Someone--or something-- is out to get Jessi!

The Baby-sitters Club #42: Jessi and the Dance School Phantom

I like puzzles, a lot. My brain just works that way. I think it’s natural then, that I like mysteries. I really do. I like trying to figure things out from clues dropped along the way. I like that “Aha!” moment. I’d like to have been a detective, except I’m pretty sure that I’d die somewhere in the middle of my first case because intellectually, I’m a pretty good problem solver, but when it comes to common sense on the ground, or even just outrunning a bad guy, I’m toast.

Jessi, apparently, is a lot like me, a sentence I never thought I’d write, considering I am neither a dancer nor black, and Jessi is one-dimensionally defined by these two traits. However, we’re not exactly the same, because this is a BSC book, so of course, despite her lack of skill and cunning, she’s not toast. Unfortunately.

Also, this is another one where the tagline on the front bears no resemblance to the story between the covers. Someone or something? Never, at any point in the story, does Jessi or anyone else think that something other-worldly is going on. Not even Dawn. So really, jacket writer, YOU LOSE.

Claudia thinks she's adopted, and no one understands!

The Baby-sitters Club #33: Claudia and the Great Search

All right, so today we're taking a little journey to a place I like to call "Claudia-land." It's a magic place filled with misspelled words, fluorescent high-tops, and Nancy Drew books. I always have to laugh at Claudia's relationship with Nancy novels- in today's installment, Claudia tells us that her parents "don't approve of Nacy Drew because they think [she] should be reading "literature." Funny, my parents said pretty much the exact same thing about my obsession with the BSC. Grown-up Claudia would so have a blog about her adolescent Nancy Drew infatuation... Grown-up Claudia and I would totally be blog-ring buddies!

And here we are: Janine gets some big award for being a genius. Claudia feels dumb. Also, this is the first Claudia book since the one where Mimi died, so Claud is also feeling even more alienated from her family than usual. She goes snooping around in her parents' den and finds that they have like 12,000 baby photos of Janine and like, 8, of Claudia. And the few they do have are Claudia with Janine. This I can totally sympathize with. We have 57 bajillion photos of my brother and maybe 14 of me, most of which are primarily characterized by him looking like he is either about to drop me or wants to bite me. I feel ya there Claud. Claudia decides because of the baby photo thing and because she doesn't look like her parents that she must be adopted. She also finds a lockbox in her dad's desk (I totally thought he had a gun as a kid. What? That's what all my friends parents' had lockboxes for. I know, I know. My midwestern roots are showing) which she thinks must contain her adoption papers.

Jessi's learning a secret language for a very special child.

The Baby-sitters Club #16: Jessi's Secret Language

So gather 'round, kiddies. Today we're going to learn a very special lesson about tolerance and acceptance of deaf kids and black people. Stoneybrook, CT is apparently a hotbed of prejudice so much that it makes my racist, homophobic, anti-feminist hometown look like Shangri-la. To be honest, I don't really have any recollection of this book. I think it might be one of the few early BSC books that I never actually read.

So Jessi just moved into Stacey's old house (sniff. Stacey! I miss you so much!) and everyone in Stoneybrook is apparently a racist except for the BSC and all of their clients. Jessi whines about it a lot. Seriously, I'm starting to see why she and Mal are best friends. (Let me just state here and now, for the record, that I know that racism exists and that it is awful. I do not mean to make light of it, and it is my heartfelt prayer that someday we will live in a world free from all forms of prejudice. That said, STFU Jessi. Your whining makes me hate you and it has nothing to do with your race.)

