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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interesting Tidbits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. and Mrs. Austin are Ted and Jenny.

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

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

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

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

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

Outfits

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

New characters

Sandra Lazan (7)—27

Next: #91

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

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

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

Interesting Tidbits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Costumes:

            Robert and Stacey: Gomez and Morticia Addams                  

            Mary Anne and Logan: Dorothy and the Scarecrow

            Mal: ballerina

            Jessi: cow girl

            Abby: Lucy Ricardo

            Kristy: Amelia Earhart

            Claudia: giant Twinkie

            Grace: Snow White

            Todd and Rick: Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble

            Mr. Rothman: football player

            Sabrina Bouvier: Cleopatra

            Cary: a knight chess piece

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Outfits

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

Grace: thermal leggings, blue plaid flannel shirt

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

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

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

New Characters:

Cary Retlin (13)—33

Next: Dawn’s Book

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

Let’s Vlog! Doo-da-doo-da-da-doo!

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

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

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

Interesting tidbits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We finally meet Anna and Abby in chapter six…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Outfits:

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

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

Next: Mystery #22. Hot dog!

“It looks deadly.” BSC Mystery #21: Claudia and the Recipe for Danger (1995)

Ooh, we are in the part of the mysteries where they are just so ludicrous that they’re funny to read. I can’t wait for the next mystery, which is Carrie meets the BSC meets my gut splitting with laughter.

A kids baking contest is set up, and Mary Anne and Claudia team up with Shea Rodowsky to try to bake the best creations. Someone’s sabotaging other peoples’ baked goods—and it’s not just Claudia, who would rather make up her own recipe than follow a real one, and nothing she creates tastes good. Claudia winds up teaming up with Grace Blume and finding out that the culprit is a girl too old for the competition who joined it anyway and her boyfriend, one of the contest officials. MA, Claud and Shea wind up winning when they use MA’s mother cake recipe.

Meanwhile, the rest of the BSC is running a daycare of sorts during the competition. They make a pretend restaurant with the kids and catch a liar.

Interesting Tidbits

I LOVE this cover. Claudia’s looking around all shiftily (which apparently is a word, even though it doesn’t sound like one), suspecting everyone. Mary Anne is looking at Shea like she’s upset with him, like whatever’s wrong with that baked good she’s holding is his fault, while he’s like ‘I don’t know what happened.’ Oh, and the banner's really low-rent for a professionally-sponsored contest.

Ha! Claudia says Jamie isn’t her boyfriend, then ask if the reader knows any cool boys. I think she’d have better luck hanging out with Jamie, to be honest.

I love Claudia’s charm bracelet, which has a miniature Hershey Kiss, a book (for her Nancy Drews), a crane (Japanese sign for peace), a credit card, a crayon, etc.

“Sometimes I think my humor never developed much past the four-year-old stage.” I say something similar, except I never outgrew being a ten-year-old boy.

This book actually takes place before the last one, because Dawn is still around.

Claudia describes the members of the BSC as if they were charms on a charm bracelet as well. Kristy is a baseball; Mary Anne, a kitten. Dawn would be sunglasses; Stacey, the Empire State Building. I’m guessing Mal is a book and Jessi, a pair of ballet slippers. (I was half right; a pencil and toe shoes.) She even does Logan (soccer ball…I think that’s the only team he’s NOT on, but this is pre-Abby) and Shannon (drama masks).

I like that Claudia acknowledges the connection she formed with Shea. She also says he’s great with figures and measurements.

The other teams we meet that are competing? Logan, Austin and Kerry; Grace, Cokie (who actually gets too sick to compete), and Mari Drabek; Pete, Erica and Lauren; Bill Korman and his friends Greg Wilson and David Simpson, Sara Hill, Elizabeth Sayers (her best friend, who is mentioned anytime Sara is mentioned) and Brittany DePew; several teams of out of towners that I’ll mention when they come up.

I think it’s interesting that Kristy wants to be the Cake Cop, making sure everyone follows the rules. She’s the same person who wanted to work with the security guards in the mall mystery.

