“What am I going to do with a silver doorknob?” BSC #126: The All-New Mallory Pike (1999)

Ahh, here we go. This book begins a change in the BSC. By this point, they must have realized that the series were coming to an end. The Friends Forever series narrowed the focus of the characters and the action. There were fewer characters—fewer sitters and fewer clients—and the plots were (mostly) more realistic. There were no more festivals, no more giant group activities. Just four girls, their friendships, their love lives, their homes and the occasional sitting drama. Interestingly, it’s not just the BSC who wind up being the focus of stories. I’ve always wondered whether the characters who got more page-time in the FF series were the authors’ favorites, or whether fan letters had any input. I say that because, for the most part, the non-BSC members who get stories are often ones who interested or intrigued me through the whole BSC-universe.

Why am I saying this? Because the evolution and development of one of those characters starts here. He’s always been one of my favorites, but small pieces of development through the years led to this, and then much more development through his sporadic appearances thereafter.

Mallory leaves for Riverbend Hall. She feels like she fits right in, except with her roommate, Alexis. Alexis creates impossible rules, rifles through Mal’s stuff—including her diary and a care package sent by the BSC—and even draws on pictures of Mal’s friends. She tries to get along with her, talking things out, but Alexis won’t budge. After Mal gets the school staff involved, Alexis tears the room apart entirely. The staff admits that they put Alexis with Mal because they thought she’d be able to get along with her where no one else could, but it’s decided that Alexis’ problems are just too big, so the two of them are separated.

Meanwhile, the sitters are dealing with Pike Family Room Wars. With Mal gone, Vanessa has her own room, which most of her siblings are not happy about. This includes Vanessa, who likes the idea of her own room, but not the realities. The ideal situation would seem to be putting the four girls in the larger bedroom, because only three of them would be in it most of the time, while the boys could room in twos. The trouble? Adam and Jordan are fighting the idea. Byron agrees to room with Nicky, solving the problem and leading him to take a leadership role among his siblings.

Interesting Tidbits

Did you know that Sam Thomas set the spaghetti-sucking record? I’m more than a little disturbed that Mal knows that. Was she there, or did Kristy just…brag…about that during a BSC meeting?

When Mal describes her family as all matching except for her, does anyone else think about the possibility that she’s got a different father than the rest? I mean, I know it’s possible for her to just have different looks. My friend Zee has four kids and three of the four all look like a combo of their dad, with his straight brown hair, and their mother, with her pale coloring, gray eyes and freckles. The other daughter has curly hair, much lighter in color, and a much fuller face. She’s still an obvious combo of the two families—she’s the spitting image of one of her aunts—but when my mom saw pictures of the oldest two girls, she assumed they had different dads.

Mallory and Jessi plan on emailing each other once she leaves for school. It was one thing when Mrs. Pike was emailing in the last book, or when characters were surfing the ‘net, but these girls are eleven. My niece will be nine in a couple weeks, and I can’t imagine her mom letting her have her own email address, but maybe things were different back in 1999? (Later you learn that Mal’s email address is provided by her school, which is a little different. You know that’s got to be monitored.)

Mal has this little moment the morning she leaves for school wherein she realizes she already packed her robe, so she’s going to have to go to breakfast in her pajamas. This is the same house where ‘see food’ and running around naked are normal. Is she really concerned about her P.J.s?

There is a joint Mary Anne-Jessi notebook entry, and I really had trouble differentiating their handwriting for some reason.

When the Pike parents drive Mal to Riverbend, Claire gets very upset and wants to know why all three of three of them need to go live in Chassamoosetts. Meanwhile, Vanessa dresses all in black, looking like ‘a romantic heroine wasting away from sorrow.’ I can totally picture this.

Mal’s friends? Smita Narula, Pam the prefect, and Sarah Bernhardt, an actress who was named after a famous actress, and Jen Bodner, who used to be Alexis’ roommate.

Mallory says she doesn’t really miss boys. Insert your own gay joke here….

Oh no she din’t! Mal’s roomie is a real piece of work. When Mal comes home after her first day of class, Alexis is reading her diary. She claims Mal left it open on the bed, and that she considered that an invitation to read it. That’s someone with absolutely no sense of boundaries. You almost want to get a lock for your trunk after something like that…

Ahh, Byron is already a teenager in training at age ten. When asked how he feels about the room situation, he just shrugs and says, ‘whatever.’

Vanessa’s door sign? “Poet at work/Knock, you silly jerk” Niiiice.

Mal’s way of handling Alexis is to avoid her and allow her to have the room to herself except when sleeping. Sarah, Mal’s actress friend, is making a drama out of the Alexis situation. She’s so stealthy and spy-like in her tracking of Alexis that Mal keeps waiting for her to suggest they synchronize watches. (I’m picturing a scene from Soap: “Let’s synchronize watches. It is now…threeish!”)

I miss Claudia spelling. Oh, sure, she still misspells things on emails, but it’s not the same when it’s not in her belabored handwriting. Wasnt, eether, thats. She also uses gong for going.

The title quote comes from Abby and Claudia’s joint email. Abby says that, for solving the Room Wars, Ambassadors Kishi and Stevenson will be awarded the Silver Doorknob. After Claud’s question, Abby suggests she could make an earring out of it.

The Siege of Vanessa’s Room. Sounds like an epic saga poem, penned by one V. Pike.

You’d think the Pikes would be better able to handle fights between their kids, even with their obvious hands-off policy. (To some extent, I agree with this policy. Give them a chance to sort things out for themselves before dictating a solution.) But Mr. Pike sits the seven kids down and asks them to tell him what’s going on, without any direction. He seems surprised that everyone starts talking at once. Abby has to whistle before they get quiet.

If I wanted to, I could write a whole dissertation on the ‘evolution of Byron.’ A lot of you are aware of my extreme fondness for that character, which stems from several different scenes throughout the series. In one book, he offers Nicky part of his lunch after Adam and Jordan tease him; in another (#73), he’s the logical brother who is the only one of the triplets able to bring any sense of order—however small—to their kickball team. Here, it takes a while to notice that while the Pike kids are arguing about Vanessa’s room, Byron never takes part. He simply complains that Adam and Jordan’s posturing causes the three of them to be punished with extra housework, and then says ‘whatever’, like I mentioned before. While his brothers and sisters are laying siege (I just love that term), Byron is sulking in the basement. He tells Abby that Adam and Jordan are acting like babies about the whole situation, and he just wants some peace and quiet. He’s not the actual one to solve the problem here—Abby is—but his attitude allows the solution to work. Later, in the FF series, he takes a more mature role in things. He fills the big sibling role Mal used to play, and more.

The Alexis situation is solved when Jen, her ex roomie who had a single room, agrees to switch rooms with her. She and Mal get along okay, and that lets Alexis have her own room. Mal finally feels completely happy at school.

