and another extra stupid plotline): Mystery #10 Stacey and the Mystery Money

“There’s probably just rice cakes and low-fat frozen yogurt. Alfalfa flavor.” BSC Reader’s Request: Logan’s Story (1992)

“It’s all right, ‘cuz I’m Saved by the Bell!” It’s time for the first story from our favorite babysitting Zack Morris lookalike! If Logan starts hanging out with a guy named Screech and using a giant cell phone when he hits high school, this will all start to make sense.

So Logan’s all busy playing football and trying out for track…aka, being a stereotypical jock. Then Jeff’s appendix blows up (my words, not the book’s) and Dawn heads to CA for a ridiculously long time to stay with him while he gets better. The BSC expects Logan to take her place and even miss practice to take sitting jobs. Meanwhile, Logan’s teammates (especially this one dumbass who goes by King) keep teasing him for being girly. Things come to a head at the Health Fair, when Logan loses Johnny Hobart and King finds him. Logan quits the BSC and figures out that if he stops responding to the teasing it will stop. After a couple weeks, he rejoins as an associate member and makes the track team.

Interesting tidbits.

Let’s start with the cover. Poor Johnny. He’s only four, so I’m going to assume he didn’t pick out his own clothes. He kinda looks like a really bad clown. (Note to Mrs. Hobart: Don’t dress your redheaded boys in red. It looks awful.) Why is King wearing his football uniform to the Health Fair? He’s like Kevin from Daria, who almost never takes off his shoulder pads even when he’s in class.

Oh, and if you forget they’re at the Health Fair, there’s a sign in the background that says “HEALTH FAIR”, quotes included.

I think it’s apropos that Peter Lerangis wrote this one. I mean, Logan’s (sorta) a guy.

One of the first things Logan tells us that he’s a guy, in fact. On page two. It’s pointed out for two reasons: 1) It’s crucial to the story, supposedly. (I guess this is true, because chances are SMS would not let a girl on the football team or stuff like that.*) 2) People can’t always tell from a name like Logan. That’s even more true these days.

I never thought of Austin Bentley being named after two cars. I guess that’s because I don’t generally think about cars beyond, “How much longer until I need to fill my gas tank?” (Austin, though, like Logan, has one of those ‘new’ names that became popular after these books came out. I wonder how many girls read these books and then named their sons Logan. Scary thought.)

BLECH! Listening to Logan talk about how Mary Anne’s smile seeps into his chest and spreads through him like a magic potion…gross. I suddenly feel better about my own romantic scenes. It's schlock.

You can grill tofu, Logan. Just wrap it in foil after you marinate it. (I love that I’m giving fictional characters cooking advice.)

Kristy calls Sharon Mrs. Schafer instead of Mrs. Spier. (You’d think Logan would know her as Sharon, though, since that’s what MA calls her.)

I want to state for the record that I think it’s really unfair of the BSC members to ask Logan to miss practice for sitting jobs. I think that he should only have to do that if everyone else has to miss all of their other responsibilities, like art class and Krushers practice and ballet practice.

Why in the heck are track tryouts during football season? Isn’t there a whole other season in between there? (Not to mention that my middle and high school took every interested student as members on the track team. Yeah, you might not make all the events you wanted to get into, but you could go to all the practices. Now, my school was pretty tiny, but I think that’s pretty common.)

There’s this whole weird thing where Stacey tries to convince everyone to donate blood (when they’re old enough.) I donated blood once…I didn’t weigh enough when I was seventeen and I tried—wish I still had that problem—and now they won’t let me donate in case I have mad cow disease. I’mnot kidding on that part. I’m not sure if I was so determined to donate because my dad has donated every three months for the past thirty-some years (even though he could have mad cow disease too) or because Stacey told me to do it. Hmmm… (Just kidding. I’m sure it was all Stacey.)

Mathew Hobart is my new favorite sittee. (I have a new favorite about every third book or so.) He, Logan and Johnny are playing camping…a game I used to play ALL THE TIME in my basement with a card table, bed sheets and a sleeping bag. He licks his finger and puts it to the wind and uses that to ‘tell time.’ Then he fends off Johnny’s imaginary bear by giving him a chair to sit in and Teddy Grahams to eat.

Okay, let’s discuss some more logic here. I know that a ruptured appendix is serious and can possibly be fatal. I can understand Sharon and Dawn going to California to see Jeff in the hospital and spend time with him. But even if Sharon can get that time off work (which she totally could these days, thanks to FMLA), is it really smart for Dawn to miss that much school? Fly the girl out to see her brother, then get her back home once she’s had a chance to tell him she loves him even though he’s a pest.

Also, Mary Anne seems to be more upset that Dawn’s upset than because Jeff nearly died. I can see the logic in that, but it kinda contradicts what she said about loving him a couple weeks ago…

I’m disappointed in the lack of outfits. Oh, they’re there, but Logan-the-guy doesn’t go into details and hyphenates the way the girls do. And he doesn’t know what Laura Ashley is.

Who knew Jenny P. was friends with Leonardo’s character from Titanic? They both yell, “I’m the king of the world!”

I don’t have any older brothers or sisters, so someone set me straight. Would whether Mallory and Ben are friends or dating really be that interesting to James, Mathew and Johnny (who, remember, are 8, 6, and 4)? I guess I could see it from the point of view of siblings like to fight over anything and everything…

Oh, aren’t the members of the track team all from Clever-Clever Land? They call Logan Lois because they catch him babysitting, so he must be a girl.

