Publication date: 2022
Ghostwriter? No, the text copyright is for Ann M. Martin
Illustrators: Katy Farina, with color by Braden Lamb
Synopsis:
Karen's been having headaches, especially when reading. Time for a trip to the eye doctor. Karen (like my same-age daughter who just got glasses) is very upset to learn she'll need glasses, but quickly recovers when she realizes how much better she can see and how her headaches and eye strain disappear. Her friends and family are complimentary, with Nancy telling her perhaps the best thing: that the glasses look great AND that Karen hardly looks different with them on. Nancy is an excellent friend throughout this book, reassuring Karen at every turn and standing up for her.
But at school, Rickey Torres, AKA Ricky the Pest, zeroes in on the glasses and mocks Karen relentlessly. Then a few days later, Ricky gets glasses! Karen is at first happy to see him getting teased with the same names he called her, but quickly decides to take the high road and not make life harder for him. She even steps in when he's being teased, but Ricky's so upset and embarrassed that he takes out his frustration on Karen, calling her more names and telling her to leave him alone.
Not to mention, as the title suggests, school pictures are coming up. Karen can't decide what to do: leave her glasses on and feel like she stands out as too different, or leave them off and feel like a coward for giving in to teasing? Fortunately, Kristy helps Karen feel confident with her glasses, taking her to the library to show her pictures of famous people wearing glasses and pointing out the people in her family who wear them (an idea I used when my daughter was upset about her glasses; now she's fine with them--though she did choose to take them off for her school picture, which was fine).
After a lot of pondering and seeing how her teacher and another classmate leave their glasses on but Ricky takes his off, Karen decides to leave hers one. A moment later when the class gathers for a group picture, Karen and Ricky make up from their fight. Karen tells Ricky about the famous people who wear glasses, and he leaves his on for the group picture.
Continuity related to BSC books:
Emily Michelle and Nannie now live in the Big House:
Misc:
Dedicated to Ashley Vinsel and "my friends, my unyielding pillars of love and support."
Doesn't Karen have two pairs of glasses in the original books, one for distance and one for reading; one pink and one blue? She wore one pair on her face and another on a chain around her neck for the picture, right? Here she just gets pink ones that, from the descriptions of what she can see, are bifocals.
According to my uncle and cousin who are optometrists, kids should start having eye exams at kindergarten age (five), unless they're showing signs of eye problems before that. Regular exams are how we found out that my youngest needs reading glasses, and how I learned in third grade that I needed glasses for distance vision--I didn't know you could make out street signs from the back seat of a car; I figured no one else could read them from back there either!
When I got glasses in third grade, my teacher also rearranged the classroom so that I sat in the front, like Ms. Coleman does. That never made sense to me--before I got glasses, I hadn't been able to read the board from my seat in the back (I am VERY near-sighted), but now the problem was fixed. I should have been in the front BEFORE getting glasses, not after.
One boy teases Ricky for having "boring" brown glasses that match his "boring" brown eyes. First, having brown eyes myself, I've always disliked the idea that an eye color can be superior--maybe it can be striking, like my middle kids' piercing blue eyes, but not inherently better. Second, the boy teasing him also has brown eyes.
Karen narrates that she and Andrew are "visiting" her dad's house--does she not think of it as her house since she spends less time there? Could be a factor of why in later books she and Andrew spend a full month at each house then a full month at the other.
Karen's handwriting (and spelling) is noticeably better. A combination of learning more in school and getting glasses?
Karen's classroom:
The titular picture:
