For once, the babysitters actually start acting like 13 year old girls and not like forty year old PTA president wannabes. They shop and goof off and consider non-BSC activities. Naturally, any desire to stray from the group must be quashed in the next 100 pages.
Eighth grade yet again (no time paradoxes here!). Kristy proposes that the club plan a Fall Into Fall block party that no one else is remotely interested in. Then she flips out when it turns out that some members have other commitments besides the club and want to be more flexible. Can we please replace the adjectives “bossy” and “stubborn” with “type-A control freak”?
Kristy votes to disband the club after Jackie Rodowsky sprains his ankle under her watch because she feels she's a terrible babysitter. The rest of Stoneybrook falls apart and eventually, they start up the club again when Kristy realizes she's not so bad, everyone misses the club (read: she has no one to bully).
I Hate Mallory Alert
When five thirty rolls around on the next non-meeting day, who calls up Kristy all wounded in a vulnerable post-break up invitation for a booty call? Okay, okay, she just wants to see if anyone else wants to hang out, just so they can still be friends without necessarily being in the club. But everyone else is too busy having a life. Poor Mallory.
Fun Observations
- Mary Anne's last name, Spier, rhymes with “fear.” I always pronounced it to rhyme with “flier” until I read this one. Incidentally, Claudia thinks the name is spelled "S-P-E-A-R."
- The club meets on a Labor Day Monday. The Kishis were at Claudia’s aunt and uncle’s barbeque and apparently Claudia’s parents agreed to cut it short and come home early so a group of thirteen year olds can hang out. (Though considering they let the rest of the club hang out in Claudia’s rooms during times when even she couldn’t make it to a meeting, somehow I’m not surprised.)
- There’s a picture of a parrot on Claudia’s easel. Hmmm. Another self-portrait?
- The rest of the Stoneybrook really needs their BSC fix. Mrs. Wilder offers counseling, Mr. Papadakis offers to pay them a retainer, and Mrs. Arnold is almost reduced to tears. Wow, for once they'll have to spend time with their own offspring.
- Kristy eavesdrops on Erica Blumberg and Lily Karp (remember when they used to fraternize with non-BSC members?) and overhears Erica not realizing that Lucy Newton needed a diaper change when she sat for her. Kristy barges in and starts giving advice about the best thing to put on a diaper rash (hmmm, why does Kristy know so much about baby asses?) and then gets offended when Lily and Erica tell her that the BSC had the racket on babysitting covered.
- Jessi can’t make Friday meetings because of a ballet class conflict. Rather than excusing Jessi once a week, they have to change Friday meetings to Thursdays. Um, what? And in what world is missing one meeting where babysitting doesn’t even occur all that big a deal? Could be worse—initially Kristy thinks it’s reasonable that Jessi either has to quit ballet or the club.
- Kristy has a meltdown when Abby and Mary Anne are late for a meeting after they go shopping and Abby has an allergy reaction. Kristy: “I am a reasonable person. Really…that is, if a BSC member has a good reason, like an accident or a death or a horrible family crisis. But for a shopping trip? I was seeing red.” Makes you wonder if Kristy asked Claudia to produce a death certificate when Mimi died.
- Oh yeah, Claudia and Mary Anne get into an awesomely bitchy fight when babysitting the Barrett-DeWitts. Too bad it’s not over anything fun like Claudia job hogging or when MA will grow a spine and tell
- Poor Jackie Rodowsky sprains his ankle when he falls out of a tree and later gets a concussion while riding his bike, helmetless. Horrible things happen to this kid all the time, but never to his two brothers. It’s sick but whenever I think of Jackie, I can’t help picturing this book:
- Incidentally, aren’t you NOT supposed to move someone who may have broken their leg? Yet Kristy helps Jackie inside before she even knows if it’s a break or a sprain.
- One of Stacey’s motivations for wanting the club back is that she misses the money. Yes! A normal, non-fixated-on-the-lives-of-eight-year-old-kids reason!
- Kristy’s English teacher: “Stay with me, and you’ll be richly rewarded, as we visit the vastly different worlds of Dickens, Stevenson, Faulkner, Blume, Cormier…” Blume and Cormier? Hey, I love Forever as much as the next gal (any book where a guy decides to nickname his pistol Ralph is all right with me) but we never got to read her in eighth grade. Though Kristy’s English teacher did inspire me to read The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, so maybe he’s not all bad.
BEEP BEEP—Continuity Alert
Mary Anne claims that Kristy stood up for her and that’s why Alan Gray stopped teasing her in third grade. Except in Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls, in the fifth grade, Alan picked on everyone and Kristy fooled him into stealing her lunch (which was actually full of dead spiders and mud pies)—and that’s why he picks on Kristy. Bad ghostwriter—no twinkie!
Outfit Alert
Claudia:
At that Labor Day meeting she was wearing a bracelet of dyed, braided shoelaces, along with a blousy ruffled shirt that looked like it once belonged to Captain Hook; mismatched high-top Converse sneakers; and baggy, pinstriped men’s suit pants, gathered at the waist with a bungee cord.
Claudia, Claudia, Claudia, the puffy shirt didn’t work for Jerry Seinfeld. It’s NOT going to work for you.
Also, even the hipsters manage to coordinate themselves by color, and I don’t even want to know what you’re doing with a bungee cord.
Conclusions
Kristy thinks it’s reasonable to blow up when club members want to do things that interfere with the club (Mal’s writing workshop, Jessi’s new dance class conflict, Abby possibly taking up a new instrument, Stacey going to a Broadway show on the night of a club meeting). Nope, not cult like at all.
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