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.

Stacey has never been so wrong in her life!

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The Baby-sitters Club #18: Stacey’s Mistake


Really, Stace? You’ve never been so wrong? Really? What about the time you thought you were going to run off to la-la-land with Scott Foley? What about the time you tried to set your mother up with appalling drama queen John Brooke? Let’s try to keep a bit of perspective here, ok?

I’m not going to lie, I LOVED re-reading this book. I believe that I have made clear in the past that Stacey’s life in NYC is pretty much the entire reason I chose to move from the Midwest to NYC when I was 23. And seriously, even though I am on the far side of my 20s these days, and Stace is 13, I totally identified with her SO MUCH in this book. Those parts will be made clear in the coming paragraphs through my squealing and digression into meaningless anecdotes from my own life. That is why you read, right?

So a bunch of the adults in Stacey’s (AWESOME, UPPER WEST SIDE, WHITE-GLOVE DOORMAN) building (seriously, what does Ed do for a living? I’ll marry him!) are planning to attend this big neighborhood meeting about homelessness (this is possibly the most bizarre premise ever, but I’m just going to run with it) and 5 different families ask Stacey to babysit. Rather than turn down 4 of them, Stace has the brilliant idea to invite the BSC (minus Jessi and Mallory, which right away shoots this book to the top of my LOVE list) to visit NYC and babysit all the kids.

Dawn's a California Girl!

The Baby-sitters Club #23: Dawn on the Coast

Well, no shit, Sherlock. We all know Dawn's a California girl. And we love her for it. (At least, I do. All my ideas about California were given to me by Dawn (and in college, by the O.C.) As far as I'm concerned, California is entirely populated by sun-worshiping, beach-loving, health-food-eating, environmentally-conscious, house-with-skylights-having blondes.)

It's spring break (a full two-weeks! Who ever got a full two weeks for Spring Break??? We were lucky to get a week. AND they'd always try to lump our Spring Break in with Easter Break... so annoying! Silly Catholic schools.) and Dawn is off to California to visit her dad and Jeff. Yay, Jeff! But she can't possibly leave without a BSC sleepover to see her off, so they all gather at Kristy's.

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?

They wish they all could be...

The Baby-sitters Club Super Special #5: California Girls!

So in honor of today's delightful weather (almost 60 degrees! Almost May! Way to be global warming! Oh, wait. Not.)let's travel with the girls as they visit California, someplace I've, sadly, never been.

So the BSC has won 10 grand on a lottery ticket, and apparently, there are no taxes in the state of Connecticut, so that works out to $1428.57 each, according to Dawn. They have one of their never-explained random two-week breaks from school, and decide to blow their wad on a trip out to Cali to visit Dawn's dad and Jeff (yay, Jeff!) in someplace called Palo City, which I guess is near LA, but not anywhere near San Diego (Dawn totally rips on Jessi for making that mistake) and I guess not by San Fran like I first thought (I guess that's Palo Alto? Where Stanford is?) Forgive me, I have no concept of California geography. If someone would like to pay for me to take a trip out there for BSC research purposes, I'd be happy to correct myself, but for now, I'm just going to assume it's somewhere LA-ish.

And another thing, all the BSC parents are okay with this? I mean, have any of them ever even met Mr. Schafer? And I'd wager a strong bet that none of them even really know who Carol (Mr. S's new girlfriend) is. My parents certainly wouldn't let me go galivanting across the freaking country to stay with some dude they'd never met, even if he was my friend's father. And spending all their winnings on it? The same Richard Spier who in book 1 wouldn't let his daughter spend $3.00 of her baby-sitting money on pizza is letting her blow $1500 on a trip to California to visit his new wife's ex? Seriously, people? Seriously?

Misgivings aside, the BSC is in Cali. Let's see how they fare, shall we?

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.

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.)