“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!

“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.

“When the big freckle gets past the wrist bone, then you’ll know it’s time for ice cream.” BSC #53: Kristy for President (1992)

Kristy decides to run for class president. She actually has a decent campaign and all, but she’s bitten off more than she can chew. Her grades start to slip and she’s neglecting other duties. Finally, she drops out at the last minute.

Meanwhile, Jamie Newton gets his first bicycle. Rather than taking the time to learn how to ride it and become secure, he insists on taking the training wheels off prematurely. Finally, some older neighborhood kids do what the BSC couldn’t: convince him to put his training wheels back on for a little while until he’s ready.

Interesting tidbits

Ooh, Kristy’s actually wearing her ‘uniform’ on the cover:

Only other comments: Why are they decorating her bedroom? Also, that’s one big-ass pillow on her bed.

There’s this whole thing about Kristy noticing the kids from the special education program because they all sit together. It’s weird for a couple reasons; first, it doesn’t relate to anything else in the story. It was like the ghostwriter’s attempt at a ‘lesson,’ but serves no purpose. Second, she keeps capitalizing Special Ed, which is just a little off.

Ah, irony: the fire alarm goes off and Alan and his friends lead the charge out of the building. Later, they said there was no alarm and Alan and his friends just started walking and everyone followed. (I’m not sure what the whole ‘fire alarm going off’ thing was then, but whatever.) The BSC says that Alan’s not a great leader and they’d never follow him…but they totally just did.

Ah, gross food jokes again. Those never get old. MA and Kristy are eating the SMS meatloaf and Kristy screams that it’s still alive, then complains it smells bad. (On a side note, I wrote a fanfic set at SHS where the two characters were complaining about the meatloaf, knowing that the SMS meatloaf was made fun of in at least one book. I just couldn’t remember which one it was. [The girl bitching about the meatloaf in that story always brings her lunch from home, which puts her a step above Kristy. If you hate the hot lunch so much, honey, then stop eating it!])

Oh, and you know Kristy’s cool and well-read, because she says her broccoli looks as if Bunnicula already got to it.

Heh. Kristy describes Claudia’s room as a “junk food collage.” It’s not too far off.

There’s a whole conversation making fun of Mary Poppins (the class play). However, Stacey doesn’t comment. You’d think she’d speak up, as it is her favorite movie. (Of course, we all know they end up doing a play of Peter Pan, and it’s not as if that’s any more serious. Or mature.)

Heh heh. Jamie corrects Kristy when she gives him directions and doesn’t say please.

Kristy is running against Pete Black (he of my giant crush), Alan and Grace, Cokie’s friend. I was thinking about it and, early on, they said you have to have a B average to run for office. Do you really think that Grace or Alan would have that good of a GPA? Or am I just being mean?

I love this bit: Claudia had a whole conversation with Kristy when she agreed to be her campaign manager about having a slogan and design that are simple and recognizable. Later, when they go forward with Claudia’s ‘K+’ idea, Janine comes in and starts scrutinizing it. She refers to it as effective branding. Kristy points out that Claudia said the exact same thing…in different language. The two of them laugh about it, and then Janine compliments Claudia.

My favorite slogan suggested for Kristy’s campaign: “Choose Kristy or else!” Jamie suggests that one.

Spelling error, and it’s not even in a Claudia notebook entry! Mr. Kingsbridge is apparently the vice principle of the school (rather than the vice principal.)

You gotta love Toilet Monster references. There seems to be one any time the Korman kids show up. (The title quote is something Kristy tells Melody.)

Another mistake! Pete’s booth at campaign day is across the aisle from Grace’s, but the text said it is across from Cokie’s. Cokie is not running.

Claudia should totally go into advertising. She’s already got the lingo down.