You do have to wonder why they didn’t give Alexis a single room after two different bad roommate experiences, anyway. My sophomore year of college, there was a freshman who, like Alexis, went through two roommates in one semester. She was really immature and would walk into your dorm room and start going through your stuff without being invited in. Her first roomie was very easygoing and could get along with (almost) everyone, so we all knew who was the problem when they fought. Her second roommate wouldn’t put up with a single ounce of crap, so that pairing lasted about two weeks. They told her she had two options at that point: she could either pay more money for a single room, or she could get the hell out of the dorms. That wouldn’t work with a sixth grader, but it seems pretty cruel to start Mal off at boarding school with a roommate who had already terrorized two others on the thought that the oldest of eight could make it work.

Outfits

Mallory: jeans and blue sweater; flowered flannel pajamas

Alexis: black sweater, short black skirt, black high tops, five black metal hoop earrings; orange sweater, black jeans

Sarah: long purple skirt, silky, shimmery purple shirt

Next: #127

“Saved by the Mal!” BSC #108: Don’t Give Up, Mallory (1997)

This isn’t the last Mallory book, but it is the last one I’ve never read.

Mallory’s latest Short Takes class is Children’s Literature, which should be a breeze for her. Instead, the class is torturous because the teacher lets the boys dominate the class by shouting out answers, something Mal isn’t comfortable with. Despite not being comfortable speaking out in class, Mal has no problem speaking up to the principal after discovering that money had been set aside for a student lounge was used for building repairs instead. She leads the class to raise enough money to get their lounge, despite the fact that several of her classmates discovering the idea of playing dumb to get boys. She eventually talks to her teacher, who realizes he’s not being fair and starts giving the girls willing to talk equal time.

In the sitting-related subplot, Buddy Barrett claims to be in a marching band so that he can march in a parade. Rather than make him tell the truth and face the consequences, the BSC scramble to amass a band full of random kids with ridiculous homemade instruments that don’t make noises.

Interesting Tidbits

The cover: By this point, the kids—at least, just the sixth graders—have started to look age-appropriate. Also, you kind of get why the teacher is calling on the boys instead of the girls in this set up. Mal is the only girl who is raising her hand, and she looks really reluctant. The boys seem more enthusiastic.

You would think that straight As were really unusual in a middle school, given the way everyone keeps acting at SMS. Mal has straight As on her midterm report—not even a regular report card—and she gets called brainiac and know it all. I had straight As every quarter in middle school…and so did seven other people in my class. And it was a really small school. Anyway, I know for a fact that Kristy had straight As the last quarter of seventh grade, as reported in #6.

I like this: Mal says that Abby talks loud and fast, but Abby blames this on being from Long Island. (As opposed to my gut instinct, which is just that Abby is loud and talks fast simply because she’s Abby.)

Real books: Charlotte’s Web, Where the Wild Things Are, Polar Express, The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, The Wreck of the Zephyr, Make Way for the Ducklings, Dinosaurs and How they Lived, Dinosaur Discovery, Dinosaurs A to Z, Dinosaur Bob, Dinotopia, Goodnight Moon, The Runaway Bunny, Animalia, Eleventh Hour,

Elise, Jessi’s synchronized swimming partner, is in Mal’s literature class. I don’t know why I thought she was in seventh grade. The Complete Guide says she’s in sixth grade, though. I think it’s because Jessi had to switch around lunch periods or something to take ‘synchro.’

I had an experience similar to Mallory’s first day of lit class, with a substitute teacher. Class policy said if you wanted help, you raised your hand and the teacher would come to you. So I sat at my desk with my hand raised for fifteen minutes while the sub ignored me and the other kids all got out of their seats and went to the teacher’s desk. Finally I went over to the teacher’s desk, where I got chewed out for not getting my assignment done, because I was sitting at my desk with my hand raised. Why am I bringing this up? Because it took me fifteen minutes to get into the sub’s groove of how she wanted the class run. Mal’s sitting at her desk with her hand raised, but not getting called on. The back cover says that the teacher is favoring boys, but at one point in the class, a boy and a girl get into a discussion. It’s clear reading the chapter that the teacher isn’t calling on raised hands; he just wants the kids to shout out their opinions. Let’s see how long it takes before Mal figures that out.* Oh, and as the book goes on, he does lean more toward favoring the boys.

*(I get it; she’s also not really comfortable just shouting out her opinions. But there are going to be times in her life where that’s necessary, so maybe it’s time to start acquiring that skill now.)

Claudia spelling time! It’s only one sentence: I dont know, Stacey, waht do you git? This would be a lot less funny if Stacey hadn’t started the notebook entry by asking What do you get… and therefore, modeling the spelling of most of those words for Claudia…

Ooh, I like this, too! The sixth grade class officers have their meeting in the memory garden from book #93. Glad to hear that place is getting some use.

Sandra, the class vice president, figures out that some years back, the funds raised during Sixth Grade Fundraiser Week were earmarked for a student lounge but were used for repairs instead. Sandra says that it’s misappropriation of funds, but I guess it depends upon circumstances. If I were eleven, I’d completely agree with her, but as an adult, I think that roof repairs are way more important.

Mallory is late two BSC meetings in a row. When she’s on time the next meeting, Kristy points it out as first order of business. I think I liked it better when she would just yell at them for being late.

Mallory figures out how to save the ridiculous ‘marching band’ by giving the kids kazoos to play. The title quote is Stacey’s response. (It ends up being ridiculous…twenty kazoos playing twenty different tunes at the same time. Abby calls it an attack of the killer bees.)

Remember when puff paint was cool? That was more like 1989 than 1997.

The whole Sandra plotline is interesting because it’s the most realistic in this book. Sandra is eleven or twelve at this point and she’s really aware of what the boys think of her…as most girls her age are. She purposely tries not to appear too smart or strong so that boys will like her better. She wears shoes that hurt her feet so that she’ll seem more feminine. (I’m picturing Quinn from Daria, who did the same thing for a while but stopped because she didn’t need to wear shoes to make her legs look hot, because her legs look hot no matter what she’s wearing…)

This is ridiculous. The marching band story line is stupid (why, oh why, do the BSC members not just tell Buddy he’s out of luck when he tells them he wants to make a marching band), but the actual parade takes the cake. On practice day, the BSC handed out twenty kazoos to whomever showed up. They never sent out a date everyone had to sign up by or spoke to any parents. Kristy agreed to babysit for a ridiculous 9 children by herself in the time period leading up to the parade. But then, proving that Stoneybrook parents are the worst in the world, various parents start dropping their kids off, assuming the BSC will watch them. In a couple of cases, parents literally pull up in a car, drop off their four year old, and don’t even speak to Kristy (who is left alone with a whopping twenty-three children) before driving off. Horrid, horrid parenting.

I’d expected this book to suck, but it really didn’t. (Well, except the marching band part.) Mal had said, early on, that her parents were proud of all of her siblings, no matter their grades, as long as they did their best. Mal found the courage to speak up to her teacher and point out his unconscious bias to him. He denies calling on boys more than girls or letting boys have more time to think on a topic, but later that day, he realizes it’s true. He apologizes to the class and makes a concerted effort to be more fair. But then Mal realizes that wasn’t the only reason she wasn’t speaking up in class. She proves she knows her stuff in the final written project for the class, and the teacher gives her a B+. Even though it’s her first ever B, Mal’s not disappointed, because she realizes it’s the grade she deserved (and in my opinion, probably nicer than she deserved) and she tried her hardest.

