BSC #44: Dawn and the Big Sleepover

Tagline: This was going to be one long night!

A bunch of kids at Stoneybrook Elementary have pen pals at a school in New Mexico. The Baby-sitters love hearing the letters that Charlotte, Becca, and the Pike children get from their new friends.

Then the bad news reaches Stoneybrook: their pen pals' school has been destroyed by a fire. Dawn is so upset that she organizes a fund-raiser for them. And as a reward to all the kids who help out, she is going to throw a gigantic sleepover!

A hundred kids, thirty pizzas - will Dawn survive her biggest baby-sitting job ever?

We're thrust into the middle of things, with Dawn baby-sitting the Pikes with Mallory, and all the kids wanting to be the first one to read their letter from their Zuni penpals. Everyone is really excited, and Dawn gets caught up in it. She laments to Mary Anne about how it's too bad that only the elementary school gets to participate in the penpal program, and Mary Anne suggests writing to the Zuni elementary school to inquire about getting a penpal from their middle school. Dawn thinks it's a great idea and can't wait!

Unfortunately, Dawn never gets to do that as a few days later, Mallory comes to their Friday meeting with bad news: a massive fire broke out at a gas station, and the entire Zuni elementary school got burned down, as well as a few neighbouring houses. Everyone feels horrible about it, but Dawn is particularly affected. She wants to do something, but she doesn't know what. She gets to thinking, and eventually decides to organize a huge 3-part event: a food drive, a clothing drive, and a fundraiser. Knowing she can't do it alone, she calls Jeff's old elementary school teacher from when he was still living in Stoneybrook. After an anxious few days of waiting, Dawn hears back from the elementary school: everyone is excited and it's all systems go!

At a planning meeting with the Club, the girls get everything organized. They decide that the kids can drop off their donated clothing and food at Dawn's barn. (I know it's technically Mary Anne's too, but I always think of it as Dawn's.) They decide that as a reward to anyone who has participated, they'll throw a huge sleepover party at the elementary school at the end of it all. Mallory suggests that for the fundraiser, they should just leave it up to the kids to decide what they want to do, reminding everyone of how innovative her siblings had been when their father got laid off. Now the only thing for the girls to figure out is how to let everyone know...

Stacey solves that problem the next day, by baby-sitting for Charlotte. Even though it isn't supposed to be announced yet, Stacey tells Charlotte what's going on. Charlotte instantly comes up with the idea to have an assembly. Dawn and the girls get special permission to miss an hour of class to go to the elementary school to do the announcement. Everyone is of course super excited.

Over the course of the next three weeks, Dawn is exhausted running around, trying to keep everything organized. She's organized it so that kids can drop off food and clothing donations at the barn during certain hours. Of course, the kids don't want to miss out on any possible prizes, so they insist on receipts so that they get credit. After awhile, Dawn and Mary Anne start to notice that some of the items arriving are a little strange, a little too nice. Eventually, they figure out that some of the kids had been pilfering their parents' things, taking stuff that according to the kids, they "don't need". So permission slips become a thing.

Finally, it comes down to the big day: the drive and fundraiser is over and it's time for the big sleepover. They manage to get a local pizza parlor and toy store to donate pizza for dinner, as well as prizes and games for the kids. The local grocery store also donates pancake mix and juice for breakfast the next morning. There's even going to be the local news station doing some coverage of the event, so everyone gets some good publicity! Immediately, Dawn runs into problems, the most pressing of which is the lack of pizza. About an hour or so before the event is to start, she gets a call from the pizza parlor, saying that they didn't get their usual order of flour on time, so they can't make the pizza. Eventually, they decide to get some flour from the grocery store, and go on with that.

The kids start arriving, and at first everyone's having fun, running around. A couple of hours into the evening, some of the little kids get overwhelmed, and two of them go home. Then the pizzas and toys arrive, and the handing out of them and distribution of everything takes up a good chunk of time. The girls then organize some gymnasium games for the kids to keep them busy, before getting them into PJs and winding down with story time.

When it comes time for bed, a few more kids get skittish, and another one leaves to go home. Everyone tries to settle in, but Dawn and the girls feel like they're constantly getting up for bathroom breaks and water. Finally, they all get to drift off to sleep. No sooner than Dawn falls asleep comes morning! Dawn's exhausted as she and the girls corral everyone into getting changed and eating breakfast, but finds she gets her second wind once the kids are picked up and everything's done. The sleepover is a complete success!

