BSC #14: Hello, Mallory

Front Cover: Why are the Baby-sitters making it so hard for Mallory to join their club?

Back Cover: Mallory Pike has always wanted to be a member of the Baby-sitters Club. The Baby-sitters are so much fun to be around, and so grown-up. Now the club members have invited Mallory to a meeting. This might be her big chance!

But the Baby-sitters don't make it easy. First Claudia makes Mal feel like a baby on her first official baby-sitting job. Then they give her a written test - with questions nobody could answer!

Mallory's beginning to think she doesn't want to be part of the Baby-sitters Club. Maybe with her new friend Jessi she'll start a club of her own...

It's time to show those Baby-sitters what a couple of new girls can do!

So this is our first book narrated by Mallory. In it, we learn all about Mallory and are introduced to her and the Pikes from her perspective. Mallory is excited because she has a received an invitation from the BSC to potentially join them. She gets all dressed up, wanting to impress them at her first meeting.

But first, Mallory goes to school, where she meets a new girl. Not only is this girl new, but she's black. This is a big deal, because the only other African-American student in their school (and yes, there's only one) is in the 8th grade. Mallory is excited, because this is her big chance to make a new friend; maybe even a best friend.

Things don't go smoothly for Mallory though. At her first Club meeting, she feels awkward and realizes that she's too dressed up. The other girls have a hard time transitioning from Mallory being a charge to Mallory being in charge. When they hear about an accident Nicky had when Mallory was taking care of him, they decide that they better put her to the test!

Like the description says, the tests don't go well. The questions on the written test are so ridiculous, and Mallory gets so nervous during her sitting job with Claudia that she just acts like a giant spazz, causing Claudia to deem her unfit. Frustrated, Mallory decides that she doesn't need the BSC, and decides to start her own club!

Meanwhile, Mallory has been getting to know Jessi better. Jessi's family has been having a hard time with their move and transition into Stoneybrook, because apparently no one has seen a black family before. Of course Mallory doesn't care, and since she's in need of a best friend, she's especially keen to get to know Jessi and her family. Luckily for Mallory, Jessi loves reading (especially horse stories) and baby-sitting, so the two get along famously. Jessi immediately joins Mallory in her baby-sitting club.

Kids Incorporated doesn't get much business. In fact, the only business they do get is their own families. But the BSC isn't going to take any chances, plus they really do need more sitters. So eventually Kristy and the girls decide to stop being so unreasonable and mean, and recruit Mallory again. Mallory, not wanting to leave her new best friend in the lurch, insists that her and Jessi are a package deal. The girls agree to give them each one test run baby-sitting job (one without heavy breathing and berating). Mallory of course aces hers, and is now part of the club!

Random Thoughts:

• Although I know for sure that I have read this one before, I don't particularly remember reading it, so I don't think it was one that I re-read often.
• It's interesting getting everyone's descriptions from Mallory for the first time, as well as getting additional early insight into Mallory. For instance, despite the fact that every other book describes her as a red-head, and she's always depicted as a red-head on the covers (including this one!), we learn in this book that the Pikes all have "dark brown hair" (or "chestnut brown", as Mrs Pike refers to it). "Chestnut brown", even though I know is technically a darker brown, always makes me think of a more auburn brown, which would then be bordering on red. I had always assumed that the Pikes had auburn/medium brown hair, with Mallory's being particularly russet, leaning towards full-on ginger. But nope: apparently they originally all had dark brown hair! It'll be interesting to see when that changes.
• I'm probably the only one, but I would have liked to have seen more of the casual racism Jessi faces to have continued for a few more books. And maybe it will. I can't remember. I think I've only read Jessi's first book a couple of times. But yeah. I feel like it's really a non-issue after it was such a big deal in this one.
• I like how they don't list Mallory on the back of this book, as if there's any debate or suspense about her eventually joining the Club haha
• I think it's sad that Mallory has never really had friends, especially not a best friend, prior to this novel and meeting Jessi. I think it's especially sad that she says that she's never really needed to have friends: she'd always been so busy with her siblings that she didn't really have any time or need for friends.
• I can never figure out the size of Stoneybrook and/or the school. Stoneybrook always seems so large, and they have a million special elective classes and projects going on at SMS, that it doesn't really seem like a tiny town. Plus there are three middle schools in the area that feed into their high school: Kelsey Middle School, SMS, and Stoneybrook Day School (although that one's private). Is Stoneybrook just a community? Because my city is made up of many many many neighbourhoods/communities, each with their own set of elementary/middle schools and then high school. Several of them. But I can't imagine considering any one of those to be a town on their own. And like, I can easily public transit between the communities. Even if the girls weren't allowed to take public transit, there's no way their tiny community is so far out in the middle of nowhere that their next town over is a city! Yet somehow, Stoneybrook is so tiny that the arrival of an African-American family is a huge deal
• I especially liked hearing about Mallory eating lunch with the other girls in her class and how horrible they were about Jessi. I totally do not remember any 6th grade girls ever being mentioned in any of Mallory's other books.
• I miss the days when Jessi was a comedian. This one specifically points out how much she likes jokes and how she knows more jokes than anyone!
• Are reading glasses a thing? Everyone I knows pretty much wear glasses all the time, not taking them on and off. Either way, this is one of the few times where Jessi wearing glasses is part of her default description.

