Another of my favorite Super Specials, and this one has a personal story attached. I remember I took my copy of this to the salon to read while I was getting my first and only perm (rockin' the Stacey style). This would have been 4th, maybe 5th grade. This book kept me entertained during that long process. However, unfortunately, when we left the salon, I managed to forget "Snowbound" as well. By the time of my next visit, it had disappeared into oblivion. This was a life-defining tragedy for me.
So, a heavy snowstorm is called for on Wednesday, which no one takes seriously because multiple snowfalls have been predicted and nothing ever materialized. So school continues as usual, with the Winter Wonderland dance planned for Friday. As Wednesday evening hits, the snow starts to fall. It was a dark and stormy night...then the power goes out....
Stoneybrook Snowpocalypse Breakdown:
Mary Anne and Mallory: They are babysitting for the Pike family overnight while the Pike parents escape to New York City (with 8 kids, I'd take every chance for an adult getaway while I could, too). Of course, Mrs. Pike mentions before she leaves that there is hardly any food left, which I'm sure will have no bearing on the story whatsoever (yeah, right, we know AMM better than that). So, the Pike parents get stuck in NYC, and the kids run out of food Thursday morning. This always stuck me as such a crisis when I was younger, however it turns out there was actually plenty of food, just not food the kids liked (who wants to eat frozen broccoli? Um, I do...). Thursday afternoon, Logan, the knight in shining armor, cross country skis over to the Pike house with a backpack full of food, crisis averted.
Kristy: invites Bart, her kinda-sorta boyfriend, over to watch movies (Uncle Buck and Back to the Future, I'm impressed that real movies are listed here) and to have dinner with her family. Snow falls, Bart must sleep over at the McMansion (Kristy freaks out about Bart seeing her in her pajamas, that so would have been me at 13, too). The next morning, Kristy sets her alarm for 5:30 so that she can get pretty (including curling her hair and putting on makeup) before Bart wakes up. Kristy actually acts like a girly girl for once.
Claudia: babysitting for the Perkins (Myriah, Gabbie, and baby Laura), the Perkins adults get stuck at their friends' house overnight. Biggest adventure here is that the dog, Chewbacca, gets shut in the basement overnight.
Dawn: she and her mother make a white-knuckle drive to the airport to pick up Jeff from California, but his flight has been diverted to DC, so they must spend the night in the airport waiting for him to come the next morning. His flight lands around lunchtime, everything is hunky-dory.
Jessi: stuck at dance school rehearsing for "The Nutcracker" (she's the King of Mice). Her romantic interest, Quint, was on the train from New York City to go to the school dance on Friday with her. Quint's train makes it to town, but Mr Ramsey isn't there to pick him up, so he walks to the dance studio (umm...what adult transit employee would let an 11 year old boy walk away in a blizzard, even if the dance studio is only a few blocks away? As Cher Horowitz would say, "That's a lawsuit waiting to happen!!"). All of kids spend the night at the dance school, Jessi and Quint help babysit.
Stacey: she and her mom get caught in storm on the way back from the mall (Stace had to get a fresh perm for the dance, of course). They get off the highway to avoid wrecks and get stuck on the back roads (ok, my Midwest winter driving tip here - don't get off the highways unless you have a four wheel drive, because the highways tend to get pretreated with salt and sand better, and tend to get plowed first. Now you know, Mrs. McGill, and knowing is half the battle). A stranger stops and invites them to spend the night with him and his wife. Instead of Texas Chainsaw massacre, they get Norman Rockwell, aka the Schiavones.
After the blizzard, totaling 28 inches of snowfall, everyone is reunited with their families, school reopens on Friday, and the Winter Wonderland dance carries on as planned.
Winter Wonderland Dance:
Kristy - going with Bart Taylor, her on/off boyfriend and rival softball coach; when Kristy asks what Bart is wearing to the dance, he says his suit is "puce" - I don't even know if I knew what color that was at 13, so a 13 year old boy? Doubtful.