Outfits

Mr. Cobb: collarless white shirt, jeans and a black vest; tan chinos, leather boat shoes, blue linen shirt

Stacey: jeans with rolled cuffs, denim work shirt, backwards painter’s cap

Claudia: shorts, tie-dyed t-shirt with matching scrunchie, red high tops

Helen Gallway (who?): hot pink bike shorts, t-shirt with puff-painted hearts on it

Next: #109

“The patient was a little cranky at first, but she took her medicine. Luckily, we didn’t have to operate.” BSC #69: Get Well Soon, Mallory (1993)

Is it terribly juvenile of me to point out that book about ‘the kissing disease’ is appropriately numbered? (I’ll answer my own question: Yes. But not enough to stop me from doing it!)

Before I begin the blog, it’s vlog time! I intend to vlog each Babysitter at some throughout the series. The next one after this will definitely be Claudia; you have to wait and see WHY I picked that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MBQAdBeuSw

(I couldn’t get it to imbed, sorry.)

Interesting Tidbits

The cover: That’s Margo and Claire with Mallory and this is straight out of the book. I am amused by the ‘get well soon’ card and flowers in the background.

Did anyone ever actually wait until the day of Halloween to decide what they were going to dress up as? (I know, terrible sentence structure. Suck it. ;) My mom picked my costume out for me every year until I was seven and we moved to England. (In July or August, so that she had time to hand sew it.) When we moved back, we made our own costumes out of things lying around the house. I was a ‘fortune teller’ one year wearing a square dancing costume and a lot of scarves. (I told everyone I was a gypsy, but hell, I was 11. Forgive me. I would say I got the idea from this book, but it was 1992.) The only time I decided upon my costume the day of was my freshman year of high school, when I decided on a whim to be Alexander of Daventry. We went from door to door yelling “Zounds!” instead of trick or treat that year.

I’ve always remembered this! After Mrs. Pike tells everyone they’ll be going to NYC for Thanksgiving and will get to watch the Macy’s parade, Mallory catches Vanessa practicing her waves in the mirror. Who, when they read this book the first time, didn’t practice each of the three types of waves Vanessa mentioned?

I love when they can’t keep track of the ages of various characters, as I’m sure you, my loyal readers, know. In this one, Sam and Charlie are 14 and 16. Oh, and along the same lines, Tigger is mentioned as being black and white striped. He’s usually a gray tabby. He probably looks a lot like my Dobby.
This book was the first place I ever heard of mono. When Mallory’s diagnosed, there’s this whole science-y explanation about glands and the spleen. Mal’s mom says that 99% of the time it’s not serious, but it can damage your spleen. I went to this really weird little school district (oh, Kaney-land!), and seventh through twelfth grades used to be in one building. When I was in eighth grade, the sophomore class president died during surgery from a bizarre combination of spleen damage from mono and a bad reaction to the anesthesia. I remember thinking that mono was suddenly the scariest thing ever, between her death and Mal’s ridiculously long convalescence.

Before she has a diagnosis, Mal’s greatest fear is never catching up in her homework and failing sixth grade. After she finds out she has mono? Her fear shifts to everyone thinking she got mono by kissing Ben Hobart. Nice to know she has her priorities straight.

I love Mallory’s commentary on soap operas, which was obviously written by someone who’s never seen a soap (or hadn’t seen one in decades.) I actually started watching soaps in 1993, when a little girl on one show died in a school bus accident and her heart was given to her ailing cousin. I still (sometimes) watch that show on my day off, and when I don’t catch a week, I miss a lot. (I’m still mad that Sonny is Ava’s baby dad instead of Morgan…so freakin’ predictable.) I won’t say that there weren’t soaps out there that you could not watch for a month and come back and nothing would be different, but it’s definitely not really true these days when any one of the few soaps left could be cancelled at any moment.

I loved this bit: Mallory’s trying to convince “Nurse Tiffany” (aka Claire) to eat celery as part of her lunch by suggesting that all great nurses did: Florence Nightingale, Clara Barton and…Hot Lips Hoolihan. The title quote also comes from this “sitting job”, the one shown on the cover. It’s said by “Doctor Margolius.”

Logan’s suggestion after the Pikes say that Mal needs to temporarily quit the club: The BSC should picket their front door, shouting ‘Unfair!’ and ‘Free Mallory!’ Sometimes, I really like Logan. Sometimes.

Mallory suggests a car wash to raise money. In Connecticut. In November. They actually suggest that to the kids before they realize it’s a bad idea.

Jessi is spelled as Jessie at one point. Again.

“Acting like a jerk was hard work.” Just another reason why Mal’s plan was a stupid idea.

It’s established that Claire wears a watch even though she can’t tell time. Mal asks what time it is, and Claire answers by looking at her watch. (Her assessment? Thirty-o’clock.) Adam has to look over at her watch to figure out the correct time. I had always assumed that it was some Pike family thing that everyone wears watches and is on top of their own schedule.

There’s a quote on page 97 with only one quotation mark. There’s usually at least one typo in any book, but I hate when I actually find them.

Jessi takes Charlotte and Vanessa to pick out books for the oldsters. They decide to only get mysteries because Vanessa says her gramma likes mysteries, and then they decide to only get mysteries with ‘nice’ pictures on the front: cats, flowers, houses and horses. But they can’t find enough books that way, so they have to relax the rules to include candles and pretty women. Later, they develop a game for deciding which person gets which book…by rhyming the titles or cover photos with the person’s name.

Mrs. Pike actually lets the triplets polish the carving knives. That seems…not smart. I’m seeing an ER visit.

Claudia makes Mal earrings that are made of wooden bottles labeled ‘miracul cure.’ They’re supposed to magically cure her.

Kristy’s got magical talents, too: she points at the phone, and it rings. (And of course, because this is a BSC book and everyone’s parents agreed to let them visit the Pikes’, the phone call is Dawn from California.)

As I said a couple weeks ago, I only have two more Mallory books left to blog. I actually don’t have copies of either one of them, but I’ve got about another year before I have to worry about it.

Outfits:

Mallory: flowery pajamas; blue velvet skirt and matching bolero jacket, white silk blouse

Byron: maroon corduroy slacks, yellow shirt, blue and yellow sweater

Next week: #70, Stacey and the Cheerleaders

“Since when does an animal trainer wear a Cub Scout uniform?” BSC #54: Mallory and the Dream Horse (1992)

Scout, my new cat, keeps trying to attack the book while I’m reading it. I think this is some kind of commentary on Mallory being a bit of an idiot in this book. I really hate to see what she’d do to the books where Mal is truly an idiot.

