The Baby-Sitters Club: The Summer Before

So, gentle readers, I have finally done what any decent recapper would have done 5 years ago. I have read the BSC prequel published by Ann M. Martin back in 2010. I knew it was out there but I put it off, because really, did we need a prequel? Wasn’t Kristy’s Great Idea basically the prequel to BSC? Did we need more origin story?

The answer, after all, is yes. This was not a bad book! So as a special welcome back (to me) present, I’m recapping it for you. Along with offering a promise to get back into recapping regularly, 2009-style. I’ve moved, (yes, again) back home for good. I’m settled about 30 minutes from the Midwestern hometown I fled almost a decade and a half ago. I’m rebuilding relationships I thought were done for good. I’ve had a good run, in my beloved NYC, in other areas of the country for the last few years, and when circumstances, both good and bad, conspired to offer me the chance to try going home again, I felt I had to give it a chance. And so I find myself, 6 months later, feeling like Stacey returning to NYC or Dawn back to California, trying to navigate the old and new and reconcile the person I am now with the person I was then, and figure out where my home is and what my life will be in my new-old environment. So, I may as well recap the BSC while I do all this, no?

So let’s escape, back to Stoneybrook with a dash of NYC, to a more idyllic time. This book plays like a super-special, with different POV chapters and intertwining stories. There’s no Dawn (sad!), no Jessi (meh), and Mallory is limited to a fourth-grader no one cares about (yay!) Everybody’s dealing with change, and if I remember the summer after my sixth grade year correctly, a lot of it seems pretty plausible. There’s not a ton of action, but the good part is that this is old-school Ann M, none of that ghostwriter crap. There’s also CONSIDERABLE attention paid to continuity, and mad props for that!

Dawn thought having a sister was going to be fun. Was she ever wrong!

The Baby-sitters Club #31: Dawn's Wicked Stepsister

Ugh to the nth degree, Dawn. I feel for you. If I had to live with Richard, Mary Anne, and freakin' Tigger, I think I'd have fled to the West Coast far sooner than you did. Shall we examine why?

We open at the glorious nuptials of Richard and Sharon. My first question is why are the majority of the people present the BSC and the Pike triplets? Don't Richard and Sharon have any friends or family? Granny and Pop-pop are present, and I believe Richard's parents have already passed on, but are they both only children? With no cousins or anything? Or longtime friends? Apparently the guest list consists of the BSC, the Pike triplets (I guess they are like Jeff's plus one (three)?), few of the not-so-happy couple's friends from work, and Sharon's parents. That is just sad. Actually, everything about this is sad. Watson and Elizabeth's wedding was so much better. Anyway, the actual wedding took place in the previous book, which I haven't read since I was about 8 years old, so I'll save any other comments so I have something to say when I finally get around to reading it. I will simply note that this book opens with the throwing of Sharon's bouquet, which Dawn really wants to catch because she thinks she deserves it as the daughter of the bride. Ugh. Give it 15 years, Dawn, and you will be desperately hiding at the bar at your cousin's wedding while your drunk Aunt Millie steals the DJs mic so she can call you out by name to gather round with the middle schoolers who are the only other single women at the wedding, and instruct your cousin to aim the bouquet directly at you, because you are "not getting any younger." And people wonder why I drink.

But it turns out MA catches the bouquet, beating everyone down in the process (SERIOUSLY. At what wedding does anyone actually want to catch the bouquet? At every wedding I go to, everyone just stands there and lets the damn thing fall on the floor, until one of the bridesmaids finally takes one for the team and throws herself on the grenade.) Whatever. I'm all worked up over this, and it's only like the first two pages of the book.

Tigger, come home!

The Baby-sitters Club #25: Mary Anne and the Search for Tigger

I know I’ve made it clear before that I’m not an animal person, so I’m just going to assume that losing a cat is this traumatic. Because sweet Peaches, the way MA carries on, you’d think she just lost her only remaining parent. Although actually, considering that parent is Richard, she probably wouldn’t care that much.

So MA is totally obsessed with her cat, and I think we can all see foreshadowing of her future as a crazy spinster cat lady once Logan finally comes out of the closet his sophomore year of college. She lets him (Tigger, not Logan) play outside one Friday afternoon while she goes to a BSC meeting, then comes home and can’t find him. Quelle horror! She freaks out and runs all over the house looking for him, then Richard comes home and indulges her paranoia for a few minutes by helping her look outside with flashlights (really? They need flashlights at 6:30 pm at a time of year when it’s warm enough in Connecticut to ride bikes and sit outside all afternoon? I call bullshit. Also, even if it is dark, don’t they have outdoor lighting and streetlights? Are “torches that could light up New York City” really necessary? No.) Finally Richard is all “MA, I don’t care about your cat anymore. Get inside and fix me dinner.” Except not in so many words. He’s just like “I’m sure the kitten is fine. He’s been missing for less than 2 hours. Back to your lives, citizens.”

Mary Anne's on her own. Can she take charge?

The Baby-sitters Club #4: Mary Anne Saves the Day

And we're back! New year, same old Stoneybrook. Thank God we have Mary Anne to save the freakin' day.