Mary Anne - Logan Bruno, of course (ladies love Southern boys)
Claudia - going with Iri Mitsuhashi, someone we never hear about again
Dawn - Price Irving, whose fate in this series resembles Iri's
Stacey - Austin Bentley, who I think has been mentioned before
Jessi - Quint Walter, the ballet dancer she meets in the New York Super Special - BSC time warp alert: Jessi meets Quint over the summer vacation (after 6th grade), but now this is the winter of 6th grade again...it's like Stoneybrook Groundhog school year.
Mallory - Ben Hobart, the boy wonder from Down Under, her on/off boyfriend of the series
What Claudia wore:
"I'd bought this black velvet knicker outfit and was going to wear it with a lot of silver jewelry, including snowflake earrings." I guess that's a knicker outfit? Looks almost like Hammer pants (I can neither confirm nor deny that I may or may not have had a red pair of Hammer pants in 4th grade.)
Other than Stacey's LBD (note the lack of curly hair, too), all the other dresses look like 80's bridesmaid dresses - I hope at least one of them has a butt bow.
It's a BSC-Nancy Drew mashup in the house!!
The local newspaper is running a "Sitter of the Month" club, so of course the BSC is getting super competitive about who will win. Dawn, for instance, invents a game while babysitting for Kristy's younger brothers and sisters, with characters like "Bruce Stringbean" the rockstar, "Darryl Blueberry" the ballplayer, and "Ladonna" the singer. Ok, this reminds me too much of a skit we had in 4th grade, where took historical figures and mixed their names with vegetables - we had Francis Scott Kiwi, Elvis Parsley, and Thomas Alfalfa Edison (I know a few of my fellow Warriors remember that skit).
Anyway, it's not all fun and games in Stoneybrook these days. Dawn keeps getting prank phone calls while at different sitting jobs, where the person on the other end never speaks. Plus, a few minutes after the phone calls, the doorbell rings, and all that's there is an envelope on the porch. She gets one note that says "You'd better watch out, you'd better not shout. I'm going to get you!" signed Mr. X. The second note reads "I'm watching you."
However, Dawn is not the only on getting stalked. Jessi gets a bouquet of flower stems and a note that reads "Best wishes from your secret admirer." Mary Anne and Mallory, while sitting for the Pikes, get a note that reads "Do you like your hamster? If you do, you better keep an eye on him." (The hamster's name is Frodo, by the way, love the LOTR shout-out). Stacey and Claudia admit to getting phone calls and notes as well. Plus, the elusive Mr. X smears a couple of cans of baked beans on the front porch of Charlotte Johanssen's house while Claudia is there (baked beans? Really? I could understand, like, cherry syrup, or something that would look like blood or something, but baked beans? Weak, weak...)
Oh, time for an awesome original Syfy movie alert - Jessi and her sister Becca watch a movie called "Snake Boy Loose in San Francisco." Tara Reid, this could be your follow-up to "Sharknado." Think about it.
Anyway, Dawn figures out that Mr. X must be the neighborhood bully she had a run-in earlier, a kid named Mel Tucker whom she caught teasing one of the Hobart boys. They come up with a plan to entrap the prankster, and manage to catch Mel sneaking around the secret passage at Dawn's house. He apologizes, and all is well in Stoneybrook again.
Oh, and there is a seven-way tie for the "Sitter of the Month" contest. How convenient.
No outfit descriptions on this one. My day has been ruined. To console myself, I found an image of Claudia from the Babysitters Club movie (I fully plan on watching this at some point this year as part of the project.)
Notice the shade she is throwing for not getting an outfit in this one.
This is another first time read for me, this takes place after Dawn moves back to Cali and Abby joins the group. It is definitely a different dynamic reading the ones that don't have a nostalgia factor for me, and will take a few more readings to get used to Abby.