Heh. The football coach pats Logan on the back and my overactive imagination was picturing more of a butt pat. Here’s the title of the third, never-published Logan book: Logan and the Sexual Abuse Nightmare.

Not even going to go into the torture Mal and Jessi had trying to get the Pikes to go to the Health Fair, partly because I don’t blame them. It sounds boring to me, too. It is, however, where the title quote comes from.

I love this: Kristy asks a young woman if she’s a babysitter because she’s looking at the BSC booth at the health fair. Instead, the woman says she’s pregnant. MA asks her how she gets away with blurting stuff out like that. (Honestly, it wasn’t a bad thing she said. It’s not as if she asked the woman if she was pregnant when she really wasn’t. Besides, my mom used to babysit when I was young because she was a stay at home mom and wanted to make a little money, so it wasn’t that dumb a question.) Kristy responds: “What’s to get mad at? I’m lovable, funny, smart—” and at that moment Stacey walks up and finishes her sentence: “And conceited.” Even Charlotte has to laugh at that one.

Okay, here’s the “Why is King in his football gear” answer: he had come straight from practice. Eww. Showers are a pubescent boy’s friend.

Johnny is so offended that King tells Logan to take Johnny to the potty. He says he knows how to use the bathroom like a man and wants Logan to go get King so he can show him. I’d laugh if it weren’t the single most realistic moment in the whole book.

So Logan makes the track team while King and his other main tormentors don’t. But the coach tells them to try again in the spring. What kind of track team is this? I’m so confused. I really should know better than to try to put logic into a BSC book.

You know Jeff’s feeling better because he’s back to telling corny jokes.

Logan makes up with most of his friends because they think some of the BSC members are cute and want their phone numbers. One of them actually calls Claudia, but she thinks it’s a prank and hangs up.

Claudia actually hits Logan with a Frito bag. Don’t do it, Claudia! First, he’s not worth it. Second, you’ll break your Fritos.

Outfits

Mrs. P: silk dress

Jenny: Laura Ashley pajamas; brand new sweat suit

*My high school, circa 1998, wouldn’t let a ‘girl’ be a kicker on the football team. I use ‘girl’ in quotes because I knew when I met him back in 1991…when he was 9…that someday he’d make the transition to male. But back then, he had a clearly feminine name that his parents gave him when he was born with female genitalia. Anyhoo, I can’t imagine SMS being any more progressive than that, some 6 years earlier. It makes me wonder if, in this age of more tolerance for the LBGT community, if Logan would get as much flak for being a boy babysitter. I’m not suggesting that Logan’s gay because he babysits (although there’s some….um…interesting fanfic to that effect), just that most of the problems Logan has with babysitting involve the fact that many of his friends are sort of traditional.

I forgot to check what I'm blogging next week, so it's a surprise to us all!

“I was turning into a wonderful Mary Anne puddle.” BSC #10: Logan Likes Mary Anne (1988)

I would like to interrupt my regularly scheduled snark to bring you a link my sister shared with me on Facebook this weekend. I have nothing to do with it, but I absolutely love it: http://www.buzzfeed.com/summeranne/the-definitive-ranking-of-baby-sitters-club-cover-outfit?s

Now, where were we? The title of this one makes the plot fairly obvious. Logan likes Mary Anne. He’s a new boy in town, from the South, and he’s a babysitter! Wow! Even more exclamation-pointy (not a phrase, but not going to stop me from using it) is the fact that Mary Anne likes him at least as much as he likes her!! They go on a sitting job together, but meetings are too awkward, so they invent the position of associate member for him.

Meanwhile, he actually gets Mary Anne to go to a dance, where she hots herself up in an extremely memorable fashion and accidentally tosses a shoe. Then she runs out of her own birthday party and gets a cat. This was one of my absolute favorites as a kid, despite how stupid this brief summary makes it sound.

Interesting tidbits

Let’s get this out of the way. For the longest time, I had a crush on Logan as he’s shown on the cover here. I think a lot of readers did.

 

Also, Jackie Rodowsky totally looks like a girl…and like he’s got as big of a crush on Logan as Mary Anne does.

Wisdom on boys from MA: “Obviously, with a boy, you can’t talk about bras or cute guys you see on TV.” Honestly, I’d think thirteen year old boys would like hearing about girls’ bras. And you never know…you might find a really good guy friend who likes hearing about cute guys on television. (*cough* Ducky *cough*)

First day of school, and Mary Anne is already bitching about gym class. This must be because Mallory hasn’t joined the club yet. She also complains about smelling like gym all day long because she has it in the morning. A) Better than having it right after lunch, like I did in eighth grade. One girl vomited during wind sprints one day. B) Take a shower, then!

Mary Anne suggests that Claudia and Stacey used to sit with a different group of kids during seventh grade lunch because Kristy is immature and likes to talk about how disgusting the lunches are. Mushroom and cream sauce resembles glue; macaroni and cheese smells like steamed rubber in Turtle Wax. You’d think sitting with a bunch of boys would mean more of that, not less.

That said, the joining of all the older babysitters into one lunch table officially makes this the book where the BSC becomes a clique, who must do everything together, have all the same friends and have all the same opinions.

You’d think Kristy’s mom would get in trouble for doing all the BSC’s copying for them on her work copier…something they acknowledge in an off-hand way by suggesting they should pay her.

Here’s what I always wondered when I was a kid. Did Logan actually do a lot of babysitting back in Louisville, or does he just make that up as an excuse to go sit with the BSC? I mean, he tells stories about sitting, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t just get roped into a few jobs here or there.