Both Claudia and Kristy are wearing hats when the kids’ contest begins. Claudia’s is a baker’s hat covered in baking images (self-decorated, of course.) Kristy is wearing a Cincinnati Reds hat…because it has a red C…and that stands for Cake Cop.

The first day, someone switches Claudia’s team’s baking soda for flour, so their cake ends up flat, and turns the oven up high on Logan’s team, so their cake is burnt. (Grace and Mari win that day.)

On day two, Grace and Mari’s oven catches on fire because someone added a ton of baking powder (which is highly flammable.) Austin, Logan and Kerry win that day.

One of the competitors, Julie Liu, has parents that keep on her ass, telling her she isn’t taking the contest serious enough, or being creative enough in her baking. They have to be thrown out.

Claudia’s thrilled about her family’s new cordless phone. Imagine how she’d be with a cell phone.

Claudia’s adjectives for her kreatif kake resapees (lol): awful, disgusting, inedible, mondo-horrendous, barf-o-rama and puke-tacular.

Rachel Kleinman, another member of another team, also has a father who is a little too interested in his daughter’s baking. But her dad used to work for the company that’s sponsoring the contest, making him a suspect. Another girl goes by ‘Precious’ and also has an overbearing parent.

The title quote isn’t about one of Claudia’s cakes, but her comment on some ant poison her mom asked her to buy. I don’t know why I chose that; it just struck my fancy. Grace catches Claudia buying it and accuses her of sabotage. Instead, the two of them team up to solve the mystery.

We’ve all known a girl like Grace. She’s pleasant and nice and decent on her own, but her friends are toxic and when she’s with them, she’s equally bad. That’s the kind of girl who finds a new group of friends in high school and becomes popular and nice…or stays with their bad friends throughout high school and then comes to regret it later.

Heh. Claudia calls one of the teams the ‘Cute Boy team’ and distracts herself from the contest wondering what she should say to let the members know she’s available and interested.

Interesting. This story has two Tylers—both babysittees—and two Julies, one a babysittee and the other a contestant.

The stupid C plot relates to Kyle and Megan Farmer. A calculator turns up missing and later a terrarium gets broken. Kyle points the finger at his sister both times, while Megan just kind of shrugs. She denies these behaviors until told Kyle said it, then admits to them. Obviously Kyle is responsible for everything. It’s ridiculous.

The third day brings someone switching out Claudia’s bag of sugar with one that was full of salt. (She notices because the whole bag is different.) And someone replaces Logan’s eggs with hardboiled ones. (Mary Anne’s mom’s cake wins this time.)

Jackie is actually a suspect for a while, because he keeps disappearing from the daycare. But it turns out a lady gave him some baking ingredients and he was secretly making his own ‘cake.’ Why would Jackie have sabotaged Shea’s cake? Even if he was jealous, switching salt for sugar and putting baking powder in cornstarch seem too advanced for a seven-year-old.

The final five teams are Claud’s, Grace’s, Logan’s, Julie’s and Rachel’s. Of course. Those two were the main kid suspects and their parents were the main adult suspects.

Continuity: no one in the BSC-verse likes anchovies except Kristy and Bart.

Shea stumbles upon an interesting clue: The teams that got sabotaged on the first day were the ones whose stations looked tidiest. Grace and Mari’s station was a mess because Mari just throws things everywhere. But after they won the first day, the culprit saw them as a threat and sabotaged them as well.

I have never had to write the word sabotage this many times before. It looks really weird and I keep thinking I’m spelling it wrong.

“We’re dealing with a devious criminal mind.” Ooh! Does that mean Shemar Moore will be showing up soon?

Scandal! (Not the TV show this time!) Marty, the guy running the contest, gets caught kissing Julie Liu.

Claudia hatches a plan to catch the saboteur in the act. Her team makes sure that both the main suspects hear they have a ‘foolproof’ plan for winning. They put their cake in Grace and Mari’s oven and then dust flour all over every surface in their workstation. The best part? One of the contest judges catches them at it and is like WTF? So they rope her into catching their prey.