Mallory’s parents agree to let her take riding lessons. She wants to take them with Jessi, but the Ramseys say no. Mal ends up falling off a horse and being scared to get back on (so many jokes, so little time). Eventually she takes part in the competition, where she ends up in the middle of the pack (neiiiiiiigh!), and decides she would rather look at ponies than ride them.

Meanwhile, Nina Marshall (did you forget about her? she hasn’t been around much!) has a Blankie she takes everywhere with her. The kids at preschool keep teasing her about it, but she’s stubborn and won’t stop taking him. Finally, in an act of ‘whoops’ problem solving, Dawn washes Blankie, who falls apart in the washer. Dawn convinces Nina that she can take a little piece of Blankie with her everywhere she goes, but no one will have to know he’s there.

Interesting Tidbits

Doo doo da doo, doo doo! Cover time! (Sing it to the tune of ‘Hammer Time’.) Mallory looks both older than I am and totally blurry. I’m actually mostly disturbed by the girl on the left (who has stolen Dawn’s fashion sense.) She’s got this really creepy look on her face while she’s offering the horse an apple. What did she lace that with?

I’ve always wondered why Jessi and Mal would want to hang out at Mal’s house when Jessi’s house must be much quieter. Although, then they’d have to hang out with Aunt Cecelia. Scratch that thought.

Stacey is the reigning Queen of Dibbleness. And I about spit my drink all over the place…

Should I mention how Mallory dressed up her Barbie while playing with Nina? Sure, why not? It’s in the outfits below.

Oh, can I relate to Nina. I had a Blankie I loved so much that when it fell apart like Nina’s did, my mom bought me another (and I was older than Nina at the time.) I didn’t take it to school with me, but I did have the same kind of problem at preschool. I was a serious thumb sucker. I started preschool a week later than the other kids, and none of the kids in my class sucked their thumbs. I heard one other girl say, “What a baby…she still sucks her thumb,” and I stopped sucking my thumb just like that. My mom had tried everything to get me to stop for two years before that. I guess I just needed a little peer pressure.

I’m a little frightened. When I was thirteen, I made a whole presentation to my parents, complete with visual aids and charts and stuff. I forget exactly what I wanted them to agree to, but it worked. I had mostly based it upon an episode of Full House where DJ successfully gets things swapped around so that she has her own bedroom while Stephanie and Michelle start sharing, but I used a lot of the same techniques Mal does while asking for permission to take riding lessons. Scary.

Oh, and Mal totally teaches kids to ask for more than they expect to get so that they can bargain. It’s actually…really, really smart.

Okay, here’s where ‘Mal is an idiot’ shows up. (Scout has quit trying to eat the book and is asleep on a chair.) She is so excited after all her classes that she keeps reporting to Jessi about everything that’s going on. Jessi keeps trying to sound enthusiastic, but she’s really not that good at it. (I have a friend…umm, actually, she’s the same friend that I ditched at summer camp…who has always been into horses. 99 percent of what I know about horses I’ve learned from her. And I remember sounding as enthusiastic about hearing about her dressage lessons as Jessi is about Mal’s lessons. Only in my case it was more confusion than jealousy.)

In this book, Eleanor can barely talk. She speaks in toddler-appropriate bits like, “Nap done” and such. Yet the next time I remember her showing up in the plot at all in #81, she speaks in sentences. If these books involved aging like real life, it would actually be appropriate.

Mallory’s rich horsey classmates include Kelsey, Allison, Amber, Megan, Kyle (a girl), and David. She spends all this time chatting their ears off and then thinking they’re friends, but none of reciprocates.

Okay. Question time. I know that literary names are often symbolic: a character named Esperanza (which means hope) who is the only one in her neighborhood who is going to go somewhere and be someone; another named Dolores (“our lady of sorrows”) who deals with one tragedy after another. Then there’s stuff like giving all the sisters feminine names (Meg, Beth, Amy) except the tomboy with big dreams (Jo). So, given that Mallory has a dream horse named Pax (“peace”) who is very easy to ride, why would she ever consider riding a horse named Gremlin? Of course she falls off!

When I was younger than Mallory, I took six English riding lessons. I loved them all the way until the end. In our last lesson, I was cantering when all of a sudden the saddle slipped. I lost the reins and was hanging upside down on a cantering horse. My instructor caught me pretty quickly, but my mother decided that if the instructor couldn’t even put the saddle on the horse tight enough, she wasn’t really a good one to teach riding. Not as bad as Mal’s fall, but I still remember that and wonder why I ever got back on a horse again….

Was Mal’s doctor trying to blind his opponents so he could win his golf game? (See his outfit below.)

Yay! A joint notebook entry between Claudia and Stacey! Not only is there some creative spelling (relayted, intire, nayborhood, preform instead of perform, arn’t, laff), Claudia suggests that the four youngest Pikes are related to Mal, therefore they must be “Looney Tons” [sic]. Aren’t these girls always so nice to each other?

Oh, I forgot to mention (which tells you how “thrilling” this C plot is) that Vanessa, Margo, Nicky and Claire are putting together a talent show. It’s as dumb as it sounds. (You know it’s bad because the triplets are staying the hell out of the way of it, and they’re usually up for most of this type of thing.) They gather a huge number of kids in the backyard while Stacey and Claudia are babysitting. Vanessa stands on a chair and shouts at everyone to sit down and be quiet. She has their attention, even more so after the chair closes on her and she falls to the ground. (And I, in Claudia’s words, laffed and laffed.)

And oh, good heavens, are Claudia and Stacey snarky and bitchy and awesome about all the “talents”. They’re worse than I am and I love them for it. One of Stacey’s comments is the title quote.

I’d forgotten this part! One of the snobbier girls invites everyone from the class to her birthday party. Mallory decides (again!) that this thinks they’re friends. She goes to the party, feels out of place because she’s dressed wrong and no one talks to her.

All throughout this book, Mal keeps reminding me of a girl I used to work with that is on my Facebook. Whenever she has a first date with a boy, she actually updates her status to indicate she’s in a relationship. A couple days later, when he indicates he doesn’t intend to keep seeing her, she switches it back to single. And then moans and complains on FB about it. They both come on far too strong and assume a friendship/relationship after one event, forgetting that these things need to grow and develop.

Wait a minute. Mal makes a big deal about how her riding lessons are on Saturday mornings, so it won’t affect her other scheduled activities. So how is her final lesson on a Thursday afternoon?

Ha! Mal mentions that you have to be careful cinching the saddle or the saddle will turn upside down. If she only knew….

Wait another minute. When Mal’s riding class was first introduced, there were twelve kids in it: eight girls and four boys. Later, there are six other kids in the class. And now, there are only six kids in the whole class. Yet, when I listed the names of the classmates, there were at least eight kids in the class, because I mentioned seven other names. This one was ghostwritten by two people, so do you think all these mistakes are because they didn’t talk to each other?

The best laugh of this whole book? When Blankie gets all ripped up, Nina shouts at Dawn, “You killed him!”

Mal wonders how to tell her parents she doesn’t want to continue riding lessons. She paid for half of the lessons; wouldn’t, “I don’t have the funds to do more lessons right now,” be sufficient?