I think it’s really sad that Jamie’s parents are pawning off learning to ride a bicycle onto his babysitters. I don’t have too many positive memories of my dad, but he did help me learn to ride a bike when I was Jamie’s age. I only had the training wheels on for two weeks. (And I am the world’s least coordinated human being.) The difference, I think, is that I wasn’t afraid of my bike in any way, and I didn’t mind falling down too much. (I was used to it, I think.) I guess I was just a tenacious little brat. My sister, who is much more steady and less wobbly than I am, still had training wheels on her bike when she was six, when she’d had the bike for two years.

Kristy mentions the special education classes again in her speech, and I’m still not sure what she’s going on about. It feels like part of that plot line got cut out.

Since when is there a fencing team at SMS.

Oh, boy. Claudia spelling time! Greif, bicicle, hadnt, trainning, tamming. She also uses to for too.

Ooh, a Lucy outfit! The Newtons are definitely trying to make her into a girly-girl.

Mary Anne keeps defending Pete throughout the story, saying he’s okay. I wonder if this is before or after he created a device to fling her Jell-O and kill with it?

Uh oh. Kristy being pensive = boring!

I don’t know why, but I really love that Jessi is the voice of reason for Kristy, however inadvertently. She calls Kristy, who bites her head off. Jessi responds, “If you don’t have time to talk to me, how will you have time to be president of the whole class?” I think part of the reason I like this is that she’s younger and she and Mal tend to get shunted to the side. Or seen as silly and immature.

Oh, I forgot to mention: Mallory runs for secretary of the sixth grade. She wins.

Middle school elections are totally popularity contests, so I’m wondering if Pete won the election because he was the best liked or because he had the best ideas. Whatever. He’s still my favorite BSC boy.

Outfits:

Claudia (for some reason, I just tried to spell that Klaudia): lime green bicycle pants, long pink shirt, cropped lime shirt, black leather high tops; tie-dyed dress, orange tights, feather earrings, hat with green band, star drawn on her face

Stacey: black skirt, tights with one red leg and one black leg, black turtleneck sweater with red flecks; purple capri pants, black ankle boots (I’m hearing Daria’s Quinn whining about orphans without ankle boots), black and white checked shirt)

Kristy: black pants, giant sweater with brown, cream, black and green stripes (I can’t picture this exactly, but every version I come up with is hideous)

Grace: pale blue sweater and stirrup pants, three feet of makeup

Lucy: lavender overalls with pink stars, pink shirt, pink socks, purple shoes

Bonus Snark! Babysitter’s Club Little Sister Super Special #6: Karen’s Campout (1993)

I bought this book for my niece, but I decided to open it up and make fun of the pictures. I happened to open it to one of the twelve or so pages that would have made me sit down and read it. (I’ll explain that in a minute.) This book is just as god-awful as I imagined it would be, but I have a couple of specific snarks here in a moment.

The story is told from five points of view, but most of the chapters are from Karen, Hannie and Nancy. It’s summer again, and everyone’s going back to CampMohawk. Karen and Nancy went the last summer, but it’s Hannie’s first time at camp. Karen’s in the ‘other’ cabin from her friends, and she’s acting like a bored, know-it-all bitch all the time. Later, she admits that she’s actually nervous and scared because Kristy’s not at camp with her this summer. (See below.)

Meanwhile, Nancy’s all homesick, while Hannie’s having a blast. Nancy keeps (literally) tugging on Hannie’s shirtsleeve and being whiny. Hannie tells her off and the two of them stop talking to each other. Later, Hannie gets lost and Nancy’s the only one who knows where to find her. Remove that part of the story and it’s almost exactly what happened when my best friend and I went to camp together when we were eleven.

Okay, so here’s why I picked the book up. You also get points of view from the brothers: David Michael and Linny. And I just don’t think there is enough Linny Papadakis in the world. DM has a “little brother” he thinks is a big wuss until he actually impresses DM by scaring everyone at a campout. Linny keeps complaining that camp isn’t ‘nature-y’ enough. Everyone calls him Nature Boy*, but he eventually feels at home because he can start a fire without a match. Or something.