The BSC is inordinately attached to the Newton family. Now I like the Newtons. I've said before that I like to think Mrs. Newton was probably a pretty hip, cool mom, and all the girls seem really comfortable with her (unfortunately, as we'll see later on, that means they feel really comfortable acting like jerks in front of her), but their obsession with the Newton family, and especially baby Lucy, is getting kind of creepy at the point. Of course, that said, my co-worker brought her 6-month-old into the office today, and I got super-excited and probably spent half an hour making funny faces at her and could have gone on much longer except the baby had to go home. On the other hand, you have to factor in my absolute lack of desire to do anything resembling my actual job, so... where was I?

Oh yes, the BSC is creepily fixated on Lucy Newton and really, that is the crux of this whole shitshow of a book. Mrs. Newton calls the club and wants a baby-sitter for both Jamie and Lucy (remember that Mrs. Newton really doesn't trust these 12 year-olds with her infant. And with good reason-- they lose kids.) Kristy takes the job without offering it to any of the others (and FYI, in case anyone doesn't buy my "Mrs. Newton is awesome" theory, please note that the Newton's need a sitter because they are throwing a classic cocktail party from 6-8 pm on a Friday night. This is one of those awesome things that I fully intend to do once I a) have an apartment that is not someone's 300 square foot basement, and b) can afford to fully stock a bar. I will probably need to get married to achieve either of these goals. That's what Mrs. Newton did.) ANYWAY, Kristy taking this job without offering it around (club rule!) sparks this WAY out of proportion fight that sounds remarkably like all their other fights. Kristy is job-hog, MA is a baby, Stacey is a snob, Claudia is stuck up (I don't really see this one, but oh well. When you're 12 and yelling insults at each other, they don't always have to make sense. That is one thing I very vividly recall about 7th grade.) So suddenly, the very fabric of the BSC is threatened.

Two weeks of sun, fun--and boys galore!

The Baby-sitters Club #34: Mary Anne and Too Many Boys

Happy birthday, Ann M. Martin! If we were really friends, I would throw you a slumber party in my stepfather's mansion. We would order pizza and give each other makeovers and discuss our crushes on boys like Bruce Schermerhorn and Pete Black, and how immature Alan Gray is. We would gossip about Cokie Mason and Shawna Riverson and discuss our forthcoming trip to the mall where we would get our ears pierced and our hair permed (well, Stacey would.) We would spread our sleeping bags out in a circle with our heads in the middle and be wary in case any of our brothers tried to play tricks on us. We'd giggle at Dawn for preferring Tofutti to actual birthday cake (Sacrilege!) It would be super-fun! Someday, mmmkay? Call me!

So in one of those weird, don't think too hard about it or your brain will explode time warps so common in BSC-land, Mary Anne and Stacey have re-signed up to be mother's helpers for the annual Pike family Sea City summer vacation. Despite Mallory being a baby-sitter now, the Pikes still elect to pay for two extra sitters in an effort to let Mal "enjoy her vacation." Whatever. Are the Pikes made of money? I guess if they want to waste it on baby-sitters, that's their business. But it would it kill them to spend ten minutes of their alleged "family vacation" with their damn kids?

Mary Anne has a crush-- on a boy baby-sitter!

The Baby-sitters Club #10: Logan Likes Mary Anne!

Eh, Logan. You could do better.

Well, it's the first day of the BSC's interminable 8th grade year and guess who Mary Anne spies across the crowded cafeteria? None other than her new celebrity crush, Cam Geary. Except, wait!, Stacey tells her, that's not Cam Geary. That's Logan Bruno, recnet transplant from Louisville, Kentucky (that would be Loovull, as we are treated to some delightful stereotyping of Logan's accent.) MA's heart is all aflutter.

The BSC has a huge influx of business thanks to some recent adertising, and it's getting to be too much for them to handle. Logan eavesdrops on their convo at lunch one day, and announces that he used to do a lot of baby-sitting. Mostly, this seems like a ploy to be able to oome sit by the tongue-tied Mary Anne. The BSC invites him to come to one of their meetings.

When is Mary Anne's bad luck going to end?

The Baby-sitters Club #17: Mary Anne's Bad-Luck Mystery

I don't really get Halloween. I mean, I enjoy a good masquerade ball as much as the next girl (actually, I've never been to a masquerade ball, but I have no doubt that I would enjoy it very much, should I ever achieve my dream of travelling back to 1868 and actually getting to attend one.) And of course, I like candy far more than I probably should. What don't I like? Any day that exhorts the vast majority of the world's children to act even more like spoiled, entitled little brats than they normally do any day of the week. Any day where I am encouraged, nay, expected to dress up like Donatella Versace and squeeze into a subway car shared with a gorilla, 6 women wearing pointy black hats, and a fat guy in an orange sweatsuit who I think is supposed to be a pumpkin, but might just be a fat guy with very little fashion sense. Any day where the grocery store cashier ringing up my loaf of bread and 12-pack of Diet Coke is likely to be wearing any of the above costumes. Halloween is when the freaks come out. And I have very little patience with freaks.

But here we have arrived at a BSC Halloween, no doubt the first of many in their never-ending 8th grade year (actually, I can't think of any others at this moment, but given that they went to SMS for, like, 15 years, I'd say it's probably a pretty safe bet they celebrated other Halloweens!) Mary Anne receives a chain letter saying she and her family and friends will have bad luck if she breaks the chain. Jessi and Mal are terrified, but no one else really gives a shit. Mary Anne throws the letter away.

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.