Mary Anne's Bad Luck Mystery (RS#17)

Original Publication Date: 1988

Ghostwriter? No

Synopsis:

Halloween is coming, and Mary Anne find herself the recipient of a chain letter. She and the BSC dismiss it and she throws it out. But then she receives a bad luck charm that she must wear-or else.

Self-fulfilling prophecy being what it is, bad things start happening: poor test grades, forgotten babysitting job, kids getting into strange mischief. Then, after getting home from the school's Halloween Hop, Mary Anne finds a note instructing the BSC to meet at the cemetery Halloween night. The girls nervously plan to go and see what happens; they're afraid to disregard anything after the chain letter.

Then Mary Anne remembers that Cokie Mason commented on her bad luck charm...but she just learned from her dad that it's just a mustard seed. Cokie sent the charm! The BSC arrives early to the cemetery and sets up an elaborate series of ghost and monster effects. They succeed in terrifying Cokie, Grace, and their friends, all while Logan watches: he was supposed to see Mary Anne get scared and leave her and Cokie and Grace could have a chance.

So, it's all solved. But...who sent the original chain letter? (insert scary music here)

I think this and the second book might be tied for my favorite.


Established or continued in this book:


The Girls (and Logan):

Claudia candy: Tootsie Rolls in her desk drawer

Kristy doesn't like most boys. She and Mary Anne are still the two shortest.

Dawn has been upgraded from "not exactly pretty" to "pretty good-looking."

Mary Anne likes getting the mail. So do I.

Mary Anne isn't sure she knows 20 people (the amount she's supposed to send the chain letter to). So far I've counted 30 in her grade aside from the BSC.

Logan is excellent at keeping secrets.

Mary Anne keeps a trick-or-treater tally, like my mom.


Their Families:

This book is dedicated to the memory Ann M. Martin's Uncle Lyman. Maybe that's how she came up with the name for Logan's dad.


The Club:

There's some nice continuity with the mentioning of the Rodowsky boys vacuuming their socks.

Sometimes Jessi and Mallory sit together because they're younger. I don't think we ever see that outside of the Pikes.


SMS:

Ooh, first mention of Grace Blume and Cokie Mason!

SMS staff: Mr. Halprin (janitor)


PSA time: nothing special


Misc:

Mary Anne, there are worse things than dropping a plate of food in the cafeteria. For example, you could faint in the busy cafeteria at college. Very busy, so there's plenty of people to stare at you when you come to. That's a fun way to wake up.

It was really smart of Dawn to vacuum after Jackie spilled all the sewing notions. It would be very easy to miss a needle while picking it all up.

One of my friends told me that when she sees a face-down penny, she rights it so that someone else can pick it up for good luck.

More Old Man Hickory exposition. I like that there's that running story in the background of these earlier books.


The numbers:

BSC Fights: 3

SMS Staff: 13 (2 6th grade, 3 7th grade, 4 8th grade, 2 elective, 1 vice-principal, 1 secretary)

Students: thirty 8th graders, six sixth-graders

Clients: 17

Types of candy in Claudia’s room: 28 (bubble gum, butterscotch candy, a chocolate bar, cookies, Cracker Jacks, crackers, cupcakes, Ding-Dongs, Doritos, gumdrops, Gummi Bears, Hershey's kisses, Ho Hos, jawbreakers, licorice, licorice whips, Lifesavers, peanut M&Ms, regular M&Ms, marshmallows, Oreos (Double Stuf), pretzels, Ring Dings, root beer barrels, salt water taffy, Snickers, Tootsie Pops, Tootsie Rolls, Twinkies)

Crushes: Claudia-3 (Austin Bentley, Timothy Carmody, Trevor Sandbourne), Dawn-1 (Parker Harris), Mary Anne-2 (Alex, Logan Bruno), Stacey-4 (Toby, Pete Black, Scott Foley, Sam Thomas)

Jessi's Secret Language (RS#16)

Original Publication Date: 1988

Ghostwriter? No

Synopsis:
In the first book narrated by Jessi, we are treated to both ballet and the new BSC clients, the Braddocks.