The Rants:

Karen: First, let me revel in the fact that Karen’s counselor actually tells her off. Ahhh!

Now, let’s talk about this whole Kristy thing. Karen was a “six” the year before when she went to camp, and she was in Stacey’s cabin. (Probably one of only a few times I ever really felt sorry for Stacey.) So how much time did she really spend with Kristy, who was in an “eights” cabin?

Karen’s the reason her team loses a swimming relay. And I enjoyed that, too.

Hannie and Nancy: This is probably the most realistic part of the whole book. Like I said, I actually had the same situation one year when I went to camp with my friend. She got on my nerves to the point that, when we went on overnight, I ditched her. We slept in tents of three, instead of the tents of four back at camp. And my other two tent mates asked me to join them. I did, leaving my friend to sleep with the counselors. (I am SO sorry, Kelly! I don’t think I ever said it back then.)

That said, I don’t buy Nancy being so homesick. She was in Mary Anne’s cabin the year before, along with Margo, and she was FINE. The argument made this time is that she misses her baby brother so much. I guess this makes more sense than having Hannie, who never met a person she didn’t like (except Amanda Delaney), being homesick.

The Boys: My main complaint here is that they only get two chapters a piece.

David Michael is part of an experimental “big brother-little brother” program at the camp. His cabin makes friends with a group of “sixes.” Which would be great except…they’re seven. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the nine or ten year olds be big brothers to the six year olds?

Linny keeps trying to sleep outside and his counselor won’t let him. And I love it.

Generic Snarks: There’s little to no consistency between this book and the “other” Camp Mohawk book. In that one, Dawn’s cabin of elevens gets lost on an overnight. Only the elevens go on the overnight. This year, everyone goes. You’d think they’d do fewer overnights after losing campers, not more.

This was weird. Kristy’s not going to camp, but Claudia and Mallory are. Margo gets sick and Mallory makes it with the “paper bag” (for vomit? Really?) just in time. Yet later, when you find out who is in whose cabin, Margo is in neither Hannie and Nancy’s cabin or Karen’s. She’s seven, so she should be in one or the other.

Also, Charlotte—who barely survived camp the first time—is on the bus. I can’t imagine she’d want to go back.

This is also strange. Hannie and Nancy’s counselor is a woman named Rikki. David Michael’s counselor is the Rick who Logan was a CIT with the year before—the one who wears Hawaiian shirts. And yet, Linny’s counselor is also named Rick. I think that part is actually a mistake…unless having some version of the name Rick makes you REALLY want to be a camp counselor.

This is definitely a mistake. Karen is talking to Hannie about her fight with Nancy and she says something like, “I hope you and Hannie work it out soon.” Either that or Hannie is schizophrenic or has DID. That’s a Little Sister book I’d read!

That was the biggest waste of twenty five minutes ever. ;)

*Flashback to my favorite camp: Camp Chippewa Bay, outside Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Sadly, the camp no longer exists…but we had a counselor one year named Socrates (that’s so-crates, not saw-crah-tees) that we used to call Nature Boy. He completely corrupted the Boatman song: Socrates crayfish, Socrates sing, Socrates don’t do anything!

Next week: Ooh, ponies! It’s time for #54 Mallory and the Dream Horse

“Funny, I thought only we could prevent forest fires.” BSC #52: Mary Anne + 2 Many Babies (1992)

I’m back and my kidneys are (almost) back to normal! This was one of my favorites as a kid. I wanted to be a babysitter and I totally wanted to take the “Modern Living” class featured within. I haven’t read this one since probably 1995, but I’m betting it’s full of ‘delicious’ egg puns, which you can bet I’ll report for you.

So. The SMS eighth graders are taking the aforementioned class, which isn’t really about modern living so much as about being married and having children…which not everyone does. Mary Anne and Logan are (conveniently) in the same class, so they ‘marry’ each other and have to be parents to an egg baby. Of course, all the BSC take this very seriously and learn life lessons from their eggs.