How exactly does MA wear hoop earrings? (She’s also wearing earrings on the cover of the book.) Maybe this is before it was decided that she didn’t have pierced ears.

The first appearance of the Ohdners! (Allegedly. Didn’t they show up in an earlier story? I’m going to have to go back and double check…)

Mrs. Rodowsky is named Mariel, and she wants Logan and Mary Anne to call her by her first name.

I’d forgotten about this part, but once I started reading it, I remembered it clear as day. Logan sees a picture on the wall—a piece of artwork Jackie did that his parents framed. It’s a pretty standard kiddy picture of a house. Logan’s like, “We have the same one in my house. I thought it was the original.”

Claudia spelling time! Hav, nise, siting (sitting), Gabie, comuty (community), droped, broght. She also uses bake for back.

I might have mentioned before that, when I read these books as a kid, I’d never seen Star Wars. I totally did not get the name Chewbacca or how appropriate it was for that dog.

I’m not usually much of one for shaggy dog stories, but there’s definitely some humor to Chewy (who got loose from Claudia and ran amok through the neighborhood) stealing traffic cone after traffic cone.

Okay, gang, let’s re-wind. (Sorry. Total Ghostwriter flashback.) Shy, quiet Charlotte Johanssen is seriously suggesting that shy, quiet Mary Anne would like a surprise party? Does she have no empathy?

I’ve always had a hard time believing that Richard, who less than a year ago was a total parenting hard ass, would agree to let Mary Anne go on a date with a boy he’d never met. I even thought that when I was ten….

Oh, heck yes! When I think of BSC fashion, I think of two things. One is the awesome outfit Claudia wore back in #2 that had clocks all over the tights. The second one is Mary Anne’s dance outfit, described in full below. Just say the words “skirt with cities on it” to any BSC fan and they know exactly what you’re talking about.

I also have a hard time believing this one: Kristy says that all the girls should all go to Mary Anne’s to help her get ready for the dance. In the later books, if that has to happen, they let the answering machine get the calls, but this is 1988. Instead (and this is the part I have a hard time with) she pays Janine a couple dollars to answer the phone. A) Kristy is okay with this from a business perspective? B) Stacey is okay with that from a financial perspective? C) Claudia is okay with that from a sisterly perspective? And biggest of all D) Why would Janine agree to that? (I keep typing okay is oaky, which spell check tells me is actually a word.)

Dawn, spending the night at Kristy’s? I’m surprised Kristy actually called Dawn. I know MA was busy, but were Claudia and Stacey busy too? (Sorry, that’s actually kind of mean. But I think this is one of few times that we actually see just these two interacting.)

Okay, anyone here think that they need to explain how the game Memory is played? Does anyone in the universe NOT know how to play Memory? Raise your hand and I’ll stop. (I remember playing TONS of Memory when I was really super young, because it was one game all three of us kids could play together.)

Aww, foreshadowing to #11 and the death of Louie. Legitimately sad.

Logan likes Meatballs. And spends nearly ten minutes explaining the plot of it to Mary Anne. Does he maybe have Asperger’s too? (All the Aspies I know—myself included—can give you way more details on their favorite topics than you’d ever want to know.)

I don’t know why I found this humorous: When Mary Anne tries to convince her dad to let her get a cat, he asks what they would do if they went on vacation. She says, “Get Mallory Pike to come over and feed it?” Now, she could have said Claudia, or been vague and said a neighbor, but she singles Mallory out. Mallory Pike, Cat Sitter.

Dawn ate birthday cake! Shocking! (Of course, she then complains that about the sugar in it.)

Outfits

Dawn: hot pink shorts, white tank top, island print shirt (MA says it is “snappy”); green and white sweater, stretchy green pants

Mary Anne: bright vest over white blouse; white skirt with city names and sketches of landmarks on it in pink and blue; pink shirt and sweater; white shoes with matching pink and blue

Claudia: tight black pants; white shirt with BEPOP on it; floppy blue bow in her hair

Stacey: white t-shirt, hot pink jumpsuit

Kristy: white turtleneck, pink sweater (Kristy in pink = wrong), jeans

New characters

The Ohdners, no names or ages, but they have two girls

Jackie Rodowsky (seven)—33

Logan Bruno (thirteen)—39

The Morgans, no names or ages, but they have four boys

Next week: is going to be like pulling teeth. I don’t think I’ve EVER managed to read the entire book for next week’s story. I may have to break it up in to three chapter segments (instead of my usual five chapter segments) but I will finish #12 Claudia and the New Girl. It will happen.

"It was the same way a person might say liver." BSC Forever Friends # 3: Mary Anne's Big Breakup (1999)

I know a lot of people don't consider the Forever Friends books to be a "real" part of the series. I look at it this way: They exist. There's not many of them, and they're pretty stupid over all. But they are part of the canon. It's almost like the authors tried to pretend that books 5-131 (not to mention all the mysteries, super specials and super mysteries) never happened. Almost.

So, without ruining the plot of #131 too much, Mary Anne's house has burned down. She feels like Logan is always taking charge and being too bossy. So she dumps him (on page 24!) again. She spends a lot of time crying and second guessing herself. Eventually, after talking to Dawn and Claudia, she realizes she needs to be more confident in her choices and makes a decision to stop being so agreeable just to make others happy.

"Interesting" Tidbits

The FF book covers use real girls to portray the BSC members, and they look pretty much the way you'd expect. Mary Anne's hair is long again (probably because her shorter hair style went out of style), she's got long bangs and she wears conservative clothes. The inside of the book describes the characters--it's sort of a third person chapter two of the earlier books. The descriptors are extremely cheesy: "Even though she's the shortest person in the eighth grade, she lives large." "Claudia knows the regular rules don't apply when you have art in your heart!" They also describe Stacey as confident, smart and thoughtful. Huh.