So, droppin' it like it's plot: Kristy has the great idea to start a BSC version of the Guinness Book of World Records, "The BSC Book of Kids' Wild, Wacko, Off-the-Wall Records." This involved things like potato toss, speed singing, peeling bananas with feet, Twinkie toss...basically, a lot of good groceries were ruined the name of fun. After several tantrums and hurt feelings, the kids all pull together for an exhibition of "skills" at the end of the book. Yay.
On to the juicy stuff: Kristy and Bart have basically been friends with benefits, they are not officially boyfriend and girlfriend, but go to movies and dances together, and the kiss action starts to heat up. They go to see an action movie, Bart wants to spend the whole time making out, while Kristy wants to watch the movie (I pretty much had that same date at one point, I take my movies seriously, yo). Bart invites Kristy to his April Fools' Day dance at school (I'm sorry, that just sounds like something the seniors would make up to prank the underclassmen or something). However, push comes to shove when Kristy and Bart get busted in the middle of a make out session on the couch by Watson and her mom. After being grounded over the weekend, and a phone fight, Kristy decides that she is not ready for a serious relationship (oh, the joys of 13 year old romance) and they agree to just be friends. My favorite quote of the story from Kristy: "Mary Anne and Logan were in deep LUV, Bart and I were in advanced LIKE."
So what is the true answer to Kristy + Bart = ?.
What Claudia wore: "Claudia wore a bowling shirt with the name Ralph sewn over the front pocket, and matching loose rayon pants, gathered at the waist with a leather strap (umm...isn't that called a belt?). She'd pinned her hair with a barrette in the shape of two bowling pins." I wonder if Claudia rolls on Shabbos...
So, my library only had a copy of this one in large print, and something about reading a BSC book in large print made me feel really old.
Today's special: Claudia is studying for a big time math test with her sister, Janine, and actually has a grasp on the material this time. Side note: I seriously think Claudia may be dyslexic, based on her atrocious spelling and mentioning how the words and numbers jumble on the page. Was this ever addressed? Guess I'll have to continue reading the series to see if she is ever tested or anything. Anyway, back to the story. Claudia takes the test and gets an A- for the first time in her life, but horror!, it turns out that another classmate, the popular Shawna Riverson (one of these characters you hear about in one book and never see referenced again), got the same score and made the exact same mistakes on the test. So Mr. Zorzi (awesome name) calls them out, and Shawna, normally an A student, says she would never cheat and walks out of the room. Mr. Zorzi believes her.
Ok, I get why a teacher would be more suspicious of the C average student than the A student, however, I find it really hard to believe that both the teacher and principal would take the word of one student and not investigate further. Plus, when Mr. and Mrs. Kishi are called and informed of this, instead of marching up to the school to straighten this out, they do nothing because Claud doesn't want them involved. I call b.s. on this. I once got an inexplicable C for PE in 2nd grade, I don't know how that is even possible (my friend Laura Wilson got one, too, so I wasn't alone in the misery, at least). In that case, for a grade that didn't really matter in 2nd grade, both sets of parents immediately called the school to complain, and we both got A's on the next report card. So what parents would actually do nothing in this case?
Anyway, the BSC play Nancy Drew, including breaking into Shawna's locker because Dawn somehow knows the combo (good one, AMM), all to no avail, but finally Janine convinces the teacher to let Claudia retest (apparently that was too logical to begin with). Claudia gets another A, and Shawna the Cheat confesses. Happy ending.
What Claudia wore:
"Since I had a big test, I thought that I'd start with my lucky earrings - the ones that look like Princess Di's. They're huge (pretend) emeralds, surrounded by thousands of tiny (phony) diamonds. Then I thought I'd work downward from there, wearing my new green-and-blue-tie-dyed (all-the-hyphens-must-stop) T-shirt dress (the casualness of the dress would be an interesting contrast to those fancy earrings) over green leggings. The only thing I hadn't figured out was the shoes - should I go with my old ballet flats or the black leather high-tops I'd just gotten?" Claudia later specifies that she chose the ballet flats. Plus, this girl has a serious thing for tie-dye.