Interesting Tidbits

The cover. Slap some yoga pants on Mary Anne (instead of her very early-90s leggings) and she could be a soccer mom on her way to watch Logan, Jr.’s team lose. (This actually happens in the book, down to the twins’ outfits, with one exception: The Salems have a side-by-side stroller.)

Deep thought time: Mary Anne says she loves Jeff, but she doesn’t spend much time with him. How well does she even know him? He hasn’t been her stepbrother very long, and she only gets to see him during about every-other school break. I guess that’s a better way of phrasing it than, “I guess I like Jeff; I kinda have to, because he’s my stepbrother.”

Ooh, an incident of Sharon-itis! She put the hedge clippers in the bread drawer. MA also mentions finding her sweater in the freezer and the remote control in the bathroom. Honestly, anyone could do the last one…or maybe that’s just me. (Actually, I usually find it next to the fridge when I’m looking for it.)

Heh. Mary Anne suggests that the opposite of outgoing is ingrown. It’s like Ten Things I Hate About You: “I know you can be overwhelmed and I know you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?” “I think you can in Europe.”

Mary Anne thinks she and Logan are ready to get married. Um, really? I could see that attitude if she were seventeen, but she can’t even drive a car for three more years. And I realize she and Logan have been together, on and off, for 42 books, but it’s not even a whole school year, technically.

Shawna Riverson is an idiot. She doesn’t know the difference between a wedding and a marriage or between a condiment and a commodity. She also never heard the phrase, “Better to be silent and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.”

Ooh, scandalous! The school’s allowing same-sex marriages, as there are four more boys than girls in the class. (Connecticut actually was one of the first states to legalize it, but not until 11 years after this book was published.)

Ah, Logan the misogynist. He and MA are given a homework assignment to figure out whether they can be financially independent. (They flip out after discovering they can’t even afford one month’s rent on a two-bedroom apartment with their current, 13-year-old pay.) Logan insists they HAVE to live at his house, because he’s the man.

Actually, wouldn’t it have been funny if he’d tried to convince his parents to let Mary Anne stay over, because they were married? There’s never any insinuation of sex in these books. Real teenagers would be dealing with ‘how far to go’ and hormones. These girls barely kiss most of the time.

Ah, Smokey the Bear jokes. Those never get old. (See the title quote.)

When Mary Anne refers to her egg-baby as ‘her,’ Logan asks how she knows it’s a girl. Um, I know that they were just told to treat the eggs as babies and refer to them as children, but it’s a flippin’ egg. I would have sarcastically replied, “I looked in her diaper.”

I’m trying to remember all of the eggs’ names. I know Mary Anne and Logan name theirs Samantha, Sammie for short. Kristy is married to Alan (natch) and their son is Izzy. Stacey’s is named Bobby and someone else’s—Dawn, I think—names theirs Skip. It’s really disturbing that I remember that. I think what actually disturbs me even more is that I remember being really irritated at not knowing what Claudia named HER baby.

For the record, here are some things I would have considered naming MY egg baby, if I ever had one: Eggbert (actually the title of a Degrassi Junior High episode on this topic), Eggberta, Eggidio, Eggeria, Egguskina, Omelet, Overeasy, Poached, Scrambled, Chicken-Embryo. (The non-food-ish ones are actual names, just with an egg-stra G added by yours truly.)

I remembered this, too: Kristy and Alan get way over-involved in their egg baby, trying to stimulate its brain cells and worrying over whether its nervous when Kristy takes it on a sitting job. She talks on the phone so long over their egg’s social development that she actually loses her sitting charges…and the egg.

And suddenly, I love Linny and Hannie. They’re taking the ‘missing’ Izzy situation about as seriously as I am. Linny: If I were an egg, where would I go? Hannie: How about the refrigerator?