Or, she could, you know. Be honest with them.

Aww, this is sweet. Mallory’s riding instructor (whom she calls Lauren but one of the other students calls Ms. Kendall) has Mal all figured out. Mal is the only one without a riding habit—she followed the basic minimum attire by wearing a helmet, boots and gloves with her jeans and regular clothes—so Lauren actually stops by Mal’s house the day of the horse show to loan her a habit and give her a pep talk.

Jessi: You should warm up before the horse show like I do before a ballet. Mal: I should do pliés?

And we’re back to there being twelve riders in Mal’s class. Consistency, ghostwriters. Consistency.

Speaking of consistency…During the Claudia/Stacey chapter earlier when everyone was rehearsing their talent acts, Charlotte was there with her dog Carrot. (Carrot tried to run off with Blankie.) Yet Charlotte and Becca are about the only kids in the neighborhood not participating. Mal and Jessi watch them during the talent show.

Also, the girls mention they don’t want to participate after what happened to them during the Little Miss Stoneybrook contest. But only Charlotte was part of that.

The triplets as crowd control is an ironic statement, right? Right??????? (Mal says she knew their big mouths would come in handy someday.)

I hope I didn’t disappoint you all with my lack of bad horse jokes. All the ones I know are a little too first grade even for me.

Outfits

Barbie: red and white tights, long shirt made of sweatshirt material (since when does Barbie have clothes like that?)

Dr. Calloway (Mal’s doctor): neon yellow pants, electric blue polo

Mallory: gold and brown kilt, gold cotton sweater, penny loafers (sounds adorable! I’d wear it!)

Next week: It’s time for some testosterone, folks! We’ll be making fun of Logan’s Story.

“Only one Pike kid at a time can go on strike.” BSC #47: Mallory on Strike (1991)

Confession time: When I was a kid, I kinda secretly wanted to be Mallory. I only had one sister, and we didn’t really get along at the time, so I wanted to have seven brothers and sisters so that I could actually have friends in my family. Now, reading these books, I feel the same way about Mal as I do the oldest Duggar daughters: I pity them for having to help raise their younger brothers and sisters. I know a family with a whole bunch of kids (eight back to back, like the Pikes, then an eight year gap and five more, back to back again). They had a nanny to help out with raising the younger children, and although the older kids DID have to be responsible for certain things (chores like making school lunches, supervising tooth brushing, etc) they were mostly just allowed to be teens. Certainly, the two oldest siblings who I was closest to never had to break up arguments between younger sibs, and they weren’t expected to be unpaid babysitters on a regular basis.

So, as you can tell by that comment and the title, Mallory decides to go on strike for being an unpaid babysitter at her house. She had the opportunity to enter a Young Authors contest but wasn’t getting any quiet time to work on her story. After an accident on a sitting job, she decides to take a complete sitting hiatus. She finally talks to her parents, who agree to give her a day just to herself, and she finds she misses her brothers and sisters, so she gives them a day for them.

Interesting Tidbits

I’m sitting here, looking at the cover, and thinking about the evolution of the cover-Mallory. She’s pretty cute on her first couple covers. Then, somewhere around 1990, she morphed. Her glasses became massive and they gave into Mal’s idea that she’s an ugly duckling. She doesn’t look too bad on this cover, other than her hideous outfit, but give them another year. Think SS#8, where she looks like Weird Al. And then, somewhere around 1995, they actually started making her look like an eleven year old and she was cute again.

Mr. Dougherty! I love it when I recognize the teachers from other stories. He’s the one who went to Europe with the BSC and snuck out to see Virginia Woolf’s house. Here, he’s Mal’s creative writing teacher.

I feel like a lot of the Mallory books start with her complaining about how crazy her siblings are. In this one, the triplets are dressed up like “a weird ad for Sports Illustrated” and Claire thinks they’re boogiemen and kidnapped their mother. Margo’s been playing with makeup. Then the hamster gets loose (twice), Adam and Jordan get into a fight and something happens to the dinner casserole.

Wait. Mal says only she and Nicky wear glasses, but I’m pretty sure Vanessa does, too.

Heh heh! Dibble is back!

There’s this weird moment after Mal turns down a sitting job. No one else is free to take it, so Kristy says, “I’ll call Shannon Kilbourne.” What’s with the last name? It’s not like she’d call Shannon the dog, and how many other Shannons does she know?

With eight kids, do the Pikes really have dessert at every dinner? And do they really ‘make’ it all the time? Mal ends up making chocolate chip cookies for dessert at her mother’s insistence.

Here’s my problem with Mal in the early part of this book: she never sits her parents down and explains how little time she has to write or how important it is to her that she get quiet writing time. She makes a schedule and is determined to stick to it, but she never shows it to her parents so that they can RESPECT it. So her mom ends up asking her to make dessert for the family so that Mrs. Pike can make phone calls for the library. (Of course, I have an issue with this, too: Mal makes chocolate chip cookies. If I were her, I would have paid Nicky to go to the store and pick up a bag of Chips Ahoy or something. Instead of spending an hour or more baking.)

Mallory is kicking herself because Buddy cuts his feet. He was riding his bike barefoot, something she says a good babysitter would not have let him do. I used to ride my bike barefoot all the time…until I had an accident like Buddy’s. And who was watching me at the time? Yeah. My mom. That could have happened to anyone. (Besides, I’m going to go back to my old standby of ‘who lets an eleven year old babysit three small children anyway?’)

Once again, we get one of those odd moments where, during a sitting job for one of the other sitters (in this case, Jessi) the person telling the story is referred to in third person: “On the other hand, she thought maybe they would feel better if they acted out their frustration with Mallory.” It keeps up through the chapter, so I guess it’s just a style choice, to remind us we’re seeing Jessi’s way of thinking. But it’s really odd.

This is kind of awful, but also pretty hilarious: Margo and Claire put on a “ballet” that they call Mean Old Mallory. And instead of stopping them or trying to sort things out, Jessi just sits back and laughs.

Oh, I just love this. Kristy gets an unplanned, emergency sitting job because her mother and Watson have to rush out. And then David Michael’s friend shows up. At first Kristy’s upset because she’s already babysitting for four kids (instead of going shopping like Mary Anne, like she’d planned.) Then she becomes indignant because the friend’s parents don’t like him to be left “without adult supervision.” Apparently, Kristy considers herself an adult. (A few minutes later, she’s crabbing at Karen and Andrew as much as they’re crabbing at her.)

Ha ha ha ha ha! Boo-boo eats the ham out of all of the sandwiches Kristy prepares for lunch. I can just see that happening.

I just love the title quote I used for this one, which is something Mr. Pike says. I want to tell my internal organs the same thing.

The Teeter Streeter is really cool; you’ll look like a geek and act like a fool. Sometimes, just every now and then, the girls in these books act like real people.

Is Pamme Reed a real person? I need to try to remember to Google that. (Answer: There are real Pamme Reeds, but this one is fictional.)