Now just mentally add fancy earrings, green leggings, and ballet flats.
Claudia, take 2:
"I decided my theme for the day would be The Sea. I put on a blue skirt with brightly colored tropical fish all over it. Then I put on a green blouse. I figured it could represent seaweed or something. I pulled my hair into a ponytail, over to one side, and I pinned it with a sand-dollar barrette I made last summer. I ran to my closet and pulled out a pair of shoes. They're the plastic kind called "jellies" that I had decorated with stickers of seahorses and shells." (Side ponytails, jelly shoes, sounds like most of my photos from elementary school...)
What Amy wore: Today she chose her dark wash skinny jeans, topped with a beige long sleeved shirt with a coral-colored fox imprinted on the front. She chose sterling silver owl earrings (she thought the owls would provide an animal food chain type contrast to the fox on her shirt) and finished the look with black leather riding boots (because historically, people rode horses when they hunted fox, so this completes the circle of life). Take that, Claudia Kishi.
So this is one of the later books in the series, meaning I had never read this one before. It's also one that features Abby instead of Dawn, so that was an adjustment as well. On to the fun...
Plot-tastic in the house: Stoneybrook Middle School, SMS to those in the know, offers special classes called Short Takes, 3 week courses in specialized, elective-style topics. Stacey, as well as Kristy and Logan (Mary Anne's true love, of course), enroll in a film making class, taught by an Academy Award winning documentary director. Umm...what kind of budget does SMS have, exactly? How realistic is it for an Academy Award winning director to teach a 3 week course to middle schoolers? College, maybe, but middle school? Way to make me feel disappointed in my own TMS experience, AMM.
Anyway, Stacey and her group decide to do a documentary of what it's like to be a middle school student, interviewing friends and foes alike. Cue the drama...
Mary Anne - she admits to being mad at her mother for dying, then tries to get the interview cut from the movie.
Kristy - tries to take over all aspects of her group, finally realizes that she is stubborn and wrong.
Jessie - she admits that it's hard to be a minority in Stoneybrook, especially since Mallory is away at boarding school (what!! This is what I get when I read books out of order...)
Claudia - thinks creative kids aren't given as much of a shot at success as the smart kids. Unfortunately, she's pretty much right, especially when it comes to the workforce.
Abby - well, we discover she has asthma, but she uses an inhaler, not inhalator (you need to work on the continuity, AMM)
Stacey - she admits on camera to being upset about being a child of divorce, but more importantly, we find out she has a 16 year old boyfriend in New York named Ethan. Hold. The. Phone. No way my parents would have let me, as a 13 year old, date a 16 year old boy. Now, she only sees him when she visits her dad, but still, he's sixteen. You're toeing that line, AMM, might want to rethink that one...
Cokie Mason - our favorite resident SMS mean girl totally pulls a Gretchen Weiners in her interview, is all "I'm sorry that people are so jealous of me, but I can't help it that I'm so popular," then she proceeds to tell Cady, I mean Stacey, that she's, like, really pretty. I'm thinking Tina Fey read some BSC before she wrote "Mean Girls."
Today in Claudia fashion:
"Today for instance, she wore a tie-dyed T-shirt (which she dyed herself) under a pair of white overall shorts. But these weren't ordinary overalls. She'd painted a rain forest scene over the entire fabric. It made her look like a walking mural. The forest canopy was up by the straps, and mushrooms, rocks, and little lizards sat at the hems." I don't know if I have words for this look. By the way, if you do a search for images of tie-dye/overalls, your eyes may explode. You have been warned.
Unfortunately, no Stacey outfits in this one, which considering this is a Stacey book, was pretty disappointing.