Then they start with the puns. (Actually, Mary Anne says they started “cracking jokes” so I think she beat them to the puns.) The two of them (and Kristy, once she discovers Sari is playing with the egg) use egg-sactly, egg-cellent, egg-zample, egg-citement and egg-straordinary. Linny also says he hopes no one cooked and ate Izzy.

Logan and Mary Anne decorate their egg with flowers. Wouldn’t a face make more sense?

Kristy actually makes Dawn smell Izzy to make sure the egg isn’t spoiled.

I’m actually glad I read the notebook entry that leads up to Stacey’s sitting job for Bobby and Alicia. She mentions that she went through a phase when she was afraid of pigeons “for no good reason.” I’ll give you several good reasons to be afraid of pigeons. They’re fat and grisly. They’re rats with wings. And if they can’t find a better perch, they’ll land on your head. You have to trust me on this. I have photos, and I'm hoping my mom will scan them so you can laugh.
Exhibit A:

That's me in Italy in 1989. I was eight. I am still afraid of pigeons to this day.
Ooh, Stacey’s turn for deep thoughts. She wonders what it must be like for her mom to be single with a “kid”. (I’m sure Stacey doesn’t think of herself that way, even though she is.) Before that, she was the only one not taking the egg project overly seriously. She now thinks it must be very scary being a parent.

Oh, and I’m convinced that the only reason the Gianellis ever became BSC clients was so they could make a few jokes about Bobby the egg meeting Bobby the human.

Please forgive any random typing or spaces you may see while reading this. I (inadvertently) adopted a new kitten recently and one of her favorite games is jumping on my laptop to try to catch the curser. It’s adorable…unless she does it while I’m writing a research paper or something like that. (On a side note, I am now officially a crazy cat lady.)

I was right; Dawn’s egg is named Skip. But Dawn wanted to name him Douglas, because Skip sounds like a cartoon chicken wearing a beanie. Well, Dawn, he is an egg…

Does anyone believe that the Pike boys would really agree to ‘marry’ their sisters and adopt egg babies? Yeah, me neither. Moving on.

Although I did laugh hysterically when Vanessa “killed” her egg baby trying to color it with a crayon. “Poor, poor nameless killed egg.”

Mary Anne and Logan actually contemplate what their teacher does with their egg babies after the class is over. Two words for you: trash can. Better yet, one word: dumpster.

Logan’s been ridiculously overprotective of their ‘baby’, but when he has to say goodbye to Sammie, he suggests that she’s been a good egg. And he’s back to being a regular teenaged boy.

Once again, Jessi is randomly spelled Jessie. I think one of the people who typed up the books (or edited it or something) had a friend/relative that spelled it that way.

That’s it, that’s all. There were NOT enough egg puns for my liking.

Outfits

Claudia: sequined shirt, stirrup pants (“maybe black”), low black boots, turquoise earrings, sparkly nail polish (This doesn’t sound ‘wild and trendy;’ it sounds like 2/3 of the girls in my sixth grade class. Unless they were all wild and trendy too…)

New(ish) characters:

Bobby and Alicia Gianelli (7 and 4)—29 and 26 (this is the first time they’d appeared in a BSC book, although Bobby had already been in Little Sister books)

Next week: I get to re-blog #53 Kristy for President, almost exactly a year after I blogged it originally.

“I had taken a vacation with lunatics.” BSC Super Special #8: Babysitters at Shadow Lake (1992)

Watson’s aunt and uncle want to leave him a cabin in Massachusetts in their will, so they encourage him to take the family up there to see if it’s something he would like to accept. Watson lets the kids bring friends, leading to a grand total of (ahem) 20 people going on vacation together. Everyone gets their own story (including DM and f***ing Karen):

Kristy: really wants to show Watson how much they love the cabin. She also convinces her friends to spend the night on Shadow Island.

Claudia: decorates the little speed boat and enters in in a boat show with much larger craft.