Jessi is en pointe even though she's 11. My best friend can tell you just how many things are wrong with this. In sum, she said "There are eleven-year-olds who are en pointe, but they're either [the equivalent of] Beethoven or in Communist countries...where they're selected when they're five based on their body type, their parents' bodies, how flexible they are...and live at Academies their whole lives...They are not random baby-sitters...They're not en pointe at eleven dancing the lead in ballet. Bad. BAD."

Now it's my turn! The younger Braddock, Matt, is deaf and uses American Sign Language. The book does a decent treatment of it, but some things irk me. What is Jessi signing on the cover? Because I think she's using Exact Signed English and not ASL. Some sign descriptions in the book are too far off to be accounted for by regional differences, too.

But Jessi manages to bring it all together: she helps the Braddocks fit in with their new neighborhood by getting the other kids excited to learn ASL, thereby ensuring that Matt is accepted and his sister Haley doesn't have to be his translator 24-7. She also arranges for Matt's class (in a school for the Deaf in Stamford) to attend her ballet's production of Coppelia (Jessi lands the lead, of course). It also helps her bond with a student in her ballet class who has a Deaf sister, and is inspired to learn sign because of Jessi so she will be able to communicate with her. Aww...


Established or continued in this book:


The Girls:

Claudia candy: Double-Stuf Oreos, Ring Dings

Jessi wakes up every day at 5:29, before her alarm goes off.

To quote Jessi, she's "a good dancer, a good joke-teller, a good reader, good at languages,...good with children. But a terrible letter-writer."

Ooh, nice continuity with Claudia: she gets a butterscotch sundae, like in SS#1.


Their Families:

The Ramseys have been to Mexico. Her family had lived in Oakley, NJ Jessi's whole life before moving to Stoneybrook, and in NJ Jessi had lots of family living in her neighborhood and nearby, including her cousin/best friend, Keisha.

I always like the way Jessi's family is portrayed. A lot of that has to do with the fact that it's more like family than the others in the BSC: Mom, Dad, and three kids, one who's much younger (three years between my older brother and me, seven with the younger), and we tend to like each other.

Jessi's mom wakes up when Jessi goes to the basement to practice.

Becca has a rock collection.

Mallory's mom volunteers for Meals on Wheels every Monday.

Karen calls Krisy's mom Elizabeth. I thought she went by Edie...maybe this is Karen being all precocious and precise? Kristy's mom, by the way, has been saying she wants a baby.

Mary Anne lets us know that Tigger can play fetch. So does my husband's cat, Eddie. But at a health twelve pounds with feet so big you can hear him walk, he's far from a kitten.

I'm kind of disappointed that Jessi didn't try to teach Squirt any sign. I taught my goddaughter a little bit, and two other kids I used to sit for.


The Club:

New clients: the Braddocks. Matt, 7, is deaf and Haley, 9, has her hair in a rattail.


SMS: nothing new


PSA time:

When referring to deaf people as their own culture, it's considered proper to capitalize Deaf, as in "Gallaudet was an important influence in the Deaf community."

Jessi's name sign description doesn't quite work. Look up how to sign "J" and you'll see what I mean. I get the concept she's going for, but the way it's described (forming the letter J and signing "dance" with it) is somewhat off.


Misc:

It seems odd how Jessi states that Stoneybrook's having few black families is bad. I would think it's the way her family was treated that was bad, not the demographics of the town. Maybe she means that she felt more "obvious" in Stoneybrook. She also narrates "There was no way Swanilda could have been black, so I wasn't perfect." Is that normal to be concerned like that?

One of the four words Squirt says is "ba" for bird, which amuses me because my younger brother's first word was "duck."

When Jessi talks about her old neighborhood, I always picture a tree-lined street. Oak trees, of course.