The menu for the ‘Kidz Kitchen’ is interesting, and Claudia had input into neither the name nor the menu. (The kids did everything.)  You can get a frute plate and have your sandwich on raisen toast or hole wheat. You can also get a chery Jell-O Jiggler or have popcorn covered in parmisan cheese or cimmanon and sugar. One of the drink choices is leminade, and my personal favorite? “Bug Salad (not real bugs)”

Everyone was so surprised that Marty was kissing Julie earlier that none of them except Claudia caught the significance of the fact that Julie was driving the car they got out of. The junior contest was for children under sixteen. If Julie was old enough to have a license, she was at least sixteen. Marty claims he was sabotaging everything to get her parents off her back…so they could have more time together.

Heh. Shea is only nine, but he’s already trying to be all macho. Claudia and Mary Anne both say what a good time they had working with him, and he agrees. They get all emotional—Mary Anne cries, of course—but he tries to pretend he’s not as upset as they are.

Claudia dreams up all these different names for their chocolate cake after they win, such as Cake a la Claudia, since the cake will be in a cookbook. That makes no sense at all. (They end up calling it Alma’s Memory Cake, which is a nice and logical name…especially if the book makes note that it is in memory of Alma Spier.)

“What would the BSC be without Cokie for an enemy?” I actually preferred this one, where she was home with no voice for the whole book.

New Characters

Tyler and Emily Austin (12 and 8)—32 and 28

Nichole, Taylor and Tyler Lavista (6, 3 and 3)—26, 23 and 23

Morgan and Dana Singer (8 and baby)—28 and 20

Kyle and Megan Farmer (9 and 7)—29 and 27

Greg Wilson (9)—29

David Simpson (9)—29

Brittany DePew (9)—29

Joseph and Julie Rodowsky (5 and 3)—25 and 23

Next: #89, and I vlog Kristy. Can’t miss that! (Should be posted tomorrow, along with the next entry.)

“We wanted our beautiful faces to be the last things you see before taking off.” BSC #88: Farewell, Dawn (1995)

Before I reread this one, let’s discuss a little Dawn timeline.

#4: Dawn moves to CT from CA

#30: Mom gets married; she and MA (I’m all about the abbrev. today) become stepsisters

#67: Temporarily moves back to CA

SS #12 (between #80 and #81, I believe): Dad gets married; moves back to CT

#87: Finds out Sunny’s mom has cancer

#88: Moves back to CA (not really for good, since she narrates 2 more books and is in every SS for the rest of BSC-time.)

If Dawn’s visit to California was six months and 14ish books, then how long was she back in Connecticut before she turned around and moved back to California?

Anyhoo, people, obviously, Dawn decides she needs to permanently move back to California for two reasons. 1. She needs to be near Sunny while her mom’s dying. 2. Ann M. Martin decided she needed to write the California Diaries. (Yeah, I went there.) The most interesting part is that she doesn’t tell Mary Anne she’s leaving because she knows it would hurt her feelings; she procrastinates until MA finds out from someone else and is even more hurt.

In the B plot, James Hobart breaks his leg and the BSC throw him a Christmas party (in the middle of summer vacation) to cheer him up.

Interesting tidbits

Stop! Cover time! Is it just me, or is it really funny that Claudia and Kristy look so happy to see Dawn go? It’s more like “Good riddance!” than “Farewell!”

Hmm. Maybe #85 wasn’t a mistake when it had three separate pages stating the title. This one is the same way….

Oh look, there’s Norman. Let’s talk about his weight. *eye roll*

I love this: One phone call to Sunny and Dawn makes up her mind that she must move back to California.

Dawn says Stacey’s still changing, even with her return to the BSC. Teeki’s psychoanalysis? She seems to be having a crisis of self-esteem, not quite knowing who she is or where she stands. Very normal for a girl her age, if you ask me.

There’s one paragraph in chapter 2 that is indented further than the rest, and it’s extremely distracting.

This is actually nice and true about Mal: Dawn says she’s quick with a snappy retort. They do it subtly most of the time, but Mal is pretty sarcastic and quick witted.