 

Logan made photocopies of all the letters and cards MA sent him and gave the copies back to her. Who does that? Even if she did lose all his letters to her in the fire.

Awww. MA says she feels like she's lost her mother entirely, now that all her pictures and mementos of her are gone.

Mistake! Sharon says she's "overdo" for a haircut.

Claudia and Stacey are fighting over a boy. I haven't read that one, so I'm not sure the actual details. The guy's name is Jeremy and he's new in school.

Mary Anne keeps the club record book under Claudia's bed. How does it not get eaten by the dust bunnies and scuzz?

When MA tells the other girls at the meeting that she's thinking of breaking up with Logan, they're all, "But I thought you'd be together forever!" Which is realistic for thirteen year olds. I remember that one couple that dated for more than a year in my middle school that we'd felt that way about. (He's married with kids now; she's a lesbian.)

Hallelujah! Mary Anne makes a decision without consulting Logan and her friends. She does have a spine! (Of course, that only lasts about 15 pages before she starts doubting herself.)

Logan cries when MA breaks up with him. He sarcastically asks if she wants to break up, and is totally shocked when she says yes.

Janine comes in while Mary Anne is crying in Claudia's bedroom, and she's really sweet. She asks MA if she's okay, and then gives her encouragement.

Mary Anne is surprised when her dad notices something is wrong with her, and even more so when he says he's noticed her "lack of enthusiasm" for Logan recently.

Do we really have to be told that Stoneybrook Middle School is called SMS for short? That's pretty standard.

Ahh consistency. MA says that she has to go past where her house burned down to get to Logan's house "on Burnt Hill Road." It's established that both of those houses are on that street.

Mary Anne babysits Kerry and Hunter post-breakup. In order to explain things to them, MA tells them she still likes Logan and them, but she isn't dating Logan any more. Logan comes home and Kerry tells him MA still likes him. Mary Anne ends up running out and I could only think two things. 1. It was pretty mature of Mary Anne to take the job and deal with the angry little sibs. 2. She ran off without getting paid.

Mary Anne freaks out when one of Logan's friends asks her to the fall dance...mostly because Logan's other friends are all pretending she doesn't exist.

My favorite BSC boy, Pete, has a thing for Mary Anne; he asks if she's dating anyone else, and tells Emily that MA won't be single for long because she's pretty and nice. This makes me laugh because he's been on dates with Stacey, Claudia and Dawn in the past. Who's next, Kristy?

Kristy and Logan are hanging out and laughing. When Kristy puts her hand on Logan's arm, MA worries they'll start dating...and that she'll lose Kristy as a friend over it.

Dave, Logan's friend who asked MA out, tells her a joke about a frog trying to get a bank loan. Is it sad that I want to know what the joke was?

Richard, Sharon and Mary Anne go with the contractors to check out the plans for the new house they're building. One of the contractors is called Ellice. At first I was reading that as Ellis, until I realized she was a woman. I guess it's pronounced like Elise?

Ellice gives MA some good advice: she tells her not to limit herself and box in her thinking.

Heh heh heh. Mary Anne goes apple picking with the Brewer/Thomas crew. Karen mentions that Kristy told them MA and Logan broke up, and Andrew adds, "Yeah, she says you're crazy." Leave it to a four-year-old to repeat exactly what you don't want them to repeat.

Karen gets stuck in a tree. They should have left her there.

Instead of going to the dance, Mary Anne stays home alone and watches movies. She rejects a bunch of movies because of romance or Logan memories. These include: Fly Away Home, Sleepless in Seattle, and Paulie. Logan calls and, instead of mentioning a specific movie, he says he rented "the Robin Williams movie" that just came out on video.

Despite the fact that Logan usually hasn't been allowed into the Spier house when no adults are home, MA says her parents won't mind that Logan came over to watch the movie.

Dawn tells Mary Anne that she's always defined herself by her relationships: Daddy's little girl, BSC member, Logan's girlfriend. While this is true, and Mary Anne needs to hear it, it's totally ruined by MA telling Dawn, "I may not be as much as an individual as you are..." (Speaking of that, that's one thing I liked about the California Diaries--I've now read 14 out of the 15--is that Dawn actually is the individual they keep calling her. She thinks for herself instead of being all insecure and doing what everyone else expects of her.*) On the plus side, she tells Claudia that she's the only person she knows who's more of an individual that Dawn is. Which is actually more true.

Back to what Dawn says to MA. She tells her that she needs to figure out who she is without her friends or anyone--just Mary Anne. She tells her she's busting out and becoming herself, and that it's a good thing. If I hadn't read the California Diaries, I'd find her smug and annoying saying this. But really, she's telling the truth.
Outfits
Stacey: fuzzy aqua sweater

Claudia: white painter's overalls covered in daisies

*If anyone was wondering, I've read all the Ducky books, and although they never say he's gay, he's totally gay! Sunny kisses him and he panics and runs off. He says it's like kissing his sister and he's not "into her." Dawn tells him she's not surprised that he's not into Sunny. Made me laugh. Dawn apparently has good gaydar.

