Kristy's not too happy with some things at Stoneybrook Middle School. The hot lunches, for example, look like dog food. And Kristy's class has to perform Mary Poppins for their annual play. how babyish can you get?It's Friday, and Kristy can't wait for the weekend. But first, there's an entire school day to get through, including an assembly. Things quickly fall apart when Alan Gray and his friends get everyone to think that there's a fire drill and Kristy's all distracted and not paying attention. While critiquing their disgusting hot lunch, the girls tell Kristy that she should run for class president. Kristy's not too sure about it, and wants to spend the weekend thinking. However, she doesn't get much of a chance to, on account of having to watch her siblings in the morning, then baby-sit in the afternoon. She can't even hang out with Bart when he calls! Still, the girls keep hounding Kristy to run, and eventually she decides that with their support, she'll do it!
What the eight grade really needs is a new class president. Someone who is organized and has great ideas. Someone like - Kristy!
But can Kristy coach a softball team, get straight A's, baby-sit, run the BSC, and be president? The Baby-sitters are about to find out!
Kristy gets Claudia to be her campaign manager, and Claudia helps Kristy to design all sorts of posters and things, as well as chooses her wardrobe for her speeches. The rest of the girls help pitch in to get everything organized, and they run over the other candidates in the running: Alan Gray (who nobody takes seriously), Grace Blume (who everyone hates on account of Cokie Mason and who they think is snobby), and Pete Black (who they... reluctantly admit to being okay haha). Kristy figures with all the talent of the Club behind her, there's no way she can't win!
Things get complicated though when their principal announces that in addition to the Campaign Day before the election (as well as all the postering and general campaigning that Kristy and everyone was doing before/after class), they were also going to have to do two speeches and a debate. Then later that week, there's another meeting called, but Kristy already has a conference lined up with her English teacher! Her teacher is giving her a chance to do better on an assignment. Kristy makes it to the meeting 10 minutes late, and then later is running late for her sitting job at the Kormans. She figures she can do her homework there, but finds the kids are more maintenance than usual. Kristy then decides to put off her homework til the morning.
Kristy manages to get her homework completed, but the next thing she knows, it's Campaign Day, and she has to get to school early to set up. Kristy feels like she's the only candidate taking things seriously, even though Pete is as well. Alan and Grace clearly aren't. Alan comes to school dressed as a bunch of grapes (the grapes being balloons that students can pop) and Grace has borrowed a video camera from her parents and has it hooked up to a TV so students can film themselves and see themselves on TV. All in all, it's a disaster, as the students are far more enamored with Grace and Alan's silly shenanigans than Kristy's genuine effort. To make matters worse, Kristy remembers that she has an incredibly important science test the next day, as well as her usual obligations of dinner, homework and Krushers practice. Realizing she can't do it all, it's with a heavy heart that Kristy cancels the Krushers practice.
It's a few days later, and Kristy's running herself ragged. She's disappointed in herself because she's failed the science test, and she's not usually the kind of person to fail things. Her teacher however, gives her a chance to re-do it the next day, so Kristy heads home with the intention of spending the whole afternoon and evening studying. However, David Michael reminds Kristy that she had rescheduled the Krushers practice to then, so Kristy has to spend the afternoon doing that. Claudia then phones her that evening to remind her of the speech she has to do the next day for the campaign.
Kristy ends up staying up half the night, unable to sleep, worrying about everything and trying to cram everything in. The next thing she knows, it's morning and she has to give her speech. Grace goes before her, and her speech is awful: one sentence per cue card (with a ton of pausing between cards) and all sorts of popular promises that she can't keep. Kristy goes next, and when she stands in front of the audience, she realizes that her friends are all sitting apart from each other, so that wherever Kristy looks, she'll see one of them. Her speech goes fairly well, although Kristy feels it could have gone better with more practice and sleep. Alan's speech is just to yell at everyone to get up, then yell at everyone to sit down, and then to cite that that proves he can be a leader. Pete's speech is also fairly serious.
After the speeches, Kristy runs off to retake her science test. To her dismay, not only does she fail it again, but she does even worse this time around. Kristy realizes that she's doing too much and that she needs to get organized. She makes a list of everything she has to do, and sets out to do it, however it soon falls apart. She's late to a Club meeting because she went from school, to baby-sitting, to doing homework, and lost track of time. Her science teacher has called home to let her mom and Watson know about her grades. Kristy decides she needs to cut back on baby-sitting, while the girls remind her that she has another speech to prepare for the next day. Upon arriving home, Kristy is soon buried by a series of phone calls, reminding her of how she's neglecting her friends and everything in life.