Yay, happy ending. Mallory loves everyone and they all love her.

Outfits

Mallory: navy wool skirt, white blouse, navy vest, penny loafers; jean skirt, jean jacket, red tights, earrings by Claud

Mr. D (yes, a teacher outfit! I love it!): brown corduroy jacket with leather patches at the elbows, red and yellow plaid shirt, baggy tan chinos

Kristy: sweatpants, t-shirt that says GO KRUSHERS!

Jessi: purple jumpsuit (if anyone can find a more horrible combination of words than ‘purple jumpsuit’ please let me know), gold turtleneck

Pamme Reed: Indian-print skirt, white blouse with puffy sleeves, leather vest, boots

Coming up next: #49, Claudia and the Genius of Elm Street. However, I will make no claims as to when that will be. I’m going to be seeing a lot of doctors in the next few weeks, and then one of three things will happen. 1. They’ll fix my kidneys, so I’ll be back to normal and the blog will continue as scheduled. 2. Things will continue as they are now, in which case I won’t have much energy to work on the blog. 3. They’ll tell me my ‘good’ kidney is shutting down, in which case I’ll end up on disability and dialysis…and will have lots of extra time for blogging. (I hear you all cheering, but let’s not hope for that one, okay?) I’ll try to have #49 for you for next weekend, but no promises. I may have to cut back to every other week instead of every week. But I’m not giving up!

“Shouldn’t we be saving our food for when we really need it?” BSC #39: Poor Mallory (1990)

So, as you can guess by this original title, Mal’s dad loses his job. So not only is Mallory poor, but she’s feeling sorry for herself because she’s sitting for the Delaneys of the $400 cat and giant, ostentatious fish fountain. Mal encourages her brothers and sisters to be thrifty and do odd jobs to earn money. Otherwise, she’s concerned that they’ll have to go on welfare. Meanwhile, her mom’s temping and her dad’s job hunting/moping around the house. It takes him less than a month to find a new job. (Good thing he didn’t lose his job now.)

Meanwhile, Amanda and Max Delaney are having trouble because they got a new pool and can’t tell which of their friends likes them and who just likes their pool. Mal finally suggests they invite them over and say they can’t use the pool because there are no free adults. Only one girl doesn’t show up, so the kids figure out who their real friends are.

Interesting Tidbits

And of course, I have to start with the cover. I think Mallory moved to California when she wasn’t looking, as everyone’s swimming…during the school year. Plus, all the kids are blonde. And Mal’s totally ignoring them while she has a mope.

 

Why is Mal voluntarily singing a song the triplets taught her? Normally, she seems to find them and their behavior a little embarrassing, yet she and Jessi are singing the songs on the way home. Even worse, Mal continue singing after Jessi leaves, only to realize how gross the song is while she’s singing it. Didn’t she pay attention to the lyrics before she began singing it out loud…in public?

This book pretty much confirms what I’ve always suspected about the Pikes: because all four boys share a room, they have the master bedroom. Mal says Mr. and Mrs. Pike’s bedroom “isn’t very big.”

I always wondered, when I was a kid, about the birth order of the triplets. I know now that it’s Jordan, Adam and Byron. I had to laugh when I found that out, because whenever I refer to them, I always say their names in the opposite order. That’s also the order Mal uses in this book when she introduces them. I picked up three other random Mal books (#29, #80 and #92, if you must know) and she either uses that order or alphabetical to refer to them—never the correct birth order.

Mr. Pike calls Mrs. Pike to let her know people are being laid off at his company (they use that term and ‘fired’ like they are the same thing.) So instead of waiting to find out whether he actually will lose his job, she just up and tells the kids so she can ‘prepare them.’ That sounds like a not-smart idea, especially if he hadn’t lost his job. They would have worried for nothing.

Mal actually says, “But it’s especially bad when you have eight kids, a wife—and a hamster.” We all know that hamster is such a financial burden.

I am going to count the number of times the “word” dibble comes up in this story. Wait for my final number at the end of the entry. (For the record, dibble is a word, according to my spell check. Dibbly is not.)

I have sparkly nail polish on my toe nails. According to Mal, I’m totally sophisticated!

I have to chuckle every time they put an ellipsis (…) in the text before they reveal that Logan is an associate member, usually in conjunction with an exclamation point. (For example, “Guess who are other associate member is…that’s right, Mary Anne’s boyfriend Logan!”) Because with the pro-feminist thing that keeps popping up in these books, you’d think there’d be less surprise that a boy babysits. It would even things out a bit. (And I still maintain Logan only joined the club to get into Mary Anne’s pants.)

The title quote is what Nicky says when the Pikes sit down for dinner right after Mr. Pike loses his job.

Mrs. Pike says that on days when she’s temping and Mr. Pike has a job interview, Mal may need to babysit for free. Then, in the next chapter, the BSC offers to give Mal a M-W-F month long job at the Delaneys’ and give her as many other jobs as possible. So…what’s going to happen if the Pikes need her to sit for free? She’ll already be busy.

Apparently, Mal has never sat for the Delaneys before. I guess because they haven’t really appeared since before Mal joined the club. They never attend all the crazy group activities the BSC puts together.

The Winslows live next door to the Delaneys. AMM must know someone with that name, because it’s also Sunny’s last name.

Mrs. Kilbourne works in this book. Yet later, in Shannon’s Story, the whole problem is that she doesn’t have a job and feels purposeless.

A brief mention is made to the Pikes’ having had a cat. I was going to compliment the ghostwriter on that little bit of trivia (the cat was named Sarge and is mentioned in book #1) but this book was actually penned by Ann M. Martin herself.

What month does this book take place in? I’m in chapter 6 and that hasn’t been established. It must be either very early in the school year or very late, as it’s warm enough for the kids to go swimming. In New England.

There is a Timmy is using the pool while Stacey is sitting. The Delaney’s rule is that the kids have to be “good swimmers”—which means swimming the width of the pool without stopping. (That’s a really lame definition of a “good swimmer”, but I guess it works, as you only really need to be able to swim half the width of the pool—or less—to get to the edge.) I’m working under the assumption that this is Timmy Hsu, as he is the Delaney’s neighbor. But isn’t Timmy the kid who later nearly drowns in the same pool (then owned by the Kormans) in Mary Anne to the Rescue? I don’t have a copy of that one yet. (I checked the BSC wiki my coworker/friend Kinsey found. [“I just wanted to find out who exactly Byron and Haley are!” Yeah, I talk about my fic too often at work.] It is Timmy Hsu who nearly drowns because he got into the deep end and couldn’t swim. This is either a mistake by the ghostwriters or it’s a different Timmy.)

You know it’s bad when Karen is actually the nicest non-babysitter in part of the story. The first time all their friends ditch them, Amanda and Max are left alone with Stacey…and Karen. She’s the only one who didn’t leave just because the Delaneys wanted to get out of the pool. It’s probably the only time I can actually say I’ve liked Karen in a story. (Second sign of the apocalypse?)