"There aren't any tats here." BSC #46 Mary Anne Misses Logan (1991)

My local library's being lame and slacking off in the Logan department. I do have a copy of Logan's Story on the way, but it's coming from a library branch I've never even heard of before, so I will have to chronicle that one next week. I was faced with three Logan related choices that were in-house at my (second-closest) library branch. Given that two of them related to breaking up with Logan, I skipped one of those. The other, I'll blog in a couple of weeks, if I don't locate Logan Bruno, Boy Baby-sitter. But this one was pretty much a gimme.

This was one of my all-time favorites as a kid. I remembered the vast majority of the story before I even opened it, from the Cokie goodness to the "resolution" of the Toilet Monster story. I think I liked it so much because I was so sure Logan and Mary Anne would be together forever and this helped with that illusion. I read it so much I nearly wore my cover off. It was the second-most worn looking book in my collection--right after #2, but I dropped that one in the bathtub and it was missing a half-dozen pages.

Anyhoo....the main idea of this plot should be pretty obvious from the brilliantly awesome title. Mary Anne and Logan broke up five books ago, and any cojones MA gained in dumping the dead weight have left. She's paired up in a school author project with Logan, Cokie and Pete Black. She freaks out, especially since Logan and Cokie are going out and slacking on the project. Eventually, she and Logan talk, Logan does his part of the project, Cokie looks like an idiot in front of their author and MA and Logan get back together.

In the B-plot, the Korman children have totally overactive imaginations and create a Toilet Monster...then start believing it really exists.

Interesting tidbits

I loved this cover growing up. It features Mary Anne, Kristy, Claudia (wearing a fedora!!!) and, I think, Stacey, roller skating and having fun. And while I fail to see what it has to do with missing Logan (to me, it makes hanging out without a guy look like a great time), it was basically representative of what I thought my teen years would be like. (This copy is one of the re-covers from the late 90s, so it has the pictures down the left hand side. It is also a bright blue...I am fairly certain my childhood copy from 1991 was not blue. I think it was pink.)

 

The copy from the library is a large-print edition. Is it sad that I really enjoy the huge print?

If you couldn't tell the plot of this book from the title, the first line is, "I missed Logan."

Tigger goes crazy and starts tearing around the living room. I happen to know an insane gray tabby cat who does this as often as not. We call it being on kitty crack. (This same insane cat got his rabies shot earlier today and purred and licked the vet while it was happening.)

The Korman kids always have hotdogs when there are babysitters...except I remember in another story where one of the BSC members is serving them fish sticks (to the ghostwriter's credit, one of the kids asks if they're having hotdogs in that one.)

MA uses "like" in several sentences in the style of a Valley girl. "Skylar has, like, eight teeth."

MA describes the Korman house, when owned by the Delaneys', as ostentatious, and then tells the reader to go look it up. Heh heh.

MA starts the Toilet Monster shit by suggesting that if the Kormans had a cat, a Cat Monster would get it. Bill and Melody start suggesting everything has a monster attached to it, at first as a joke.

Jessi tells the world's oldest, stupidest jokes at a club meeting, while Stacey tells Claudia she looks like she's having a daymare.

Mary Anne says she likes school. *nerd!*

The girls are eating beef bourguinon for school lunch, and it's Dawn who gives them the correct pronunciation.

List of authors the BSC are excited they might get to study: Lois Lowry, Madeleine L'Engle, Paul Zindel, Paula Danziger, Judy Blume, Robert Cormier, and fake author Megan Rinehart (whom MA is assigned).

Kristy thinks it would be funny if Alan were assigned to read Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret because of all the "bra stuff" in it. But that book is full of Margaret and her friends wishing for their periods, which should be way more embarrassing. But, it doesn't appear that periods even exist in the BSC-universe. No one ever has PMS or anything...wouldn't it have been great to get a book where one of them got her first period and was all crabby? (I'm picturing a Degrassi episode.)

MA's original group was Logan, Pete and Miranda Schillaber, one of the twins that MA and Kristy were friends with in the early books, before it was decided that BSC members could only be friends with BSC members.

I don't know why this seems so weird, but they refer to Skylar's room as the nursery.

Isn't Bill, at nine, a little too old to really believe in monsters?

Dawn takes Melody and Bill on a ghostbusting trip through the house, only she calls it a Monster Hunt. And of course, it doesn't help.

The teachers make an exception to the no-group-switching rule for Cokie, because she actually shows interest in an author, but I'm not sure how she did this. Later, she gets the author's name wrong and completely validates MA's theory that Cokie only wanted to switch groups so she could be near Logan.

I think this is the book where I started to really like Pete. He and MA really want the project to go well, but Cokie is sitting there being stupid and "hypnotizing" Logan, and they get nothing accomplished. Pete really steps up and he and MA attempt to salvage the project on their own.

MA retells the events of #17, but with one mistake: she says that Cokie wanted Logan and that is why she tried to make the BSC look stupid. Actually, it was her crony Grace who was interested in Logan in that book.

Heh. Cokie wants to know why each of the group members needs his own copy of the books--why can't they just read aloud to each other? Pete replies, "Yes, that's always been my dream...to read aloud to Logan."

Claudia spelling: didnt, beter, wold, ther, realy, shold, Melidy, theres, monstir, growel, monstur, dont, excape, fluch, frist, anoying, waht. She also uses thing instead of think.

Mary Anne muses on the gender of the toilet monster.

Bill asks if there's a law that babysitters have to fix hotdogs, and Claudia tells him it's rule 116 in the Babysitter's Handbook, under the section about hotdogs.

Bill wants to play the telephone game with Skylar because he thinks it would be funny. I once played telephone with my friend's little sister (Pye) when she was about that age. It was pretty humorous. Instead, they just teach her to say Cowabunga, dude!