I took American Sign Language in middle school, high school, and college, and have never, never, never, never, ever seen or heard it referred as Ameslan outside of this book. We called it ASL. This is distinct, by the way, from Exact Signed English, or ESE, which has signs for articles (the, a, an), while following the same grammar rules as spoken English, is somewhat "clumsy" and less utilized. The Braddocks use ASL, as demonstrated by Jessi's not finding articles in the ASL dictionary.

The "I love you" sign is mentioned, and it's an especially cool one. You basically sign the letters I, L, and Y at the same time. Hold your fingers out as if you're saying 5, then fold down your middle and ring fingers against the palm of your hand. The letter I is your pinky, L is thumb and forefinger, and Y is thumb and pinky.

Hmm. Let's see how this pans out. Here are (at least some of) the people in Jessi's ballet class: Mary Bramstedt, Lisa Jones, Katie Beth Parsons, Carrie Steinfeld, and Hilary ?. I think they all get revisited later in the series.

Why is "versus" italicized in BSC books?

More writing in a used book! Whoever owned this was listing the ones she'd been to, I think. Missing from the list of 33 states: Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Ontario is also on the list.


The numbers:

BSC Fights: 3

SMS Staff: 13 (2 6th grade, 3 7th grade, 4 8th grade, 2 elective, 1 vice-principal, 1 secretary)

Students: twenty-eight 8th graders, six sixth-graders

Clients: 17

Types of candy in Claudia’s room: 27 (bubble gum, butterscotch candy, a chocolate bar, cookies, Cracker Jacks, crackers, cupcakes, Ding-Dongs, Doritos, gumdrops, Gummi Bears, Hershey's kisses, Ho Hos, jawbreakers, licorice, licorice whips, Lifesavers, peanut M&Ms, regular M&Ms, marshmallows, Oreos (Double Stuf), pretzels, Ring Dings, root beer barrels, salt water taffy, Snickers, Tootsie Pops, Twinkies)

Crushes: Claudia-2 (Timothy Carmody, Trevor Sandbourne), Dawn-1 (Parker Harris), Mary Anne-2 (Alex, Logan Bruno), Stacey-4 (Toby, Pete Black, Scott Foley, Sam Thomas)

Litte Miss Stoneybrook...and Dawn (RS#15)

Original Publication Date: 1988

Ghostwriter? No

Synopsis:

The Little Miss Stoneybrook Pageant is upon us. Mallory and Jessi will have nothing to do with it: it's too sexist. The older sitters, eager to prove they're good at their jobs, think it could be fun for the little girls. Dawn coaches Margo (talent: peeling a banana with her feet and reciting "The House that Jack Built") and Claire Pike (singing "Popeye the Sailor Man"), Kristy coaches Karen (reciting umpteen verses of "The Wheels on the Bus"), Mary Anne coaches Myriah Perkins (tap dancing to and singing "Tomorrow"), and Claudia coaches Charlotte Johanssen (reciting the scene from "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" when Violet becomes a blueberry). Myriah ends up placing second to a "pageant-head" while Charlotte freezes onstage then runs home in tears. The BSC decides pageants don't reward real talent or character.

At home, Dawn and her family deal with Jeff moving back to California with their dad. It's supposed to be only a six-month visit, but it's never mentioned as temporary past the middle of the book. He's thrilled to be moving back, so Dawn is hurt that he won't miss her. There's a nice part at the airport when Jeff suggests he and Dawn use the photobooth so each of their parents can have two pictures of the two of them. He does end up missing his mom and sister, but is much happier in CA.


Established or continued in this book:


The Girls:

Claudia candy: licorice

This may be the least awkward "Jessi is black" book: "She [Mallory] are alike in a lot of ways, except that Jessi is black. Jessi also wears glasses..." You know, rather than "But we'd like her even if she were purple!"

Yay for peacemaker Claudia, trying to console the other 8th graders when Charlotte only wants Claudia to babysit. I like that side of her.

Dawn's house in CA has a bright yellow door.

Dawn, plenty of people on the West Coast eat red meat. I'm up in Washington and I had a roast beef sandwich yesterday.

Dawn calls Kristy a slob (in narration). She must be remembering the cruise they all took in SS#1.