There isn't really a subplot in this one. We're just treated to a few chapters of the kids attempting to fundraise. The Pikes hold a carnival-type thing in their yard, with the Arnold twins, David Michael and Linny Papadakis participating. It goes pretty well until Chewy, the Perkins' dog, gets started by their hired entertainment, Goober Mansfield, and ends up running around and causing a scene. The Rodowsky boys organize a yard sale, with other friends participating. The only problem is, not everything donated had permission, leading to some parents getting really upset at seeing their items getting sold. Luckily they catch it early enough, and the parents decide to help out by "buying back" their stuff. Haley Braddock tells fortunes as Madame Leveaux. She makes a killing swindling Alan Gray and his friends.

Random Thoughts:

• This is the first one ghost-written by one of the most well-known and prolific of the BSC ghost-writers, Peter Lerangis!
• I remember this being one of my favourites as a child, but then for some reason not particularly wanting to read it now haha
• I love how the description on the back of the book mentions Becca, but we don't see her at all in this book. We do see Haley Braddock though.
• Dawn calls Mrs Besser at home, saying that because the middle school and elementary school have virtually the same hours, there's no way Dawn can see her in person. Most teachers don't leave school right away, and even so, Dawn could have left a message at the school to make a meeting with Mrs Besser. Obviously, it all works out, but it just strikes me as funny that Dawn figures calling her at home is the only option.
• Dawn gets insulted that Mr Besser thinks she sounds like a 4th grader. She probably does sound like a 4th grader! Even so, Mr Besser says, "it's one of your kids". It doesn't necessarily mean that he thinks that Dawn is one of her current students. My old high school teachers still refer to me as "one of their students". Yes, a lot of the time it's in the past tense, but a lot of the time it's in the present tense. I am clearly an adult (in fact, I'm a high school teacher myself!), but I'm never offended. Then again, I guess it's the attitude that children/teens always want to be seen as older and definitely never younger than what they are, so they're super sensitive about it.
• Also: I'm glad that my phone number will never be in a phone book. Nor my address. I don't want my high school students being able to call me in my off hours, or worse, come knocking on my door. You know it'd be a prank anyways haha
• I would have been surprised if the school wasn't already planning something. The high school I work at is always doing stuff for charity, but especially more so when the cause hits close to home. I love that they let Dawn do her thing and get the kids excited, but yeah, you totes know that the staff was already planning on doing something. This just meant they didn't have to do much of the planning or the thinking. Just the chaperoning and legal stuff haha
• They talk about how the girls were able to pile into the back of a station wagon. I remember when I was in kindergarten (which was two years after this book was published) being carpooled to a birthday party in the back of a station wagon. It's crazy, because that kind of thing would never happen now. I only ever got to do it once, but it definitely remains one of the highlights of my young 4 year old memory haha
• Betsy Sobak is mentioned in this one! I love how she'll get mentioned in passing every now and then in the background, but the girls definitely never seem to baby-sit for her ever again.
• I find it weird that Jamie Newton would be afraid of Chewy. I always thought he hung out with Myriah and Gabbie Perkins all the time, so he'd be used to Chewy. A big unfamiliar dog, definitely. But Chewy? No way!
• I keep thinking of how different this book would be now with internet. The kids would have found out THAT DAY about the fire, instead of several days later. I wonder if they would send more or less emails than they currently do letters. I know here in Canada, sending mail across the country only takes about 3 days, so you're looking at about a one week turnaround, meaning if you're diligent about it, you'll be writing a letter a week. That's actually a pretty good rate, especially for elementary students. 
• I like that this is a Dawn book. They always paint her to be such an activist in the later books, but we hardly ever see her do anything, other than just preach about the environment and vegetarianism to people. They could have easily made this a Kristy book, but I'm glad they gave Dawn a moment to shine. 
• I'm not a big fan of pancakes (I much much MUCH prefer waffles), but reading that list of available pancakes (plain, strawberry, blueberry and buttermilk) really made me want some. Or just any sort of big breakfast/brunch haha