Heh. After Bill and Melody decide the only way to be safe from the Toilet Monster is to be safely on their bed before the flushing stops, Skylar decides to play with the toilet flusher.

MA thinks Pete sounds like Kristy when he "adjourns" their group meeting after learning that Megan Rinehart will be at an assembly and they'll have to present their project in front of her. I wonder if this comment is what led them to have Pete be Kristy's main rival for eighth grade president.

Kristy's notebook entry is really self-congratulatory. She says that, in her first sitting job with the Kormans since the TM first appeared, she solved the problem. There's an unwritten OF COURSE in it. She does, at least, admit she's bragging...and she also happens to be wrong. (She mentions that she might become a child psychologist. In my long, winding, ridiculous fanfiction (which isn't actually written out in a readable fashion, so don't ask to see it), Mary Anne is a play therapist who nearly gets divorced from her husband because he wants kids and she wants to wait until she finishes her Ph.D. Kristy...yeah. She goes a completely different path.)

Cokie may not be much of a student, but she's never been shown to be stupid. Why she thought she could get away with copying, word for word, the information on the back cover of the book as her section of the report, I don't know.

MA can't wait until they're sixteen and can drive. She pictures Logan having a red convertible. I guess she doesn't realize most sixteen year olds drive crappy little old compact cars.

And of course, Logan and MA get back together until the Forever Friends series. I may be blogging that entry (FF #4 Mary Anne's Big Breakup) later this month. We'll see.

Outfits

Stacey: paisley-print leggings, giant shirt, black boots, silver jewelry (I remember when this was fashionable, but it never, ever looked good. On anyone!)
Mary Anne: red tights and a big blue shirt (I hope the tights were at least opaque and the shirt was ass-covering.)

New Characters

Bill, Melody and Skylar Korman (9, 7, and 1)--31, 29 and 23

"You sure know a lot about pinkeye." BSC Super Special #2: Babysitter's Summer Vacation (1989)

Until I'm able to get ahold of the two Logan Reader's Request books, we're starting with super specials with at least one Logan chapter in them. This kinda limits things a bit, as he only shows up in some of them.

There's always some kooky gimmick as to why a super special gets written. In this one, Stacey's living in NYC and her Stoneybrook friends convince her she has to come be a camp counselor with them, so she convinces them they have to write in her journal. All seven BSC members and a number of sitting charges head off to the girls' camp, while Logan and an equal number of charges head to the boys' camp.

Of course, everyone has their own stories:

Kristy: lets her other CITs make her over. Also has to deal with a very homesick Charlotte

Claudia: falls in LUV with a boy CIT after seeing him for about two minutes
Mary Anne: to impress her co-CIT, she tries to sneak over to the boys' side of the lake. She gets caught but wins the other CITs' respect
Stacey: gets poison ivy and about thirty thousand other things and spends a large amount of time in the infirmary
Dawn: goes on an overnight with her girls and gets lost. A bookish camper helps them find their way home
Mal and Jessi: deal with racist campers, but make most of them see the light in a very cheesy, afterschool-special manner
Logan: starts a food fight. The other CITs all think MA is a "feeb" until they actually meet her and lay off

Interesting tidbits

This book is dedicated to Jean, Barry and Bonkie. And I...just don't want to know.

Stacey addresses a letter to her parents as Mr. and Mrs. Edward McGill. I need to start keeping a database to keep track of these things, as I think he's had a different name in a different book.

Most of the campers at Camp Mohawk are only going to be at camp for 2 weeks. I wonder how much they had to pay for all the required camp clothing. I can see having uniforms for a camp where children spend the whole summer, but otherwise, it's pretty ridiculous.

Stacey says she didn't join in the conversation going on around her on the bus because she's not that bold. But she's not really shy either, and it's not as if the girls on the bus should consider their conversation to be private.

Different ways the lake name is spelled throughout the book: Dekanawida (the correct name, I believe--used by Kristy, Stacey and Randi), Dekadonka,  Dekanunga (Claudia), Dukakis, Deckasaga, Duckanawooda (Mary Anne),  Dekadeka (Logan), and Dekadoo (Kristy). In the epilogue, Stacey calls it Lake Whatever.

I'll have to check some other books, but I feel like normally, they don't use zip codes when they write letters. But in this one, Stacey's zip is 10000 while Stoneybrook's is 06800. Palo City is 92800.

Real movies: Meatballs and the Parent Trap. Both about camp, of course.

This book occurs after Emily Michelle is adopted but shortly before Mimi dies. So far, this is the only super special I've been able to exactly place.

When Mimi passes away, they use Mimi as her name in the obituary. Yet Claudia addresses a letter to Mimi with Mrs. L. Yamamoto.

Claudia spelling: havnt (twice), realy (twice), asinments (assignments), whos (who's), Bradock (Braddock), tonigt. She also says who instead of how, your instead of you're, to instead of too, and hole instead of whole.

Cabin assignments: Mal and Jessi are in the same eleven year old cabin; Dawn is on the other side with the other eleven year olds. Claudia has nine year olds (including Vanessa and Haley); Mary Anne, seven year olds (including Margo and Nancy Dawes, Karen's friend); Kristy, eight year olds (including Charlotte and Becca) and Stacey, six year olds (including Karen.) Logan's seven year olds include Jackie R., Buddy (who is usually eight) and Matt Braddock--because Logan knows a little sign language.

Of course, keeping with super special #1, Claudia steps on her fellow CIT, Sally, every time she gets off the top bunk. They should probably start restricting her to the bottom.