Finally, Kristy decides to drop out of the race. Her speech is all about that. At first, her friends are shocked, but ultimately they're supportive. Kristy gets her life back together, and in the end, Pete wins the election.
The subplot in this one involves Jamie Newton. He sees all the bigger kids riding their bikes past his house, and decides it's time for him to get one too. So he gets a brand new bike with training wheels. However, even with the training wheels, he's too scared. He insists on practicing all the time, having someone holding on the whole time (despite the fact that with training wheels, there's no way he can fall over). But even so, he's still terrified, needing every single twig, leaf, speck of dirt, taken out of his path, and he can't turn his bike around without getting off of it, and he's barely peddling. Still, he perseveres. Eventually, he gets fed up, and decides to get the training wheels taken off, since the big kids don't use them. Of course, that just makes everything worse. Finally one day, some of the kids from the neighbourhood stop to talk to Jamie. They admire his bike, but tell him he's moving too fast. He needs to learn to ride it with training wheels, then take one wheel off at a time. This parallels Kristy's journey of realizing that she's also trying to do too much all at once.
Random Thoughts:
- It's funny, because I don't particular remember liking this one as a child, and I wasn't super excited to read it again. I never hated it, but it never stuck out to me either. Re-reading it now, I like it a lot. I relate to Kristy wanting to do everything, getting overwhelmed, and eventually having to realize that enough is enough. This especially spoke to my experience in high school. So yeah, I really liked this one. I like the books where Kristy's a little vulnerable, realizes that she's not infallible and that she can't do everything, when she gets to show a bit of emotion.
- It took me awhile as a child to ride a bike without training wheels. I think I was 7 years old before I tried. My dad was never home, and my mom was no help, so it was up to me, hence me taking so long. Finally my neighbour helped to teach me and got me going in one day. Anyways, there was a time before I got my training wheels taken off where I wanted to be like the big kids. We'd all race around on our bikes, riding to the park, and the big kids would dump their bikes on the ground and run to the swings. So of course, I'd dump my bike to the ground too. Except, with training wheels, my bike would stay standing, so I would PURPOSELY LAY IT DOWN ON ITS SIDE. I was a crazy child haha
- I really like Pete Black. I wished we could have seen more of him over the course of the series. He seems cool. Poor guy was a mess when Laine was around; it was the only time he'd ever been written as lame. I like that he ran for class president and won. I also like how Mary Anne keeps pointing out that Pete's a legit candidate and would do a good job. It again makes me ship them together haha
- It's strange how in this one, apparently Mary Poppins is lame, but isn't that Stacey's favourite movie? And I know later on they decide to do a production of Peter Pan. So Mary Poppins is babyish, but not Peter Pan? That makes no sense!
- Also: the plays they propose instead are like... so not middle school appropriate. I don't even know a lot of high schools that do them: A Raisin in the Sun (I though Jessi was like, only the second black student to be at their school; how would they pull off this play??), Our Town and The Glass Menagerie
- Again, I don't understand why the girls buy their lunches (or buys the hot lunch) if it's apparently so gross? Dawn always brings her lunch from home (and the girls tease her cuz it's all healthy foods, but hey! It's food that she likes!) and I'm pretty sure Stacey never eats the hot lunch, but instead gets like, salad and an apple or brings her own. Why would you waste money on gross food you don't like?? When I was in high school (no cafeterias in our middle schools here), I would either bring lunch from home, buy one or two choice items from the cafeteria (actually our food was pretty good, although the sandwiches/burgers were always on the small/pathetic side), or just not eat at all!
- I like how it's always meatloaf. I'm pretty sure it's been meatloaf in the past, and I feel like on TV and in movies, it's always meatloaf. I don't think I've ever seen meatloaf served in a cafeteria here. Also: I really really really really hate meatloaf. Like, really.
- The girls decide to campaign outside of their school, putting posters in the windows of shops and things. There's a little strip mall right down the street from my high school: so all the students go there during lunch and what not. I could see MAYBE putting posters there... but honestly? This just seems like a dumb idea to me.