Mary Anne: I think when they wrote this up, they forgot MA. She doesn’t have a plot line. She’s mostly just babysitting for Karen. I’m so sorry, Mary Anne.

Stacey: Sam keeps pestering her, and it takes her forever to realize he likes her. (Um, he’s a fifteen year old boy! Does she expect him to be mature about it?) Eventually, they get together…which lasts for a dozen books or so….

Dawn: is a moron. She decides there must be a mystery (and, because that’s not stupid enough, a Lake Monster.)

Mallory: is annoying. She keeps getting bug bites, so she’s crabby and wears a jungle ensemble with mosquito netting on it.

Jessi: meets a hot guy and forgets all about her 'boyfriend', but then decides that she and this guy are just friends.

Karen, Hannie and Nancy (the Three Musketeers): spend all their time cleaning up a playhouse they find in the woods and making a bet with the boys.

David Michael, Linny and Nicky: try to build a fort that’s better than the girls’ playhouse, but lose the bet. Linny and Nicky, who don’t really know each other, don’t get along so well.

I have three really strong memories from this one, but I’ll put them into the tidbits as they come up.

Interesting Tidbits

The cover! Just two weeks ago, I mentioned this cover, not knowing it was coming up so quickly. I made the comparison between 1980s “Weird” Al Yankovic and Mallory; you be the judge:

Okay, so she doesn't have a mustache, but other than that it's pretty close, right? Besides Mal, the girls all actually kinda look cute here. I LOVE Kristy’s outfit (minus the scrunchie) and would totally wear that. In a good move, they do not have Dawn roasting a marshmallow. Can you hear her whining about processed sugar? Yeah, me too. Only other thing I have to say is that if Stacey is trying to whisper to Mary Anne, she should cup her hand the other way.

In the letter from Watson’s Aunt Faith that introduces the plotline, she mentions that Watson hasn’t been to Shadow Lake since he was twelve, yet the same caretaker still cares for it. Let’s try to guess Watson’s age here. He’s bald, which doesn’t necessarily mean anything (I went to college with a bald guy, for example). I’ve always pictured him being somewhere in his late forties. (Back then, to me that was “really old”—my parents were young parents and not even close to that age.) For shits and giggles, let’s say he’s fifty. It’s then been 38 years since he’s been to this cabin. Either the caretaker is ancient or he was ridiculously young when he started being the caretaker.

More clues to Watson’s age: he hasn’t seen his aunt and uncle for twenty years, since he was “a very young man.” I’m guessing that puts his age closer to 45, or even younger.

Oh, lord. Kristy wants a gavel to start BSC meetings.

Dawn actually considers (in her entry for Watson’s book) whether it’s okay to call him Watson or not. It does seem kind of weird. I mean, it’s normal for kids to call adults by first name sometimes, but considering that they always refer to all the other adults by Mr. or Mrs. So and So, it’s unusual. I guess it would be kind of awkward to call him “your stepdad” all the time when addressing Kristy.

Did I tell you all how much I love Charlie? When there’s too much luggage for the cars, he suggests leaving Karen behind so there’s more room.

Why, oh why, would you bring Boo-boo to the cabin in the woods? What if he gets loose and runs off?

Stacey teaches the “Three Musketeers” the Great Chicago Fire song about Mrs. O’Leary’s cow. I used to love that one as a kid, especially because it was REALLY annoying to others.

Jessi draws a floor plan of the house, and all I can wonder after seeing it is…where’s the front door? Do you have to walk in through the kitchen? (Okay, I also wondered why Aunt Faith and Uncle Pierson needed a cabin which can sleep twenty-eight.)

Do you believe that all eleven girls (seven members of the BSC, Three Musketeers and Emily Michelle) are scared of spiders? They all jump out of bed and freak out when Karen thinks she sees one. Shouldn’t there be at least one sane one?

The title quote comes from Stacey’s assessment of things, only partway into day two. Well, Stacey, you’ve been on vacation with Sam and Dawn (who are the main reasons she says this) before and you survived. Maybe you should know when enough is enough.