Reactions to being told Dawn wants to move back to CA:

            Carol: Tells her to just come on back home (as if it’s that easy. Even Carol should know that it’s not.)

            Sharon: Says she hates it, but it’s Dawn’s choice and she respects it

            Richard: Waits for Sharon’s approval, then starts working on the legal aspects

            Kristy: ‘Oh no! I’m really going to miss you, but what is the BSC going to do?’ (my paraphrase)

            Mary Anne: feels betrayed because she hears it second hand (actually, sixth hand). She actually purposely smashes a mug on the floor

Nicky manages to get Margo to play football with him and the Hobart boys by imitating her and saying girls are horrible at the game. Most of the time he doesn’t want anything to do with the girls in his family, but it’s nice to see that he’s learned to read them so well. (Ben: “I’m not big on American football.” Mal: “That shows intelligence.”)

Aww, Claire is really sweet. Being the baby of the family, she doesn’t really get the chance to be comforting and supportive to others, but when James breaks his leg, Johnny starts crying. Claire gives him a hug and gets him to stop.

Mary Anne hears Dawn’s news from Logan, who heard it from Robert (who knew the two of them were friends?), who heard from Stacey, who heard from Claudia, who heard from Kristy. Dawn told Kristy not to tell anyone—she’d only informed her so that she could be aware as the BSC president. Who knew Kristy was such a gossip?

When MA finds out Dawn is leaving, they get into a fight and basically just call each other selfish (for only thinking about her own feelings, not the others). But Dawn gets mad and told MA she was glad she wasn’t her and didn’t feel the way MA did…because MA’s solution to problems is to sit there, worry and cry, while Dawn is more an action person. This is true, but not a nice thing to say, especially the way Dawn phrases it. I always forget how bitchy Dawn and Mary Anne get when they fight. I love it.

Sharon-itis: Christmas cards in with the cookie sheets. I actually understand this one…I lost my camera once and found it in my Christmas decorations nearly a year later. Last time I’d used it was at a Christmas party.

My favorite sitting client moment of the book is this ongoing rivalry between Jenny Prezzioso and Archie Rodowsky. He sprays her with faux snow and then the two of them fight over which of their macaroni ornaments looks better. (Who cares? It’s still macaroni.)

The Christmas in Summer idea for James was created simply because Christmas is the happiest time of the year and James was miserable. But it worked out better than they expected because Christmas occurs in summer in Australia. He felt like he was back home. Shannon sort of narrates that chapter, which works out pretty well. She makes a mention of being glad that she’d gotten more involved in the BSC, which makes Dawn sort of regret her choice to leave.

Heh. At Dawn’s going away party, there are two tables of food, Healthy Food and Dawn’s Yucky Food.

Stacey’s being all existential about her identity crisis. She tells Dawn that you have to follow your instincts or you won’t be happy in life, which gives Dawn more confidence about her decision.

The title quote is Claudia’s explanation about why the BSC came to the airport to say goodbye to Dawn.

Just a weird little nitpicky thing. (I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t have one of these!) Dawn’s flight is the “flight to California.” There are a LOT of airports in California. Even saying it’s the flight to LA wouldn’t probably be enough information.

I actually liked the BSC goodbyes. Some of them were boring, with people promising to write back and forth. But Shannon says she’ll write asking for advice, such as “How do I do a million things at once?” That’s mostly interesting because Shannon is always overbooked anyway. She doesn’t need Dawn’s advice on that.

Mary Anne, after she got over her fight with Dawn, was acting distant and cold and fake-polite. She told Dawn she had to deal with the move in her own way, which is fair enough. Finally, she gets all upset because she and Dawn won’t be sharing a bathroom at night to brush their teeth anymore. When Dawn was temporarily gone, Mary Anne imagined she was still there. But now that will be harder, so the two of them agree to each take a picture of herself brushing her teeth and send it to the other, to put in the bathroom.