Their Families:

I really like the way Dawn's family is written dealing the Jeff issue.

Becca Ramsey has bad stage fright.

Dawn and Jeff went to a school called Vista while in CA. Jeff still has a weak spot for chocolate, by the way.

Margo Pike is uncoordinated, yet she can peel a banana with her feet.

Claire Pike always wears a watch on her right hand despite not being able to tell time.


The Club:

Geez, Jessi and Mallory get to see a fight at their meeting as official members. No wonder they learn quickly to be quiet and stay out of things, sitting on the floor making their gum wrapper chains.


SMS: nothing new


PSA time: nothing really


Misc:

Hello, Sabrina Bouvier, the supposed-seven-or-eight-year-old. Maybe if I read carefully I'll find out how you escape the time warp.

I think the girls picture in the front are (left to right) Sabrina, Myriah, and the third-place winner. They all have sashes, two have tiaras, and the dresses aren't the right colors for any of them to be Claire, Margo, or Karen (not that that's stopped Hodges before). There's a show-off (Sabrina), a humble one (Myriah), and a random girl in ballet slippers, which might work...

Hooray for used books! This one has someone's address in Lake Mary, FL, and two notes that Kristina L. loves Barrett K. Her sister dogeared a page and she hates her for it. Kristina, if you ever see this, I bought your old book!

"Us babysitters" AGAIN. We=subject, us=object. I hate you, Dawn.

AND "us girls." I hate you, too, Kristy.


The numbers:

BSC Fights: 3

SMS Staff: 13 (2 6th grade, 3 7th grade, 4 8th grade, 2 elective, 1 vice-principal, 1 secretary)

Students: twenty-eight 8th graders, six sixth-graders

Clients: 16

Types of candy in Claudia’s room: 26 (bubble gum, butterscotch candy, a chocolate bar, cookies, Cracker Jacks, crackers, cupcakes, Ding-Dongs, Doritos, gumdrops, Gummi Bears, Hershey's kisses, Ho Hos, jawbreakers, licorice, licorice whips, Lifesavers, peanut M&Ms, regular M&Ms, marshmallows, pretzels, Ring Dings, root beer barrels, salt water taffy, Snickers, Tootsie Pops, Twinkies)

Crushes: Claudia-2 (Timothy Carmody, Trevor Sandbourne), Dawn-1 (Parker Harris), Mary Anne-2 (Alex, Logan Bruno), Stacey-4 (Toby, Pete Black, Scott Foley, Sam Thomas)

Hello, Mallory! (RS#14)

Original Publication Date: 1988

Ghostwriter? No

Synopsis:

Now that Stacey's moved to New York, the BSC needs another member. It enlists the eldest Pike and, still on edge from the double agents the Baby-Sitter Agency sent in RS#3, put Mallory through the ringer. She's given a ridiculous test and sent on a trial sitting job, during which she's watched so closely she gets nervous and clumsy. Before she can be officially rejected, she "quits."

Mallory and her new (and first) best friend, Jessi Ramsey, decide to start their only sitting club, Kids Incorporated. Jessi's new to Stoneybrook. Her family is black (that's the term used in the book so I'm going with it) and has gotten a fairly cold reception so far, to the point that Mrs. Ramsey is surprised that Mallory offers to shake her hand when they first meet. But as Mallory and Jessi bond over sitting, people start to warm up to the Ramseys.

After Kids, Inc has taken a grand total of two sitting jobs, one for the Pikes and one for the Ramseys, the BSC, now swamped, realizes that it was unfair. The extend an offer to Mallory, who accepts on the condition that Jessi also join. They each get a trial job and are quickly official members.


Established or continued in this book:


The Girls:

Claudia candy: Tootsie Pops under her pillow, Gummi Worms in her hollow book, Ring Dings, Cracker Jacks

Mallory can't have pierced ears until she's 13 or contacts until she's 15. I remember assuming I'd have to wait until I was the same ages for those things, but I got my ears pierced almost on a whim way earlier ("Mom, look at that! Can I get earrings?" "Sure."), and contacts when I started playing soccer and heading the ball, in 8th grade.

