BSC #27: Jessi and the Superbrat

Tagline:There's trouble for everyone what a TV star comes to town!

Stoneybrook has gone star-crazy! Derek Masters, an eight-year-old regular on a hit TV sitcom, has moved to town. Everyone's wondering what a real-live TV star will be like - will he drive to school in a limo?

Jessi can't believe it, but even stars need baby-sitters, and she's the lucky club member to watch Derek Masters. Even though a lot of kids at school call Derek a spoiled brat, Jessi likes him immediately. He rides bikes and eats junk food like a normal kid, but he has exciting stories about Hollywood, too!

Pretty soon baby-sitting and ballet start looking kind of boring next to TV scripts and cameras. Maybe Jessi would like to be a star, too!

As the synopsis indicates, Jessi (and subsequently the readers), are made aware of Derek Masters. He's apparently the breakout character in an ensemble sitcom called P.S. 162. He plays a nerdy kid who gets all the laughs. Coincidentally, just as Jessi is discovering his existence and that he in fact used to live in Stoneybrook before he left to be a star, his show goes on hiatus and his family comes back. Of course, they need a sitter, so Jessi gets to be the lucky one!

When Jessi first meets Derek, she gets all star-struck and is surprised to learn that Derek in fact is nothing like the character he plays on TV. Derek has normal hair, doesn't wear glasses, and hates science. Eventually Jessi gets over it, and starts to get to know Derek. As she does, she realizes that while he loves acting, when he's at home, he just wants to be treated like a normal every day kid.

Of course, everyone else is super star-struck, and acts like an idiot around him. Becca has a huge crush on his co-star and grills Derek about him. Mallory acts like she's meeting the queen, and the triplets expect him to be super snobby. Things don't get better as Derek goes back to school, and everyone treats him weirdly, from either worshipping him (the girls), to hating him (the boys), to making him talk all about Hollywood (the teachers). Eventually, Jessi discovers that a boy is bullying Derek far worse than everyone else. Jessi calls him the superbrat, and is determined to figure things out.

Eventually Derek starts connecting to his classmates, and the boys realize he's cool and normal, and Derek starts making friends. Soon all the stories about the superbrat go away, but Jessi still wants to know who the kid is. Just as things start looking up for everyone, Derek decides to head by to L.A. to do a TV movie. The girls decide to throw him a going away party, and invite everyone and their mom to it. It's there that the girls find out that the superbrat was really Derek, who couldn't cope with how his classmates were treating him and was retaliating.

The subplot in this one is that Jessi has some super hardcore auditions for the Stoneybrook Civic Centre's production of Swan Lake. She gets super nervous, and tries to downplay it. The more nervous she gets, the more she tries to convince herself that it doesn't really matter, and that maybe she should become a model and be on TV like Derek. Of course, she totally aces the auditions, gets one of the best roles a girl her age can get (one of the swan corps), and totally forgets all the modeling and TV shenanigans.

Random Thoughts:

• This is our second book with a ghostwriter! It's Jan Carr again
• Jessi's steady gig with the Braddocks is slowly being phased out. She mentions that others are starting to sit for them to give her more free time. Which of course she immediately fills with another regular job.
• I doubt that the Swan Lake production is anywhere near as big as Jessi makes it sound ("it's practically off-off-Broadway!"), but it's definitely a big deal, especially for someone Jessi's age. We have an arts centre/theatre here, where touring productions happen and our city's professional orchestra and theatre groups and dance groups perform. It's a big deal. The performers are often people from other cities, who came specifically to spend a season here to get experience. It's nowhere near as prestigious as any of the theatres in say, Toronto or Montreal, but it's a pretty big deal. Anyways, every year, they do a production of The Nutcracker, where they have open auditions for the younger/smaller roles. My best friend's sister got to be one of the mice when she was like, 12, and that was a huge deal for her. I'm imagining the same for Jessi.
• lolz when I was younger, I had no idea why the Derek's sitcom was called P.S. 162. As far as I knew, "P.S." was something you added to the end of letters. It was only near the end of high school that I learned that in the US, standard public schools are often just named "P.S." and then a number. Here, all the schools have names. Anyways, re-reading this now, everything makes a lot more sense haha
• I really like the triplets on the cover. Although they have ginger hair, and so far, I've yet to see a description of any of the Pikes with ginger hair. Usually no hair colour is mentioned (so the only thing we have is "dark brown, or chestnut" from Mallory's first book), and then it's either "curly" or "straight".
• A chapter with Kristy baby-sitting Karen. I don't remember being this annoyed by her in the past, but this time around, I just want to fucking kill Karen whenever she's around. And she's around a lot in this book, considering she does not go to school with Derek or anything.
• The title and description of this book is weird. They make it sound like Derek is the superbrat. Of course, by the end, you realize that he was, but until the last chapter or so, Jessi and everyone are under the impression that the superbrat was a kid in Derek's class who is bullying him.
• I didn't particularly like this book. There really wasn't much to it.