The BSC gets some new clients, the Braddocks. Jessi takes a regular sitting job for them and begins to learn sign language so she can care for seven-year-old Matt, who is profoundly deaf. She picks up on it in a snap, because apparently she is good at languages. For instance, she claims to have been nearly bilingual by the end of a one-week family vacation to Mexico. Um, Jessi? Being able to say "Donde esta el bano?" and "Dos cervezas, por favor" does not make one bilingual. STFU. Again. Matt and his sister Haley are new to the neighborhood and have trouble making friends, but once the BSC introduces them to other kids, they really don't seem to have much trouble. The other kids, especially the Pikes, who are far less annoying than usual in this book, think its super fun to learn sign language, and Matt is able to play sports and games with them, so really I don't understand why such a big deal was made about Matt and Haley's (who's not deaf but feels like having to look out for Matt makes the other kids think she's weird) "different-ness." Oh wait, it's so Jessi can make parallels to how she and her sister have had trouble adjusting to Stoneybrook because no one will even talk to them because they're black. And again, seriously, is Connecticut this homogenous? I've never been there, so maybe someone can enlighten me. Would there seriously not be one other black student in the entire Stoneybrook Middle School? I just don't buy this, but if someone tells me otherwise, I'll be happy to revise my stance.

Who needs baby-sitting when there are boys around?

The Baby-sitters Club #8: Boy-Crazy Stacey

So, when I first read this book (and don't ask why I remember this, but it was the summer after 2nd grade, I was 8 years old, and I thought I was the shiz-nit because I had gone by myself to visit my Aunt Jenni and Uncle John in Indiana) but anyway, when I first read this book, I couldn't understand the term boy-crazy, with the hyphen. I had never heard this term before, and I pondered for some time before deciding that the hyphen must work like a comma, leading the title to be something like, "Boy, Crazy Stacey" as in "Dude, Stacey is NUTS" said in a condescending tone while people shake their heads at her. Which, to be fair, could also be a fairly accurate description of the book.

Stacey and Mary Anne are mother's helpers (ahem. Excuse me, according to Stacey, they are parent's helpers, as they will be helping Mr. Pike as much as Mrs, although it doesn't really seem like either Pike parent wants to spend much time with their children on this vacation. But then, who could blame them?) for two weeks in Sea City, NJ. Mainly this involves taking the kids to the beach every day, where Stacey falls in LUV with a lifeguard named Scott, which basically means that she hangs out at the foot of the lifeguard stand all day while Scott (who is eighteen and going off to Princeton that fall, despite the fact that the Scott drawn on the book cover is clearly at least 35 years old) calls her "cutie" and "love" and asks her to fix him sandwiches and get him sodas, which she takes from the Pikes' refrigerator, which I'm sure Mr. and Mrs. Pike would LUV, if they were paying any attention to their children or their 13-year-old baby-sitters.

Can Mary Anne fix a feud between friends?

The Baby-sitters Club #125: Mary Anne in the Middle

Now here I am approaching uncharted waters. I never read much BSC above probably the 70s as a kid. If I recall correctly, by the time Dawn moved back to California, I was pretty much over it. The last book I vaguely remember reading as a kid was the one where the annoying new girl, Abby, was introduced (so just taking a wild stab in the dark here, but I think it was #90, Welcome to the BSC, Abby!) and even at that point, I remember feeling way too old for it and telling everyone I was reading it in an ironic fashion, because my friend Emily had read it and lent it to me because even though we were far too old for these books (we were like, 12 or something, but we had high opinions of ourselves), but Emily's Aunt Barbara kept sending them to her as gifts, and well, it would be rude of us not to at least read them, right?

So apparently, life at Stoneybrook Middle School has just become unbearable for Mallory Pike. People call her Spaz Girl (boy, SMS students are pretty hard-hitting with the insults, huh?) and write mean things on her locker and purposely bump into her in the hall. So Mal decides that perhaps she needs to go off to boarding school to "find herself" at the age of 11. The BSC is not so keen on that idea, but no one says anything. I think we're supposed to believe that they don't say anything because they don't want to influence her decision and want her to do what's right for her (a party line towed by her tutti-frutti parents as part of their "WOO! NO RULES!" child-raising philosophy) but I think secretly the BSC is just excited that if she goes, they won't have to listen to her whine anymore... Or am I projecting my own feelings on them? Oh well.

Creaky stairs, spooky noises, secret passages-- it must be a ghost!