Kristy calls Mary Anne “Miss Encyclopedia of Bad News.” I…actually like that. MA does tend to jump to negative conclusions.

This is one of my favorite super specials. Not as high as #4 (just for sheer ludicrousity (not a word, but don’t judge me)), but up there. It’s the dialog; it’s crisper and funnier than normal. It does appear this one was not ghostwritten, so that may be why.

Here’s example #2 of the dialog. Right after MA suggests that Mal could be being bitten by a deer tick (which led to Kristy’s comment as above), Sam suggests that Stacey should be bitten a lot by mosquitos because they love sweet blood. (This could be a diabetes joke or a comment on her personality; you choose.) Kristy calls him Dracula. Sam replies that he’s a man of many secrets, and Kristy says, “Man? You don’t even shave yet.” I love this, as it actually sounds like a brother and sister talking.

OH HELLS YES! Here we go. I am going to transcribe this whole conversation, as it is one of my favorite things in all of BSC-dom.

Mal and Jessi were supervising Andrew and Emily who were trailing Kristy, who was trailing Dawn and Stacey on their monster hunt. I took my eyes off Karen and her friends long enough to glimpse Stacey, who was holding her hand to her forehead and gazing across the water.

“Yo!” shouted Stacey.

“Yo?” repeated Mal.

“She’s from New York,” I heard Kristy say to Mal, who nodded knowingly.

It goes on, but the only other bit that I have to share is when Dawn decides the shape Stacey sees looks just like the Loch Ness monster and Stacey replies, “Nessie is a close, personal friend of yours?”

I may require alcohol to get through the Karen chapters (even though I am on painkillers and that’s a bad combo.) If I stop making sense, I’m sorry. I hope you understand.

It’s always bugged me how Karen (and a lot of the other kids) never use contractions and the sentences are always much simpler. I guess it’s supposed to sound the way a second grader would write; it made sense when I would pick up the Little Sister books. But reading it in these books puts my teeth on edge, and not just because it’s Karen.

Karen flat out lies and disobeys Mary Anne. But then she mentions The Secret Garden and all is forgiven. Will no one actually punish Karen?

Kristy has a problem with her over-thirty mother wearing a bikini. Well, honey, if your mom still has a bikini body after giving birth to four children, she should flaunt it!

The girls are kind of bitchy to Mallory. Yes, she looks like a dork in her mosquito-proof headgear, but she’s their friend and she has a problem. Yet instead of sympathizing with her, they make her walk ten paces behind them. And Kristy tells her she’s an embarrassment.

Ah, this brings back memories. Jessi agrees to give her lovah boy (his name is Daniel, because you know I love to be precise about these things) a dance lesson, but first she has to rewind the tape. Those were the days.

Real books: Maniac Magee and The Hero and the Crown.

Linny and Nicky spend a whole chapter arguing. They only stop when they find a common enemy: the girls.

This makes NO sense. The bet the kids make involves doing each other’s chores for a month. That would be okay for Linny and Hannie, who are siblings, and maybe even for Karen and David Michael, who do sometimes live together. But is someone supposed to drive Nicky over to Nancy’s house so he can do her chores (or vice versa)?

Yay, Claudia spelling! Michele, waht, geting, thicking (thinking), satruday. She also keeps misusing words: boot for boat, shoe for show, the Faith Person instead of the Faith Pierson, Lack for Lake. More amusingly, she spells Andrew as Andrea, Emily as Emil and Kristy as Kirsty.

Andrew’s suggestions to decorate the Faith Pierson: a turkey, a pirate, a crayon, a hobo, Gumby and a Hershey bar.

Ah, a Sam chapter. Awesome! (And I’m not kidding about that. I actually enjoy Sam’s point of view. In fact,  I wish we could have had chapters from more of the older siblings, like Janine and Charlie.)