The final chapter is all letters back and forth. There are a few highlights, such as Dawn acknowledging the fact that school starts back up earlier in CA than in CT. Jessi says she looks up to Dawn and wants her to know what their friendship has meant. James thanks Dawn for Christmas and says he too understands what it’s like to be homesick, which is really sweet. MA doesn’t want anyone to see the picture of her brushing her teeth ‘except parents’, but I have a feeling Jeff will see it, too, unless Dawn has her own private bathroom. And Mrs. Bruen will definitely see it when she cleans.

Oh, and of course Claudia writes a letter as well. The funniest part (aside from the spelling) is that she gets chocolate on the postcard but sends it anyway. Spelling: Weve, alredy, starded, buzy, amound, choclit, wile. She signs it luv, Claudia, but I can’t tell if that’s a spelling error or if Stacey’s rubbed off on her.

I only have two more Dawn books to read, #98 and her autobiography. I’m actually a little sad about that.

Outfits

Mary Anne: blue and white plaid shorts, blue t-shirt

Dawn: white shirt, flowered blouse; gauzy blue sun dress with white buttons

Mr. and Mrs. Hill: jogging suits (whee!)

Claudia: oversized white cotton jumpsuit with jungle scene painted on one leg, pink sleeveless tee with purple sleeveless tee, safety pin and bead belt, parrot earrings; red shorts, green vest, white t-shirt, sandals with red and green ribbons

Next: Claudia and the Recipe for Danger. Sounds awesome!

“What were we accusing them of? Being Scottish?” BSC Super Mystery #1: Babysitters’ Haunted House (1995)

Lisa and Seth Engle, Karen and Andrew’s mom and stepdad, call the BSC needing two sitters to be parents’ helpers during a ten-day vacation in Maine. The four eighth grade BSC members (Dawn, Claudia, MA and Kristy) are all fighting over who will take the job, so Lisa offers to let all four of them come along; they get a free vacation in exchange for sitting the six kids all day long. The sitters keep seeing and hearing ‘ghosty’ things and try to find an explanation for it. Meanwhile, the kids are being kids (One hates Karen because she’s overbearing; one follows Dawn around everywhere; the third is mad because the only other two boys are five years older and five years younger than he is, respectively.) They find a mystery about an alleged treasure and ghosts in the attic, but it turns out that the caretaker couple are really just trying to scare the Menders family away because if they don’t move into the home, then the caretakers will inherit it.

Meanwhile, Jessi and Mal are trying to hold down the BSC fort with Shannon and Logan not able to make meetings or sit very much, which is actually more interesting than the A plot.

Interesting Tidbits

The cover: Friggin’ Karen. The funniest part, though, is that everyone’s looking stage left…except Kristy.

The book starts with Claudia handwriting! Ooh! Allready, evry, entertin, hopefuly, vacatin, whith, ful. She also uses for for four. Heh.

Claudia ‘didn’t exactly pass’ English. That sounds like the way they phrase things these days to preserve kids’ self-esteem bubbles. Honestly, I can understand that in elementary school, but by middle school kids need to accept the consequences of failing. (In this case, though, I think it might be Claud’s phrasing rather than the school’s.)

More Claudia! Fourever, tempratur, ninty, freinds, finely (instead of finally), celabrate, whitch (which). I can’t figure out part of what she’s saying, either: “[We] were jumping out of our sivety skins with exsitment.” I might be reading ‘sivety’ wrong though.

Claudia bought Dawn some rice cakes but suggests that she’d get the same effect from chewing on paper. This is pretty much true.

Karen and Andrew get into a fight over which babysitters they’ll sit next to. Karen wants to sit next to Kristy and Mary Anne, while Andrew wants to sit next to Kristy and Claudia. Ha ha, no one wants to sit with Dawn (until they see her. Then Andrew wants to sit with ALL the sitters.)

Mary Anne recognizes the name of the town the Engles are visiting because she ‘read about it in a travel guide.’ Mary Anne does seem the sort who would just sit at home, reading travel guides, waiting for the day when she’s old enough to actually go places.

Ha! The convoy gets lost on the way to Maine and detour through Vermont. Instead of getting mad, Mary Anne actually likes it.

Dawn makes up for the fact that neither Karen nor Andrew wanted to sit with her by attracting the interest of Jill Menders, who decides she wants to be Dawn Jr. and copy her in every way.