Somehow, Jessi's dad is named Alex in this one. Yet, his son is John Philip Jr. Someone needed to give the people who do the "letters" the chapter 2 backstory. (Although, it's actually pretty much missing in this one. We don't get to learn how the club started or hear about everyone's positions or crazy families. That comes out more organically.)

Jessi ends her letter WBS, and then has to explain that means write back soon.

Real books, all of them about horseys: Misty of Chincoteague; Stormy, Misty's Foal; A Morgan for Melinda; and Impossible Charley.

Mary Anne draws a picture of Tigger on her letter. It's better than the picture of Tigger in super special #12...it is truly awful. (I'm trying to track down a picture of it online.)

MA is always waaaaaay too worried about who is sophisticated.

Dawn says her co-CIT Amy went to Camp Mohawk last year. I'm trying to puzzle this one out. When Mallory and Jessi say they want to be CITs, they're told CITs must be thirteen. Yet the eleven year olds are the oldest campers. As a kid, I remember thinking that twelve year olds were just out of luck, but Amy must have been at camp the year before somehow.

Dawn's caught a case of MA's sophisticated sickness. She mentions that her camper Freddie is more sophisticated than the other girls, and knows about things "such as fur storage and dining al fresco." Fur storage? Really? (Later in the series, Dawn would have started railing about fur being murder.)

Stacey is surprised when Karen gets all hyper at camp. But why? I would expect nothing less (more?) out of her.

One of Mallory and Jessi's cabin-mates calls them Oreos. It was the first (and really only) time I'd ever heard that term. And of course, the girl used it wrong...unless she's suggesting Mal is like an inside-out Oreo. Double the cream, one cookie? Hmmm....

Kristy says she looked her name up in a baby name book once and couldn't find it. I don't even know why she really would need to look it up. Kristin is pretty clearly a version of Christina, and it's pretty obvious that that relates in some way to Christ. (Or maybe it's not so obvious and I've just too much time looking at baby name books. This is a very distinct possibility.)

Kristy realizes that all the other CITs are wearing bras, while she isn't. I know I've said it before, but even flat chested girls usually get a bra by this age. Mostly because they have to change for gym class and it would be embarrassing to wear an undershirt, or worse, nothing at all.

Kristy just sits there and lets her fellow CITs make her over verbally. She should have just told them to go to hell and that she was happy the way she was. (If only they could curse; then, all the dirty jokes told by one of Dawn's campers could actually be heard, too!)

This sounds wrong: "She was headed to the lake, wearing swim trunks and trying to walk in flippers." It's a girl. Shouldn't she be wearing a swim SUIT?

More Claudia misspellings: realy (twice, again!), riden, mosty, hav, potery, niddlework (needlework), imergine (imagine), com, Bradock (again). She also spells Mary Ann wrong, and the cream of the crop--she writes "Me just fine". I'm not sure exactly how to take that, whether she's saying, "Me, I'm just fine" or if she's really (realy) just supposed to be that stupid.

Oh my Lord (as Claudia would say). Claudia's postcard is addressed to Mr. and Mrs. John Kishi. I'm pretty certain another book establishes him as having a different name, first off; second, in different books, Jessi's dad, Mallory's dad and Claudia's dad have all been called John, while Dawn's dad is Jack. Crazy.

They (of course) make fun of the camp food. Sally, Claudia's co-CIT, suggests that the boys eat the same food the girls do but don't care: "They'd happily eat pond scum and gorilla feet."

Mary Anne writes the world's cheesiest love letter to Logan, and then is so embarrassed when she's caught and the authorities actually GIVE the letter to Logan.

Hee hee! I'd totally forgotten about this part! When MA gets caught, she tells them not to kill her because she has a kitten at home that needs her, and she has a gun!

I think this one is actually consistent: Logan's dad's name is Lyman. I seem to remember that from a book just a short time ago.

In Logan's very first sentence, he calls Stacey's book (the book I'm reading) dumb. Very astute.

During the food fight, one kid sucks Coke through a straw and squirts it out. I spent four summers at camp, and we had to drink three cups of water at every meal before we could have any other liquid. And you wanted that water, because the only other choice was (chunky, watered-down) Kool-Aid.

Isn't it convenient? Both MA and Logan get in trouble (her for sneaking across the lake, him for the food fight). They both get banned from an activity for three days for it (and are soooooooo disappointed). And both their counselors tell them they did the same thing and got in trouble for it when they were CITS. Also, they're both counselors for seven year olds, which I didn't notice until later.

After Dawn's counselor has to go home, they leave Dawn in charge. Yes, there's an adult next door in the other half of the cabin, but really. It doesn't get any better though: the replacement counselor who arrives, Debra, is only fifteen. I don't know about 1989, but by 1997, you had to have an eighteen year old in any group of campers. I worked that summer with a 17 year old counselor, and any time we went anywhere, someone who was 18 or older had to come with us. Of course, the campers at this camp also go all over the place unescorted and can choose their own activities. No one under 16 was allowed to wander without an adult at my Girl Scout camps and our units all did activities together as a group.

When Stacey goes to the infirmary, she is convinced she has "everything". At various points she describes her illness as the plague and leprosy. She tells the nurse she has Lyme disease, allergies, dyspepsia and chicken pox. In reality, she's diagnosed with a horrible case of poison ivy, pinkeye, a cold, impetigo, and lots of insect bites.

Kristy thinks it's hilarious that Becca is so bad at dancing she knocked over a bunch of girls like bowling pins. This was apparently so funny that both Becca and another girl wet their pants.