BSC #13: Goodbye, Stacey, Goodbye

Front Cover: How do you say good-bye to your very best friend?

Back Cover: Oh, No! Stacey McGill is moving back to New York! That means no more Stoneybrook Middle School, no more Charlotte Johanssen, and worst of all... no more Baby-sitters Club!

Stacey's friends are crushed when they hear that Stacey's moving, Claudia most of all. Stacey was her first best friend.

How will the Baby-sitters cope without Stacey? What kind of going-away present is good enough for someone as special as she is? But most important...

...Who is going to be the next member of The Baby-sitters Club?

Alright, so right from the get-go, us readers know exactly what's going to happen, but chapter 1 starts us off with a bit of suspense. Stacey's at a BSC meeting, and introduces to everyone then and there (instead of chapter 2, which is the norm). At the end of the meeting, Stacey's mom calls her, asking her where she is and if she could come home right away. Obviously, Stacey is upset and thinks someone is dead or dying. However, she soon learns that it's worse: they're moving back to New York. Not at the end of the school year, not at the end of the semester, but in just one month.

Understandably, everyone is upset, particularly Claudia, who had never had a best friend before. Claudia and Stacey try to convince their parents that Stacey should be able to finish out the school year living with the Kishis, but of course no one is having any of it. So over the course of the book, we have Stacey slowly packing up and saying good-bye to Stoneybrooke.

The subplot is the girls trying to think of a great way to say good-bye to Stacey, like a going away party or present. They run into all sorts of problems, mostly in that nothing they can think of is special enough, or they don't have enough money. A solution to the money issue comes from Stacey's parents letting the girls run a yard sale, since they can't fit a house's worth of furniture into an apartment. Since they were all just going to give it away or throw it out, they let the girls organize a yard sale and keep the profits. The club is reluctant to take money that should theoretically belong to the McGills, but then they decide that they can theoretically give it back by using it to have a going away party for Stacey.

Eventually the party idea that they end up settling on is having a play day with all of the charges, and they spend the money on cake and treats and toys and prizes for the children. It's pretty lame. At Stacey's last meeting, the girls call up Mallory Pike and offer her an invitation to join the club.

Jeff's ongoing troubles and efforts to return to his dad in California continues in this book as well.

Random Thoughts:

• I liked that the girls used the money from Stacey's yard sale for her going away party, but I hate how the whole thing was all just their baby-sitting charges. That sounds more like work than fun. I like the idea of doing something that will give the kids and Stacey a chance to say bye to each other, but I think most of the money should have gone towards a party with their classmates and friends. I think it would have been nice to have had a 2-hour picnic with the kids (where the kids all bring their own lunch) with cupcakes, where the kids had a chance to say goodbye and give cards, and then that evening had a party with their friends and classmates. You can see how the girls are getting progressively more and more one-dimensional and obsessed with their kids and shying away from their peers.
• I find it interesting that this book came out right after Claudia and the New Girl, where Claudia gets into a fight with everyone over making new friends, and Stacey gets particularly upset because she's Claudia's best friend. Now Stacey's leaving :(
• I just realize that Charlotte Johanssen sounds a lot like Scarlett Johansson. But I think that's just a coincidence, since Scarlett would only have been 4 years old when this book came out haha 
• I know Stacey's parents had big news to share with Stacey, but I think calling her at 6:05, being like, "WHERE ARE YOU???" when it would have taken her at least 5 minutes to get from Claudia's to her place if she had left right when the meeting had ended, is overkill. Way to panic your own daughter.

BSC Super Special #1: Baby-Sitters on Board!