First part of the ‘mystery’: Mary Anne and Kristy see candle light and hear ‘ghostly wailing’ their first night in Reese.

The oldest Menders son wants to be an actor when he grows up, so he goes around speaking in character. He scares the shit out of Dawn by coming up behind her and asking her, “Sleep well, my pretty?” Dawn says his acting is as good as Jeff’s comedy, which is obviously not a compliment.

Claudia decides that Georgio, the gardener, is a babe, but she capitalizes it: “He’s a Babe.” Makes me think of the pig…

Anyone surprised that Claudia really gets into the idea of making a float for the Founders’ Day parade? Me neither. Moving on.

More Claud spelling: beleve, thats, Saterday, wrighting, evrybody, notebok, rite (write), compositon, somthing, intresting.

Georgio is in college (University of Maine) and thinks Claudia is sixteen. He’s clearly hitting on her but she’s so busy suspecting him of being the ghost that she doesn’t even notice. Not to mention the fact that him being nineteen or older and hitting on fake-sixteen year olds is icky (and illegal).

Eww, Karen chapter. Can I throw up now or do I have to wait until it’s over?

Martha is reading The Secret Garden.

Heh. Logan and Karen have the same handwriting. In a letter to Mary Anne, he relates a BSC meeting he wasn’t even at, attended by Mal and Jessi. They get so desperate for sitters that Janine agrees to take a job. Then they forget to tell Logan about a sitting job they lined up for him, so Mal actually shows up at the Rosebud Café to get him to go. She grabs a loaf of bread from him, shakes it at him and then wrings it ‘like a handkerchief.’ I’m going to quote Logan’s letter: “Mal—acting president of the Babysitters Club—was still holding on to that pathetic loaf of bread when I rushed her out of the restaurant.” She then tells him she loves him and that the Stoneybrook Ambulance Services (which was having an auction, hence the need for so many sitters) should name an ambulance after him. Logan doesn’t love her much, but he puts up with Mary Anne’s ‘goofy friends.’

The babysitters keep confiding in the couple who are caretakers of the house, Elton and Margaret Cooper, about their suspicions about the ghost and the house. Which, for anyone who has ever read any of these books before, makes them the number one suspects. BSC members always tell the wrong things to the wrong people.

Elton tells the girls the story of the granddaughter of Reginald Randolph—that name’s a real tongue twister!—Lydia, who fell in love with the gardener. Her parents locked her up on the fourth floor to keep her from the gardener, who made a fortune and then came to rescue her. By the time he found her, she had white hair. Sounds like any ghost story you could find in any book for kids. Oh, and it's not true. Dawn’s supposed to be a big fan of those books, but she eats the story straight up. It’s kind of pathetic.

There’s some other malarkey about Reginald going off to sea and never coming back, and how his wife walked the widow’s walk at the top of the house for the rest of her life, until she was flung to her death in a storm. I can’t remember all the details, because I actually read that part a couple days ago….

Part of the reason the BSC went as a group to Reese was to try to convince the Menders kids that they liked Reese and help them adjust and make friends. This is a problem for several reasons:

1.                  Martha is shy and doesn’t want to talk to the other kids. She’d probably be fine if she were on her own, but Karen keeps trying to goad her into making friends. Of course Karen is completely unhelpful and annoying.

2.                  Jason doesn’t want to be near the girls, so Kristy keeps trying to take him to meet the other boys in the area. But since Karen is being obnoxious, the other boys won’t come near him. He calls them stuck up.

3.                  Jill only wants to be with Dawn. She says she doesn’t want to move to Reese; she’d rather move to Stoneybrook and live next to Dawn. (I keep waiting for Dawn’s patience to end and for her to wind up telling Jill off.)

4.                  Lionel thinks he can’t become a ‘real’ actor if he’s stuck in Reese…despite the fact that they have summer stock productions and he could act in them.

Honestly, I can’t decide why Lionel is the sitters’ responsibility. He’s older than they are and has been spending most of his time following Dawn around as much as Jill does. (He’s figured out she’s very easy to spook.)