In addition to Mallory, we also meet Jessi, who moved from New Jersey with parents and younger brother and sister. She tells jokes, dances ballet, reads horse stories, wears reading glasses, and has to deal with being one of a small number of black people in Stoneybrook. Her birthday is Sep 13. She's due to get braces next year. Fortunately for her, she'll never make it seventh grade.

Mallory and Jessi really bond over books, trading each other books one has that the other hasn't read. I really like this idea for some reason.

Jessi's dance school in Stamford puts on PARTS of ballets. That must be how just-went-on-pointe-at-eleven-years-old Jessi can get the parts she does.


Their Families:

The Pike family gets the usual rundown: the triplets are one entity (no mention of piano lessons!), Vanessa rhymes...at all times, Nicky as neither a triplet nor a girl is left out, Claire is silly. Margo, however, is described as bossy rather than nauseous. Mr. Pike is a corporate lawyer, Mrs. Pike's job is taking care of the family. Mallory, Vanessa, and Nicky are nearsighted.

Good job, Pike parents! They taught Mallory and her siblings to be polite when meeting new people and shake at least the adults' hands.

Pike kids get a quarter for lost teeth. Geez, there were only three of us and we got a dime.

Oh. Mimi's starting to have some more stroke-related problems.


The Club:

The club notebook is also for recording important meetings.

Laura Elizabeth Perkins is born.

Jackie Rodowsky gets to be the sittee for a trial job again (first Logan, then Jessi).

Really? The BSC thinks the Pikes would call for a sitter after how Mallory was treated? Really?


SMS:

SMS staff: Mrs. Frederickson (6th grade homeroom), Mr. Williams (6th English)

Students: Benny Ott, Jessi Ramsey, Rachel Robinson, Sally ?, Anita ? (6th grade)


PSA time:

Please don't follow this book's advice about using tourniquets, except for the part about not removing them and leaving it to hospital staff. Tourniquets are a last resort to stop bleeding if compression doesn't work and usually results in amputation of the limb.

Mallory's jumper has her name written on it. Now, she's eleven, but I remember when my brothers and I were very young, my mom made sure we didn't wear things with our names on them (i.e.; if someone gave us a shirt with our name, she'd undo the stitching). She didn't want some creep to come over, read our shirt, and go "Oh, [name], your parents told me to pick you up."


Misc:

Bifocals aren't necessarily the same thing as regular glasses, Mallory. Some people can see up close fine, like me, as long as "up close" means within about two feet of my eyes. And, apparently, you don't wear bifocals, so get it right.

Mr. Gates is still the town barber, for lack of a better term.

This books' description of the club and members is the first to feel like a "Chapter 2" even though it's in Chapter 3.

This book also starts the baby formula talk. I notice it a lot in the books, that moms tell the girls where the formula is or whatever. Formula can be very useful in emergencies or if the mom can't breastfeed, but I'm so used to watching babies whose moms have left expressed milk in the fridge that it seems weird.


The numbers:

BSC Fights: 2

SMS Staff: 13 (2 6th grade, 3 7th grade, 4 8th grade, 2 elective, 1 vice-principal, 1 secretary)

Students: twenty-eight 8th graders, six sixth-graders

Clients: 16

Types of candy in Claudia’s room: 26 (bubble gum, butterscotch candy, a chocolate bar, cookies, Cracker Jacks, crackers, cupcakes, Ding-Dongs, Doritos, gumdrops, Gummi Bears, Hershey's kisses, Ho Hos, jawbreakers, licorice, licorice whips, Lifesavers, peanut M&Ms, regular M&Ms, marshmallows, pretzels, Ring Dings, root beer barrels, salt water taffy, Snickers, Tootsie Pops, Twinkies)

Crushes: Claudia-2 (Timothy Carmody, Trevor Sandbourne), Dawn-1 (Parker Harris), Mary Anne-2 (Alex, Logan Bruno), Stacey-4 (Toby, Pete Black, Scott Foley, Sam Thomas)