Ahh, Claudia. In a post card to Janine, she asks (for the second time in this book) Who are you. (just like that, no question mark). More misspellings: boyfreind, sonds, Im', waht, certin, dont', i'l (like that, no capital), reprot. Also, no for know, others for other's. She also attempts to spell particular and dilemma before crossing them out. (I don't blame her; I had to have spell check help me solve dilemma.)

Claudia is thrilled when her mystery Asian boy turns out to be Japanese (she can tell by his last name, Yamakawa, which is distinctively Japanese) because she's sure her parents would like her to marry a Japanese man and have Japanese babies. At least she acknowledges that a) she doesn't even know this boy yet and b) she's only thirteen!

It's been a long time since I've seen Meatballs, but is it really the type of thing they'd show 13 year olds at a camp? If camp's anything like school, they'd probably show movies that are rated G.

Clumsy foreshadowing: Will's grandmother, who had always lived with his family, passed away last month.

Dawn actually address her postcard to her grandparents to "Granny and Pop-Pop Porter."

Dawn says she doesn't really know how to read a map, and she barely knows her left from her right. This must explain why she's usually the one to get horribly lost. (In this one and in SS #4.)

Dawn actually eats a hot dog!!!!!!!!

Mary Anne actually agrees to let the other CITs pierce her ears, but of course, they chicken out.

Kristy gets made over for the dance, and Logan thinks she looks great caked in makeup.

Yet more Claudia misspellings: draems (twice), isnt', realy (of course!), nigth, daced (danced...after she had just spelled it correctly, too!), matrial (material), alway, expreinces, bracking, abel, sclupture.

Claudia thinks Will is a funny name, for some reason.

Kristy says no one ate the veggie burgers at dinner. I bet Dawn did!

I think "feeb" is the BSC version of "retard." It's the insult to use when you don't have any good insults at your disposal. (When I used to teach school, I actually banned the kids from using the words "gay" and "retarded" and they got pretty good about correcting themselves and policing one another: "Ms. C. doesn't like that word. We don't use it.")

This book was back when diabetics used to test their urine instead of their blood.

Jessi writes a postcard to her cousin Keisha. She writes so much and her handwriting is so flowy that I had a hard time reading it. There's way more print on there than would fit on a standard postcard, that's for sure.

Mallory and Jessi's number they perform with Becca and Charlotte and Kristy's other campers is so preachy and silly. They made B & C twins and had the rest of the girls be neighbors who taunt them, until one girl makes friends with them, so all the rest do. Of course, this makes most of Jessi and Mal's cabin-mates apologize for their behavior.

Right before they leave, Mallory and her camping sisters have a happy reunion with Claire, who was too young for camp. Mallory points out it won't last: "We'll be fighting before we've even left the parking lot, and then Margo will puke in our Barf Bucket."

Why do they Capitalize Barf Bucket?

After the various people (the Pikes, the Brewer/Thomases) leave the girls' side of the camp, they go to the boys' side to pick up their sons. Does that mean that the boys' side doesn't have a parents' day activity, or that they do, and those families have to sit through another meal and another bunch of skits?

Final Claudia misspellings: Im', im' (in the same sentence, too), worryed, thinck, wasnt, waht, surprize, Wills (Will's), addres, dont', Stoneybrooke, writ, leter, thrid. Also, she doesn't capitalize Pike, uses no for know and bake for back. (Funniest part of the letter: she writes a P.S. stating that this is the third day in a row she's not worn something with a teepee (or as she writes, TP) on it.)

Epilogue: Stacey regularly exchanges Christmas cards with one of her campers. Claudia decided to keep up a relationship with Will. Kristy now occasionally wears mascara...when she thinks she might run into Bart. MA has decided to never, ever pierce her ears. Dawn enjoyed getting lost in the wilderness and stays close to Heather, the girl who led them back to safety.

I'd forgotten how old and bad AMM looked in her photo in the early books. She looks much younger and better in the late books, circa 1997 on. Must be better photo editing. Heh heh heh.

Outfits:

No real outfits in this one, because everyone is wearing their teepee clothes. However....

Mal and Jessi: armbands that say "junior CIT"

Randi: parrot earrings, friendship bracelet (book says "braided string bracelet," but whatever), bangle bracelets, beaded anklet spelling out her name, headband with a neon green bow

"Mohawk" Jo: a mohawk (duh) with half dyed red and half blue (at least until Mrs. Means sees her)

Will: "punk" hair that sticks up, black hightop sneakers

Logan: (best...outfit...ever!) teepee short, teepee polo, teepee sweater tied around shoulders, teepee socks, Reeboks, aftershave

Mary Anne: yellow ribbon in hair, yellow flower (as dictated by her ridiculous letter)

Kristy: tons of makeup, clip on earrings, barrettes, bracelet, Reeboks (not hers)

New Characters

Thirteen year old CITs: Sally, Gwen, Corinne, Randi, Faye, Julie, Amy, Joanne, Lauren, Izzy, Tansy, Will, Rick, John, Henry, Cliff, Jeremy, Miko (37)

Eleven year olds: Mary, Mary, Mandi, Maureen, Rachel, Shari, Freddie, Donna, Caryn (which, Dawn makes a point of saying, is pronounced Karen), Heather (35)

Nine year olds: Leeann, Brandy, Jayme, Gail (33)

Eight year olds: You actually don't get the names of any of Kristy's other campers. Sorry!

Seven year olds: Tara, Curtis, Russell, Thomas (aka T) (31)

Six year olds: Nonie, Valerie, Monique (30)