Dawn thinks the cat Jill found is a ghost. Because that worked out so well the firsttime she thought that.

Kristy manages to get Jason to make some friends…by agreeing to coach all the boys in a game of softball. Bo-ring!

Mallory and Jessi feel like they’ve ruined the club by not having sitters available for all the jobs that pop up. But really. What do they think happens when they whole BSC goes on vacation all those other times? There are going to be times when there are no sitters available. The BSC can’t be the only sitters in town.

Claudia spelling! Disapointed, freind, sory, grandparrents, scarey, midle. She also uses steel for steal.

There’s actually an Andrew chapter, about the mini-fair held by the swim team Mary Anne was trying to convince Jill and Martha to join. Because Mary Anne had asked about the Randolph house at the historical society and was told a ‘woman with an accent’ had asked about the same thing not long before, the babysitters are tracking women who ‘sound like Mary Poppins.’

After Dawn decides to play in the dumbwaiter (which was hidden behind a painting), she finds a couple of interesting things. Someone had put a tape recorder in there, and it had to be open somewhere because the cat was able to climb in and have a seat in the elevator part. Also, Mrs. Cooper, who supposedly had no voice and was unable to speak, could in fact talk. (In fact, Dawn eventually admits she had an accent…which most likely makes her Mary Poppins.)

The final key to the mystery comes when Mr. Menders states that the will stipulates he only actually inherits the mansion if he lives in it full time; otherwise, it goes to his cousin Charles, who had moved overseas years before.

The title quote is a paraphrase of why Kristy doesn’t tell Lisa her suspicions about the Coopers before all the adults leave for the day.

“I almost wish I still thought the house was haunted.” I’ll give you three guesses who wrote that, and the first two don’t count.

Jessi and Mal found out that the meetings were slow (after the first one) because a lot of clients went on vacation, not because they’d ‘ruined’ the club. But there’s a mistake in among that mess: Mal is scheduled to take both her siblings and the Rodowskys to the fair that’s going to be held in Stoneybrook, while Jessi is supposed to supervise Becca, the Braddocks and the some other kids. Yet when Jessi calls the Braddocks a few days before the fair, Mrs. Braddock tells her they’re leaving right that moment on a two week camping trip. It’s as if they didn’t keep track of which family was which and meant to mention someone else was going on vacation.

Ooh, one last set of Claudia spelling: Wat (twice), nigt, forgit, evrybody, floot, sory, scard, costum.

So the Menders kids all end up liking Reese and so they decide to move there. Lionel joins the summer stock and agrees to coach Jason and his new friends in baseball. Jill becomes a junior babysitter by supervising Martha at swim practice (this lets her be like Dawn a little); they both make friends on the swim team.

In the epilogue, Georgio writes a letter to Claudia, who responds…by typing him a letter. Probably so she could use spell check! (She also finally tells him she’s thirteen.)

There was this whole lame thing about Uncle Randolph dying and mentioning his treasure in the attic. The BSC looks but doesn’t find any jewels, but the Menderses let Andrew keep a toy boat he finds. The boat’s name? Treasure. Yep.

Outfits

Claudia: blue lycra bike shorts, lacy black tank top, man’s white dress shirt, purple and white checked socks, red high tops, hoop earrings with parrots on them (sounds positively nauseating); pink and red abstract floral pattern sundress, pink baseball cap, yellow glass earrings, red high tops; black gauzy skirt, black leotard, dangly glass earrings; same black skirt with a red tank top

Dawn: t-shirt and shorts over swimsuit; sundress and sandals (Jill asks her every day what she’s going to wear so they can be matchy, hence the attire); pink tank top, long skirt, fake pearls

Jill: Dawn’s skirt and a tank top (so she looks like Dawn, natch)

Lionel: seventy year old tux; white linen pants and beige shirt; cutoffs, Red Sox t-shirt, sideways ball cap

New characters

Lionel, Jillian (Jill), Jason and Martha Menders (14, 10, 9 and 7)—34, 30, 29 and 27

Next: Farewell, Dawn