The Baby-sitters Club #9: The Ghost at Dawn's House

I was always sort of jealous of Dawn's secret passageway. And I definitely spent many an afternoon tapping walls in my basement and shining flashlights around the garage, hoping for a secret space of my own. Of course, a large portion of that might have come from growing up with six people in a 900 square foot house. I carved a secret "cave" out of junk in the basement storage room (mainly some precariously stacked luggage and reams of half used computer paper that my dad used to bring home from work for my sister and I to color on) and spent a lot of time there wishing it were a real secret, and that my dad wouldn't come traipsing in looking for his cordless drill and that my sister wouldn't be able to find me to beg me to play "Barbie Flower Shop" with her. Dawn did not have these problems and she got a secret passageway... lucky duck.

Plot: So basically, it's the end of summer in Stoneybrook and it's really hot and humid, leading to a lot of stormy weather, setting a "spooky" stage for all the "spooky" happenings at casa O'Dawn. Dawn's house was built in 1795 and she hears strange noises and, let's face it, has something of an overactive imagination, so one dreary afternoon she invites the BSC over to look for secret passageways. They don't find anything that day, although they do have fun scaring the bejeezus out of each other (until Jeff gets them all something awesome with his green monster suit. Seriously, Jeff is the best. Why can't he stick around and we'll send stupid Karen Brewer off to California?) A few days later, Dawn goes into the barn to read and ends up sitting on the barn floor with some hay scattered around because... it's comfortable? Really, I don't get it. I had friends with barns when I was a kid and they were really fun for playing in haylofts and swinging on ropes from the rafters, but I have no idea why anyone would want to just go sit in one in stifling late August heat. But then Dawn falls through a trapdoor and ta-da! discovers her secret passageway, which she follows to her bedroom. She also finds some old detritus in the passageway, a shoe buckle and an indian head nickel. The next few times she goes back in there, with Jeff and the BSC, she finds other things. She's convinced there's a ghost.

Stacey's different... and it's harder on her than anyone knows.

The Baby-sitters Club #3: The Truth About Stacey

So I think we all know the truth about Stacey. There are 2 fundamental truths, and we hold these truths to be self-evident, that Stacey McGill is diabetic, and that Stacey McGill is AWESOME.

Background: Okay, seriously, this is probably as good a time as any to make clear my obsession with one Ms. Anastasia Elizabeth McGill. So sophisticated. So cool. I thought if I moved to New York City I’d be just like her. So even though I was 23 years old before I got the chance, I moved here anyway. Yes, that’s right. I made a vital and irrevocable life decision because of Stacey McGill. Ashamed, me? Never.

Good-bye, Stoneybrook...hello, Camp Mohawk!

Super Special #2: The Baby-sitters' Summer Vacation.

You know, I went to camp for six years, and never once did I refer to it as a "vacation." Sure it was fun, and yeah, it definitely beat school, but vacation was reserved for blissful spring breaks or weekends at the amusement park (okay, fine, my parents' idea of an excellent spring break trip was visiting my dad's relatives in Kentucky, and given my issues with heights, fast motions, and barfing (I am the Margo Pike of my family) the amusement park was never my favorite place. But you get the idea.) Vacation, at the very least, did not involve waking up in a bunk bed and sharing a communal bathroom with 30 strangers. These girls have strange ideas of vacation.

To synopsize: the girls (plus Logan, as we are repeatedly reminded, but let's just face it, Logan could pretty much be considered one of the girls at this point. I mean, when you let Mary Anne Spier whip you, you've really got no claim to masculinity left.) are off to Camp Mohawk for two weeks as Counselors-in-Training, or CITs (and Junior CITs, but that's a rant for another paragraph) taking along several of their nearest and dearest baby-sitting charges, although the specific kids themselves actually play very little role in the stories, a nice change from other plotlines. Most of the girls' stories revolve around their personal growth or their interactions with other CITs, more than with the kids. It's actually quite different from a typical BSC book, and a reminder of what made these books good, back in the day (pre-ghostwriters.)