Mal comes home and finds her dad in front of the television with a box of crackers and a glass “of something.” Vodka, perhaps?

Vanessa’s been pretty “glass half full” throughout most of the book. The triplets and Mal are all getting made fun of for being poor. Vanessa points out that Becca bought her a popsicle so she didn’t feel left out. Meanwhile, Jordan wants to hit an ex-friend with a baseball, so you know how well he’s taking things, and Byron’s “sensitive” so he’s the one concerned about whether they’ll be homeless.

Mal has to keep explaining financial concerns to Claire so that she understands where the money goes. Claire actually apologizes for it. But then Mal launches into a complicated explanation of what a mortgage is instead of saying, “Houses are expensive, so people pay for them a little each month for a long time.”

Do little kids usually have desks in their rooms? All the kids in BSC books do. I didn’t even have a desk in my room when I was a teen. I always did my homework at the kitchen table, or in front of the television while watching soap operas.

I like the Papadakis kids a lot in this book. They point out that Karen and DM are going over to the Delaney’s just to use their pool (David Michael doesn’t even like Amanda and Max) and that it’s mean to treat them that way. And that’s coming from a couple kids who don’t even like Amanda and Max themselves.

Amanda is reading Superfudge. I will always love Fudge books.

I really do feel bad for Amanda and Max. Sure, they’re brats. And yeah, Amanda can be bossy. But she knows she’s sometimes bossy and she actually acts concerned about whether she’s driving her friends away. Both kids’ feelings are really hurt when they’re friends only like them for their pool.

And of course, the BSC can’t solve their problems unless their sittees have a parallel problem for them to see. Mallory actually points out to Amanda that they have similar issues.

Mal totally tells off the girls who have been making fun of her at lunch. She sounds totally mature and totally-un-middle-school.

Amanda and her friends play Snail, even though she and Max still think Stacey’s a weirdo.

Becca and Jessi get way too excited because Aunt Cecelia goes out for the afternoon and Jessi’s in charge. They eat the least-nutritious snacks they can find and relax.

Vanessa’s doing hairstyling for money on the playground. (I wonder where she learned to French braid. Does she ever help Margo and Claire with their hair?) Funniest part of that story is that Becca says she made one girl look really nice...by giving her a side ponytail.

The return of Secret Agents! Vanessa teaches Charlotte and Becca how to play. Most disturbing is that Jessi just lets them go outside to spy on people without asking where they’re going or anything. She just tells them not to be pests. (It works out okay, as they were apparently spying on her.)

This made me laugh. Mal’s father tells her, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” Since she doesn’t know what that means and this is before you could just look stuff like that up, she calls Kristy. Kristy’s able to explain it, as Watson is the King of Clichés.

The Pikes don’t have any rules, but apparently, Adam is not allowed to say he’s going to “blow cookies.” That sounds like something a set of parents who won’t let Mallory wear oversized shirts with leggings would say.

There’s a weird moment when the triplets are talking about their odd job service and Adam mentions they painted all of Sharon’s lawn furniture. But he says “Dawn Schafer’s mom’s lawn chairs.” Wouldn’t they call Sharon Jeff’s mom, or has Jeff been gone for long enough that they forget him when he’s not around? And how many Dawns do they know, anyway?

Mal keeps kicking Adam under the table because he keeps being a smart-ass during dinner. Maybe she was right when she called him “The Terror of Slate Street”?

Another real book: Uncle Roland, the Perfect Guest. I haven’t read that one, but hey, if Mary Anne and Mal like it….

The BSC has a sleepover at Mal’s and they prank call the girls who were bitches to her. I can’t picture that being something that some of these girls (Mary Anne, mostly) would be okay with. But Mary Anne actually insists on doing the “pig farm” call because she has a great imitation of a southern accent.

My favorite moment of the whole book: Adam has a “slime gun” that he uses to slime Claudia and Kristy at the beginning of the slumber party. (This is why they should stick to Kristy’s or Mary Anne’s for slumber parties.) Mal’s dad says he’ll take care of it…which he does by finding the gun and giving it to Mal with the suggestion that she put it to good use. I love you, Mr. Pike.

New characters(? Some of these guys may have appeared in earlier stories, but I’m not sure.)

Angie, Huck, Timmy, Cici, Meghan (Max and Amanda’s friends)

No outfits unless you count the swimsuits, which are not described.

So Mal seriously uses dibble or dibbly 6 times! Meanwhile, she says stale (the opposite of dibble) 4 times, and Jessi says it once.

Next week: We get to change coasts and pretend to be California girls.

“So? He can feed it to Rudolph.” BSC #92: Mallory’s Christmas Wish (1995)

How was everyone’s holiday? I should have read this one last week. I actually (gasp!) enjoyed most of it. (Of course, that may be because Christmas is actually over!)

Mallory comes up with the idea of a non-commercial, old-fashioned Christmas, an idea the Pikes love. But then Vanessa enters them into a contest and the prize they win is being filmed for the Christmas episode of what’s essentially a reality show. At first they like it, but the camera crew quickly gets in the way of their holiday and Mr. Pike winds up firing them.

The subplot surrounds the nursing home and a fundraiser the BSC helps with. It’s more realistic than most of their big-event storylines because the BSC didn’t plan and organize it; they just pitch in.

Interesting Tidbits

Ze Cover (Sorry, I’m watching Les Mis while writing this; I’ll try not to get too overtly French…or more accurate, cockney British):

 

Mallory, red heads generally shouldn’t wear pink. Of course, that yellow doesn’t look any better on her. (Also, according to the author’s note, the man in the green jacket is the artist, Hodges Solieau.)

Mallory starts off by writing yet another story based upon her own life. LAME!

I’d eat friddiggity for dessert with Margo! (That’s how she pronounces frigidity; it reminds me of how Tessie would have pronounced it at seven...and how it kept coming out of my mouth today.)

Is it sad that I’d rather read Mallory and the Seven Simian Siblings than this book?

This makes me laugh mostly because it’s (bordering on) true: “By the time Claire is eleven, she’ll have an apartment of her own, a personal butler, and a salary.” Now, I don’t believe that, but I do believe that the Pikes will get more lenient with each progressive child. (I still hold a grudges over this fact in my own life.)

Oh my word. A food the Pike triplets won’t eat! Byron looks disgusted at the suggestion of lamb stew. Vanessa: “Lamb stew, Lamb stew/Start with some herbs then chop up the ewe!” Margo: “Ew!” Vanessa: “Exactly.”

I hate to admit how much like Mallory I used to be. Obviously I don’t have seven insane brothers and sisters. But she and Jessi went down town, pretending to be French refugees, hoping to find some kind soul to shelter them from the cruel world. I’ve never done that with someone else (in public) but I spent a large amount of my childhood pretending to be someone else.

