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.