I guess because this is the first book that's not part of the regular series, AMM didn't quite know what to do with it yet. She probably just wanted to do a fun vacation book that broke the formula. Anyways, because of that, this book doesn't fit into the continuity at all. It's published after Stacey moves and Mallory joins the club, but within the book, Mallory is still very much a charge and Stacey is still around. They say it's summer vacation, but even if it managed to be magically squeezed into their already full summer before the 8th grade, that still wouldn't fit because they mention being in the 8th grade already. So I'm reading it now, right before Stacey moves.

Front Cover: It's the baby-sitting adventure of a lifetime!

Guess who's going on a dream vacation? The Baby-sitters, of course!

Back Cover: Kristy, Mary Anne, Stacey, Claudia and Dawn are the luckiest baby-sitters in the world. This summer they're going on the greatest trip ever: a plane ride to Florida, a boat trip around the Bahamas, and then three days of fun - in Disney World!

Of course they have a million adventures. Claudia gets notes from a mysterious "Secret Admirer". Kristy, Mary Anne and Stacey make some unusual new friends. Dawn has her first real romance. And they still have time for what they like best of all - baby-sitting!

Super Special Gimmick: creating a memory scrapbook for their parents

So Mr Pike wins a contest at work for an all-expenses paid cruise and trip to Disney World for his whole family. Of course, with so many kids, he decides to hire Mary Anne and Stacey again (since they worked out so well in Sea City). When fancy rich Watson Brewer finds out, and furthermore finds out that Kristy has apparently never even been out of the state, he arranges for the whole family to go on the exact same trip, plus Claudia and Dawn too, so they don't feel left out. Thus begins our story.

Kristy: is an absolute nightmare. She's sharing a room with Claudia and Dawn. Kristy is messy and Dawn is super-neat, but Kristy goes out of her way to goad Dawn. She purposely leaves stuff lying all over the place (not just clothes, but food wrappers too) and does so staring pointedly at Dawn, just to watch Dawn get upset. Dude! It's not that hard to clean up after yourself! You don't have to fold your clothes asap, but you know, maybe contain your mess to one corner of the room? Anyways, her storyline mostly consists of being a brat to Dawn and befriending this old guy, Rudy Staples. Rudy's wife just died two months prior, so he's on the trip to do something different and try to forget about his troubles. He's pretty miserable though. Kristy distracts him and they end up hanging out a bunch. Rudy says that Kristy's the granddaughter he never had (he has six grandsons) and she says that he's like the grandfather she never knew. It's kinda cute, especially how Kristy keeps joking about setting him up with Nannie.

Dawn: meets a boy named Parker Harris, who's all mysterious and sketchy about who he's travelling with. It turns out he's on the trip with his dad, his new stepmom and his two younger stepbrothers who are 8 and 5 years old. He's all bitter about the divorce, the remarriage and the new family, but Dawn convinces him that the boys can't be brats because LITTLE KIDS ARE AWESOME! They end up spending an afternoon together at Disney World and Parker in the end warms up to them.

Mary Anne is baby-sitting for the Pikes, and while going around on the ship, she meets a girl named Alexandra Carmody, who is a couple of years older. When Mary Anne asks who she's travelling with, Alexandra says no one, and that she's an orphan. Later though, Mary Anne runs into her again, and Alex says something about her brother, leading Mary Anne to suspect she's lying. Eventually Mary Anne finds out the truth (from Mallory): Alex is on a trip with her younger brother and her two parents, who are famous singers (I keep picturing Donnie and Marie Osmond... except, you know, husband and wife, not brother and sister haha). Alex just likes lying because it's fun and it makes life interesting. Well, Mary Anne feels duped and decides that Alex is not a very nice girl and that she doesn't want anything to do with her anymore.

Mallory is still very clearly a charge in this one, despite being 11 years old, and decides that she wants to be a spy like in Harriet the Spy, which she apparently just read. Mallory doesn't really do anything interesting, other than discovering the truth about Alex. She also thinks she's found a stowaway on board (we see him pop up periodically in other people's chapters) and she thinks she's seen Spider from the band Insects on the ship. All in all, it's a really boring plot.

Claudia has a mystery admirer. She keeps getting all these notes and gifts explicitly saying that she has one. Finally, Stacey thinks she's spotted him, and Claudia goes running after him. She ends up bumping into this guy, Timothy, who suggests that maybe the admirer is just shy, and offers to help Claudia out. They start to hang out and hit it off, but Claudia feels guilty that she's ignoring her admirer (who continues to give her things). It's pretty obvious that her admirer is Timothy. Anyways, eventually we learn that not only is Timothy Claudia's admirer, but he's also Alex's younger brother. He also enjoys spying on people, which explains why everyone in the book keeps finding him hiding around the ship, thinking he's a stowaway.