I guess Sam feels the same way about Karen as Charlie does: he hears someone singing a song and thinks Karen’s in the boy’s dorm. When he finds out it’s Andrew, he thinks, “Oh no, there’s going to be two of them!”

Mary Anne is reading The Wind in the Willows.

Oh, my second memory of this book (The first was the “Nessie” scene where Stacey says yo.) Dawn takes EM and Andrew to the dock to look at the boats. Emily keeps saying “boot,” even though the other two keep correcting her with “boat” and she said it properly earlier. However, they find out she was referring to a cowboy boot decoration on one of the boats when she later says “boot on boat.”

More Claudia spelling! Parad, decrated, prety, yestruday, whith. Also Kristy ‘road’ in the boat.

Claudia dresses the Faith Pierson up like the Lack Munster.

“You must be crazy, Kristy…You’re not playing with a full deck. You’re a few bricks short of a load. The lights are on, but nobody’s home.”

“I get the picture.’’

“Wait, can I just say one more thing?”

“Be my guest.”

            “The cheese has slipped off the cracker.”

I have used ‘the cheese has slipped off the cracker’ many times in my life. It has served me well. And, well, I guess I have Dawn (and Ann M. Martin) to thank for that.

I always liked when Jessi would pop a sense of humor into the books. It seemed to happen randomly through the series, until Abby came along (and kind of stole that thunder.) Mallory overpacks for their night on the island and then describes all the things she has in her bag: she’s got mosquito spray, tick spray, general bug spray, etc. This leads Jessi to ask “Who’s General Bug?”

Mallory mixes up the theme song to the Beverly Hillbillies with Gilligan’s Island. I laugh because my dad used to tell us bedtime stories by reciting the lyrics to those songs. “Let me tell you a story about a man named Jed…” I joke that someday, I’ll be able to tell those ‘stories’ plus the Fresh Prince of Bel Air and The Nanny.

Mal says they don’t plan on using the tents they brought to the island, but you’d think someone with as many insect bites as Mal has would want to sleep in a tent. (It would have been interesting if they’d kept up the ‘Mal gets eaten alive by insects’ thing in later books, the way they do with the ‘Mary Anne sunburns’ thing.)

Ooh, a DM spelling mistake! He keeps spelling fort as forte and were as where. (I went back to his earlier entry and found a few more: figthing/figth, bild.) He still has better spelling than Claudia. Oh, and I think he has the same handwriting as Logan…

Kristy sure is creative with the descriptions of disgusting smells. After the Three Musketeers bathe themselves in perfume, Claudia suggests the bedroom smells like cabbage and sewage. Kristy suggests it’s more like the combination of a fish head and old chicken skin in the garbage disposal.

According to this book, Quint is eleven (I’d always thought he was older for some reason).

Kristy actually dreams that Stacey and Sam are getting married, but Sam is late to the wedding because he’s making prank calls.

This one still makes me laugh after all these years: Claudia’s cleaning out the refrigerator, but after she keeps announcing all the gross things she finds, she gets removed from the job and made to clean the grill.

Two notes from the epilogue. First, a funny: Mallory writes a complaint to the people who make the insect repellent she used on the trip, complaining that it didn’t work. In return, they sent her a coupon for her next purchase of the bug spray. Second, when Watson writes to his aunt to accept the cabin, he calls Kristy his daughter (rather than stepdaughter). She’s beyond happy about that.

Outfits:

Claudia: pink tank top over white tank top, black and pink bicycle shorts, three pairs of flop socks (hawt), neon yellow sneakers

Stacey: black leggings, long black t-shirt with a starfish on it, black flop socks, high tops; Hard Rock Café shirt and wrinkly shorts

Mallory: yellow sundress (which looked awesome with her safari hat and mosquito netting)

Kristy: drawstring shorts, shirt with Pokey and Gumby on it

Jessi: jean skirt, yellow tank top, flop socks, high tops

Coming up next week: #52 Mary Anne + 2 Many Babies