Front Cover: Claudia might give up the Club - and it's all the new girl's fault!
Back Cover: Claudia has always been the most outrageous kid in her class.. until Ashley Wyeth comes along, Ashley's really different - she wears hippie clothes, has six holes in her ears, and and is the most fantastic artist Claudia has ever met.
Ashely says Claudia has artistic talent, too. She thinks Claudia should spend more time on her "calling" and forget about the Baby-sitters Club: It's just a waste of time.
The Baby-sitters are sick of Ashley Wyeth, and they think Claudia's a traitor. Claudia's got to decide: either the Baby-sitters Club or the new girl - one of them's got to go!
It's still the start of the school year, and Claudia is already falling behind. But even so, she still makes time for baby-sitting and art. One day, a new girl joins Claudia's English class. Ashley Wyeth dresses weirdly (ie: like a hippie instead of the '80s), but Claudia soon discovers that Ashley is an artist, the real deal. Ashley takes an interest in Claudia's art, and soon the two become fast friends.
Claudia's never had an artist friend before, and she gets swept up by Ashley's talent and big ideas. Ashley's just moved from Chicago, where she studied art at Keyes, a real art school whose teachers actually sell and display their art. A far cry from small town Stoneybrooke. Ashley is very serious about her craft and thus dedicates all her time to it - and she thinks Claudia should too!
Claudia is torn between all the other things she loves, and spending time with Ashley and art. Inadvertently, Claudia starts missing Club meetings and consequently does less baby-sitting. She starts falling even further behind in school. The girls are all mad at Claudia for ditching them and not being a real friend. But Ashley keeps insisting that Claudia just needs to focus more on her art. Since Claudia loves art, she keeps going along. Ashley has all this experience and talent and ideas - so she must know best, right?
All the while, there's an art show contest going on, which is what really fuels Ashley and Claudia's quest for art in this book. They're going to create sculptures out of clay. Ashley decides that she wants to sculpt something unusual, an inanimate object, and goes around Stoneybrooke with Claudia, eventually deciding to sculpt a fire hydrant. After a couple of weeks of searching, Claudia still hasn't decided on anything, and is feeling discouraged and uninspired. The more Ashley tries to help and push her ideas on Claudia, the worse Claudia feels.
Eventually Claudia realizes that Ashley isn't really much of a friend, that she just likes Claudia for her art. Claudia also realizes that while she loves art, she also loves her friends and family and baby-sitting, and doesn't want to give everything up for only one thing. Maybe eventually, but not right now. Claudia and Ashley fight, and Claudia goes back to baby-sit the Rodowskys. It's watching Jackie and his infectious smile that inspires Claudia, and Claudia decides that it's Jackie she's going to sculpt!
Unfortunately, it's too late, and Claudia runs out of time for the contest. However, Mrs Baehr enters Claudia's work as a Work-In-Progress piece, where it wins an honourable mention. Claudia makes up with the girls, and everything ends well.
There's no real subplot in this one, but we get more of Dawn's brother Jeff acting out. Yay continuity!
Random Thoughts
- Fun fact: I have 6 holes in my ears. Well, one of my ears. The other one only has 2 haha
- Claudia looks like she's about to be kidnapped on the cover. She doesn't look conflicted or annoyed, she looks downright "no" haha
- I understand the girls being annoyed/hurt by Claudia, but I think they should have tried talking to her first instead of doing all that mean stuff. Also, they were way unnecessarily mean about Ashley. Especially whenever they talked about how weird she dressed, considering what Claudia and Stacey usually wear. I can understand them being annoyed by the fact that she seems to only talk to Claudia and how she tries to dominate/change her, but yeah.
- People cite this as the start of when the girls started to get really creepy and cliquey and obsessive with each other. I agree. Especially when Claudia feels so guilty for even just eating lunch without the club. I think that if the girls want to do something else during lunch, they should be allowed to without feeling guilty or being ostracized. Especially since Claudia was like, "Hey, sorry, but I won't be eating with you today." I could understand if she stopped eating with them every day, or didn't even talk to them about it, but the first time she does, Claudia immediately feels like she's done something wrong.
- I like how much they reference Claudia needing and seeking help with school. I don't remember that in the later books. Here, she actually has a period in the resource room, which is very realistic (their schedules and the way their classes are organized are far more similar to the way they are in high school here; the only way that they're similar to our middle schools is the number periods they have in a day). I miss how realistic Claudia and her school problems used to be portrayed.
- I love the ongoing continuity and arc of Dawn's brother acting out. It lasts a surprisingly long time, to the point where I'm interested in seeing where this goes (even though I already know).
- It seems really weird to me that Claudia would want to sculpt Jackie. Isn't she just trying sculpture for the first time? Why choose something so complicated as a person?? And why the fuck Jackie?? That has always bothered me
- Their art teacher, Mrs Baehr, doesn't seem very supportive or open-minded. I think sculpting an inanimate object is awesome!
- While I knew what "inanimate" meant when I first read this book, it was this book that really cemented the word in my mind and brought it to full consciousness. I had always thought it was a fancy big vocabulary word, the kind I tried to avoid using around my peers and only used around adults. But if it's in a Baby-Sitters Club book, it must be a normal, common word! haha
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