I was always a sucker for the Super Specials - I mean, you get a story for every character in one book, which rocked my 13 year old world back in the day. So, for my first book on this journey, I figured I would start with one of my favorite Super Specials ever, "California Girls!" (the fact there is an exclamation point in the title just highlights the awesomeness of the Super Special).
Let me hit you with some plot - the BSC wins $10,000.00 in the state lottery (this is somehow legal because the girls got their parents to buy them tickets). Ok, I remember being thirteen, and there is no way my parents would have bought lottery tickets for me and my friends, just not happening. Plus, not to get all adult on this children's series, but there is no mention of tax liability, the girls literally split the $10,000.00 prize 7 ways. That's going to be fun at tax time for the parents, let me tell you.
Anyway, back in Stoneybrook, where logic need not apply, the girls invite themselves to Calfornia to visit Dawn's family for 2 weeks during school vacation (which school vacation is not specified, it seems to be Spring Break-ish, but 2 weeks? Sign me up in that school district...).
Here's the character breakdown:
Stacey - takes up surfing with older teenagers, gets into a car accident.
Claudia - has a bicoastal romance with Terry, a male version of her sister, Janine (he's a thirteen year old boy who likes French restaurants and foreign language films. Does that 13 year old boy exist in real life?)
Mary Anne - babysits for Stephie, a girl with asthma (and kept talking about her inhalator, I always called them inhalers, so that was really distracting).
Kristy - gets competitive over who has the best babysitting club, the BSC or the We Love Kids Club. Admits that she may not know it all, kind of shocking, really.
Jessi - hangs out with Derek Masters, the child actor featured in several books, and is an extra on his television show.
Dawn - butts heads with her dad's girlfriend, Carol, who she thinks is way too old to act cool (Carol is 32. Ouch.)
Mallory - spends all her money on a makeover and blonde hair dye. Plus, Mallory uses the slang "dibbly fresh" at some point (Stop trying to make fetch happen, Mallory!! It's not going to happen!!)
And, now for my favorite segment, BSC fashion presents:
What Claudia wore: "She was wearing a red shirt with Mexican hats (ok, even at 13, I knew the term sombreros) and cactus plants printed on it, and blue and white striped pants held up by polka-dot suspenders. On her head was what looked like an engineer's cap (it matched her pants), and dangling from her ears were miniature cowboy boots, which she'd made herself." This outfit is totally giving me a Clarissa Darling/Blossom Russo-style vibe.
I mean, am I right, or am I right?
What Stacey wore: "Stacey was wearing wide-legged cropped pants; her Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt (why is t-shirt capitalized here?); and high-topped running shoes." Sounds like an early 90s LA Gear commercial. Or maybe a Fly Girl from In Living Color.
As I was growing up, I had quite the addiction to the Babysitters' Club series by Ann M Martin. At some point in time, I had accrued over 50 of these books in my personal collection. Sadly, I think at some point during high school or college, my mom made the decision to donate my box of BSC awesomeness to a younger cousin.
Fast forward a couple of decades, and my nostalgia for the series reignites, so I decide to use my library card to regress back to my 13 year old self. As I peruse the online catalog, I realize that the BSC has expanded since I stopped reading them. At some point, Dawn left the group for good and someone named Abby joined. Plus, in addition to the Super Specials I had always known and loved, there was now a mystery series, with Super Special Mysteries, to boot.
So, my interest piqued, I decided that I would read my library's entire BSC catalog during 2014. Since a number of my friends seemed somewhat interested in this journey, I thought I would create a blog to document my progress through the series. Since this is only a year long project, the blog is going to be fairly plain and simple (as you can see...).
I will include a brief synopsis of each book I read, including some snark, because that's just how I roll, and you can't reread a children's series as an adult without some perspective. Moreover, since I was always enthralled by the outfits AMM would meticulously describe for Claudia and Stacey, I will include a BSC fashion segment for each book, if possible.
So, let the games begin, and may the odds be ever in your favor...(wait, wrong series...)
