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!

Campfires, ghost stories-- summer vacations are the best!

The Baby-sitters Club Super Special #8: Baby-sitters at Shadow Lake

Good God, y’all. I know it’s been a while, but a lot has been happening in my life since I last abandoned you. I finished grad school. I attended my college reunion. I cheered on more friends than I care to count as they took the next steps that so far continue to elude moi: weddings, babies, book contracts, home ownership, laser eye surgery. I knew I had to do something, so here it is: I moved halfway across the country to take a new job, one where I am not disrespected and mistreated on a daily basis. I pulled a Stacey McGill (Original recipe and version 3.0)—I woke up one day and found myself leaving behind my comfortable, New York City life—a life of brunch and bridges and Broadway—and venturing back into Tinytown, USA, a world of SUVs and Applebee’s and carefully cultivated elm trees. I live in the Midwest again. Please don’t hate me.

The Tinytown library is a lot different from the NYPL and it contains very few BSC books. Plus, it took several months for me to work up the courage to venture inside. The people there… talk to you. It’s very awkward, if you believe, like me, that libraries, and indeed most public spaces, should be spaces of silence. They’re… friendly. It’s weird. Check-out lady, I don’t know you from Adam. I don’t need your views on the county fair. They’re… kind of slow and inefficient. (Must be all that talking.)

So, yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m known around here as “That bitch from New York.” But you know what? I’m okay with that label, because I’m pretty sure a certain Ms. Stacey McGill was also known by that moniker. Of course, lucky duck that she was, she eventually got to return.

Okay then! All that said, we’re diving back in with Super Special #8: Baby-sitters at Shadow Lake. I have reread this one many times. It’s long been one of my favorites, but until this read-through, I never took the time to pinpoint exactly why. It’s got all sorts of great stuff: sappy Stacey/Sam (Stam? Samcey?) moments, everyone treating Mallory like the dipshit she is, Dawn freaking out about ghosts, and minimal Mary Freakin’ Anne. Most importantly, everyone in this book is hysterically bitchy to each other. It’s phenomenal.

So Watson gets a letter from his ostensibly long-lost aunt and uncle with whom he used to spend summers at their cabin on Shadow Lake. Right off the bat I think there’s something weird about this, because the aunt (whose letter is written out as a prologue, and may I just say, she has lovely handwriting.) is all “Your uncle and I hope to meet Karen, Andrew, your new wife, and her children… We want to see what the boy we remember has become.” Well Aunt Faith, for starters, he’s become a millionaire. But if he’s that important to you, why haven’t you seen him since he was twelve? Were you not at either of his weddings? You only live in Pennsylvania, and you don’t seem to be particularly infirm, even if you are re-evaluating your will. Anyway, this is another example of me getting hung up on the first two pages of the book when there’s so much more goodness to come, so long story short: Aunt Faith and Uncle Pierson want to leave Watson their summer cabin on Shadow Lake in the mountains of western Massachusetts  (there are mountains in Massachusetts? My geography knowledge is further evidence of the decline of America’s schools) when they die, but only if he wants it. They suggest that he take his family on a vacation there to see if they like it.

So Watson not only takes his family, but 10 of his children’s nearest and dearest friends, including all six BSC-ers and 2 friends each for David Michael and The Insufferable Karen Brewer.  Luckily, this cabin sleeps 20-some people.