I’ve only just started chapter two and there’s already been about six conversations I want to record exactly. Apparently the BSC has the same kind of word skills that Margo does: nobody (except Mal the nerd) knows what ‘a tizzy’ is. (I’m reminded of SS #15 for three reasons: first, Claudia talks with her mouth full and Stacey instructs her to swallow, which happens in that book; second, the conversation between the various club members reminds me of the conversation between Claudia and Dawn when Janine calls Claudia a laggard and they don’t know what that means. Also Mal uses a word that no one else knows the meaning of. My suspicion is confirmed: they are ghostwritten by the same person.) Of course, it doesn’t help that Mal attempts to explain a tizzy by saying it’s the same as being in a dither. Really, what eleven year old knows words/phrases like that? (That’s right. A really nerdy one.)

Ha! Mallory hates being called a junior member—can you blame her? So she gets a bit of satisfaction by being taller than Kristy is. Speaking of, is it just me, or are all these girls on the tall side? We had a missing thirteen year old in our local area this week, and she was 4’11”. Kristy is the shortest BSC member and she’s taller than that. I’m pretty sure I was less than 5’ at that age.

“Kishi Scientific Ener-joy Theory.” I subscribe!

Typical Abby. Her BSC/car analogy: Kristy is the headlights, Claudia the chassis, Stacey the gas gauge, Mary Anne the engine, Abby herself the bumper. (I guess Mal and Jessi are the cupholders and the like, because they aren’t mentioned.)

Mal is, I think, the only BSC member to come straight out and suggest that Kristy is jealous of Abby, which is the first thought I had when I read a book with Abby in it.

Mrs. Pike suggests that they’re going to be arrested by the Christmas carol police for butchering the 12 Days of Christmas. (Sample lyric: five silly-billy-goo-goos) Can we arrest some pop stars for the same reason?

When the producer, Mr. Henry, arrives, he explains the reality show he’s filming while using a large variety of big words. Adam does exactly what I used to do as a kid: he agrees with everything that’s said, and then when Nicky asks him what that meant, he says, “I don’t know.” I feel there are a lot of adults who behave that way also.

You know it’s bad when Claudia is correcting Abby’s word usage.

Wow, I didn’t know that Aunt Cecelia had a good side. But a store clerk finds it by suggesting she’s Jessi’s older sister. (What do you expect from a store that sells Jessi a box of ‘tchotchkes’ labeled “Junque”?)

Mallory. Shouldn’t you be able to tell the difference between Marilyn and Carolyn, especially since you were the one who helped let them have their own style?

 The title quote is what Haley says when Margo drops cheese on Claire's letter to Santa.

The Pikes are, in some ways, the perfect family to film for a reality show: There are a ton of ‘characters,’ they’re nuts, and they love the camera. My favorite moment during the filming of cookie baking: Nicky drops some eggshell into the cookie batter and this is apparently fabulous. The camera crew not only gets a close up on the shells in the batter; they film Margo going, “Mmm, crunchy!” while Nicky freaks out. Meanwhile, Mr. Pike is laughing his ass off. (I’m not sure why; this sounds like a normal day at the Pikes.)

Mallory goes to visit Uncle Joe and he’s watching an acne cream commercial at top volume. I’m tempted to call 1800-ZIT-GONE just to see what you really get.

Interesting. Becca still sorta believes in Santa, yet Margo and Nicky, who are younger/the same age, no longer believe, and even Claire’s suspicious. I get this, though. It would be hard to maintain the Santa story when you have a bunch of older kids in the family scoffing over the suggestion. I remember that as soon as I stopped believing, my sister did too. It’s possible that Jessi was better at pretending for Becca’s sake than, say, Vanessa and the triplets would be.

Is anyone surprised by the BSC member’s responses to being filmed? Mary Anne ducks away to stay off camera. Kristy films a ‘commercial’ for the BSC while explaining their involvement with the nursing home. Abby hams it up, putting on a bib and knit baby hat.

Vanessa is full of butchered Christmas carols. I wish I were that quick on my feet. (I’m going to have to write them down for next year. There’s only so far you can go with annoying co-workers with Soap Opera Digest carols…)

I’ve never done television, bar appearing in a few news segments. (I’ve appeared in the police blotter for impersonating a dead body, but that’s another story all together.) I can only imagine how irritating it would be to have to redo spontaneous moments in order to catch them on camera. Part of the ‘joy’ of the holidays is the fun and unpredictability, especially with kids involved. So moments like Margo and Nicky falling off the sled should just be allowed to happen and not be recreated for film.

Innnnnnnteresting. Robert invited Stacey to a concert for the same night as the babysitting event. She turned him down because she had the previous commitment. (And because she just barely got back into the club five books earlier.) But she is unbelievably cranky about it. I love this because it’s realistic. You know there has to be moments when these girls don’t want to participate in whatever giant activity that’s planned, for whatever reason.

Kristy embarrasses Logan by pointing out he’s a boy. You’d think he’d already know that.

Heh. The babysitters are unprepared for once. While running the ‘nursery’ at the nursing home by supervising the kids, they don’t have any place set up for changing diapers. (They learn this the hard way.)

Mallory refers to Adam as the Terror of Slate Street. I like it. (It does let his brothers off the hook a little too easily though.) Also, I’m not sure how that happened. Adam wasn’t one of the singers that were looking angelic—Jordan, Nicky, Vanessa, Margo and Claire were.

Points for consistency: even though I didn’t mention it last week, Mallory mentioned that the Pikes do Secret Santa. I’ve done this in the past, but apparently, in the Pike household, you have to grant your Secret Santa’s wish. Mallory gets Adam, who asks for some kind of slithery creature, so she buys him a toy snake. Vanessa gets Mallory, who asks for the greatest Christmas book ever written. Vanessa’s way of granting that wish is actually really sweet: she gives her a blank book and tells her to go write it. Awww!

Later, you get to see a few other Secret Santas: Vanessa gets a newspaper that says she was elected president. (Of all the people in the house, she’s not the one I would have predicted would want that.) And Byron, who asked for his own phone, gets a toy telephone that had been passed down through all the siblings as babies. He uses it to order a large pizza order.

How is no one in the Pike house up at eight in the morning? You’d think Claire and Margo at least would be out of bed by then.

You know that the television situation is bad when the triplets start throwing tantrums. Byron screams at the top of his lungs when they call cut right before he’s supposed to open his present, and later Jordan whines that he hates Christmas. Claire and Margo throwing fits is one thing, but ten year olds is something different. It’s what makes the Pikes kick the camera crews out entirely. (I’m not saying ten year olds don’t/shouldn’t throw tantrums. I’m just saying that there’s usually a very big reason behind it.)

I know that the Pikes wrote into the contract that they could cancel at any time, but can you just imagine how much money would be lost in a move like this? I think the company could possibly still scrape together a special with the footage they already have, but it does kind of ruin the effect to not actually have Christmas Eve and Christmas day.

I think this is the first time I’ve ever looked at the ‘scrapbook’ at the back of a Mallory book. The picture of the Pike family is kinda hilarious. Vanessa and Margo both look way older than the triplets.

No outfits again. Sorry!

Everyone have a happy new year. I’ll see you in January with my take on The Ghost at Dawn’s House…I hope