Stacey is baby-sitting for the Pikes, and while going around on the ship, she meets a family with a sick little boy named Marc. Marc has a weak heart, and thus is confined to a wheelchair most of the time. He can technically walk and stand and everything, but he's not supposed to, because it aggravates his heart. He also carries around an oxygen tank. Marc's parents are understandably very protective of him, but they loosen up enough to allow Marc to become friends with Margo and Claire (he's 7 years old like Margo). Eventually they confess to Stacey that this trip is kind of a just in case thing: he's about to undergo a serious operation that will allow him to have a normal life... but there are some serious risks. Stacey is sad, but tries to keep up appearances for the kids. After the trip, we find out that Marc pulled through spectacularly and is on his way to becoming a typical active kid.

Karen gets three chapters, and we basically learn that she's a spoiled brat with no consideration for others. I can't tell if she's a typical 6 year old, or if she really is particularly annoying. Anyways, in her first chapter, she and Kristy and David Michael and Andrew are headed to the pool, but she forgets her earplugs. She promises Kristy that she'll go back to the hotel room and straight back to the pool without getting lost. Well, she doesn't get lost, but she does get distracted, and manages to convince the cruise to charge her dad for a manicure and a soda. In her next chapter, she goes on the Haunted Mansion ride, and is convinced that she legit picked up a hitchhiking ghost. She then blames the ghost for her actions in her last chapter, where she announces at breakfast to their entire reserved dining room that it was her birthday, all so that the Disney characters and everyone would pay attention to her.

Byron gets a couple of chapters too, which is totes random. It's mostly about how he's read Treasure Island, and how he tries to convince his brothers to read it, but of course, they hate reading, so they don't. But the cruise is playing the movie, which the boys all see and love, leading them to trying to find hidden treasure on their trip. They find what they think is a treasure map, but it turns out to be Dutch instructions for a copying machine.

Random Thoughts:

• Another weird thing about this Super Special that's different from the later ones: there are no illustrations. Instead, we've got these pictures that look more like drawings. The later ones have actual illustrations that look awesome!
• It's fun reading this book so soon after having visited Disney World myself. I have never been on a boat cruise though.
• I do not remember reading this at all. I mean, I remember Parker, but yeah, that's about it. I had no idea that this book had anything to do with Disney World til I re-read the synopsis at the back. I don't think I owned this one as a kid, or if I did, I must not have re-read it a lot. 
• I would not want to have been the girls on this trip. I went to Disney World with friends, and we had 7 days to look at everything, and still we were exhausted and cranky and missed out on a few things. The girls kept getting stuck with kids (or in Stacey and Mary Anne's case, it was their job to be with the kids). I would've liked to have seen a chapter from Sam or Charlie.
• They mention chocolate sodas in this one. I remember when I was little, reading the Little Sister books, Karen was always mentioning them. She would get them as a treat when out on the town with her parents or Kristy. I remember thinking they sounded gross, but mostly being confused by them. Then they mentioned them here too. Was this an '80s thing? A Connecticut thing?? I still don't know what the fuck a chocolate soda is (I think it's club soda/seltzer water with chocolate ice cream? like a Coke float??) and they still sound gross to me haha
• The name Parker Harris has always stuck with me since reading this book, and I definitely used it a lot when writing fiction in elementary school and high school and even now haha
• While I don't believe it's fair for Parker to hate his stepbrothers, I hate the idea that Dawn is like, "They can't be bad: little kids are great!" Dude, he's 5 years older and 8 years older than them. I wouldn't want to hang out with them either. Plus, he went from being an only child to suddenly have two children as siblings. I feel for Parker.
• I always assumed that Marc was on the trip because of the Make-A-Wish Foundation (or something like it), but it seems like the trip was something his parents were able to do on their own. 
• If I know anything about a manicure (and really, I don't, but let's pretend that I do), between that, the soda, and actually going to the hotel room, we're looking at about 2 hours of Karen being missing. Of course, we know she must be somewhere on the boat since the boat hasn't docked yet, so her being missing isn't really the issue. However, 2 hours is still a long time, enough for her to get into serious trouble. Serious stranger danger trouble. If I were Kristy, I would have sent out a search party for her. Or at the very least, called back to the cabin and tried to find my parents.