Original Publication Date: 1997
Ghostwriter? Yes, Suzanne Weyn
Synopsis:
When Mary Anne's dad lends her his credit card to do Christmas shopping (...yeah), she quickly overspends and finds herself owing her dad more money than she has available. There's a little lesson/PSA about credit card debt and interest payments. Her solution is to get a parttime job as an elf in a Santa village at the mall. In a shocking turn of events, this one job in New England that actually requires its employees to be 16, unlike where Laine and Logan work. But another girl, Angela, helps Mary Anne disguise the 13 she's already written as a 16 (not sure how...) on her job application, and the two co-workers hit it off. Fortunately (?) for Mary Anne, who wants to keep her job a secret, she has to dress in an elf costume, complete with a giant fake head. She and Angela get to know each other better, and eventually Angela reveals that she's no longer welcome in her family's home, because she won't toe the line of her upper-crust, intolerant parents. Angela is trying to raise funds to pay her way to California where she can live with her friends (Angela is 17). When her parents won't even speak to her during the holiday season, Mary Anne invites Angela to her house for Christmas, at Dawn's suggestion. She also comes clean about her secret job, but not until after the last day.
Subplot is about the BSC helping a defunct toy drive.
Established or continued in this book:
The Girls (and Logan):
Claudia candy: none mentioned
Mary Anne buys both Kristy and Abby catcher's mitts for Christmas. For those who don't know, a catcher's mitts is different from a regular baseball mitt. As far as I know, neither Kristy nor Abby are much interested in playing catcher. I hope Mary Anne at least remembered that Kristy is left-handed when she bought them.
Dawn (and Jeff) are visiting from California for Christmas, and Dawn has grown a bit distant. Not a ton, but you can tell she thinks of herself as visiting rather than at home.
Their Families:
A few posts ago, I mentioned that I thought Sharon shouldn't be sneaking things that Richard doesn't like into her cooking, but in this book he makes stew with beef in it for him and Mary Anne and tofu in it for Sharon. Because the meat juices won't get all over the rest of the ingredients at all.
Hunter Bruno is the only one to recognize Mary Anne in her elf costume.
Sharon loves It's a Wonderful Life. Smart woman.
The Club (and clients):
The club notebook is a spiral notebook, not a binder as I'd imagined. I wonder how many they've filled up at this point, eleven years after Kristy's Great Idea was published.
Mary Anne nearly books Stacey for a job when Stacey's not available (Stacey had forgotten as well) but catches herself just before Stacey accepts the sitting job.
SMS: nothing new.
PSA Time: nothing stood out.
Misc:
The BSC is surprised at how late some people are Christmas shopping. Some Christians exchange gifts on Epiphany, which is January 6. Plus some people don't have their Christmas get-togethers until a few days after the calendar day. So even after December 25 a few people will be looking for Christmas presents.
The numbers:
Starting 8th grade: 10
Halloweens in 8th grade: 6 (plus one in seventh)
Thanksgivings in 8th grade: 3
Winter holidays in 8th grade (that BSC members celebrate in the plot of a book, not just reference): Christmas-4, Hanukkah-1, Kwanzaa-2
Valentine's Days in 8th grade: 3
Summers after 8th grade: 10
BSC Fights: 11
SMS Staff and Faculty: 67
Students (other than the BSC): 214: 120 8th graders (not including Amelia Freeman, who is deceased), 29 7th graders, 48 6th graders, 15 unspecified. Baby-sitters' Winter Vacation tells us that SMS has about 380 students.
Clients: 37 families
Types of candy in Claudia’s room: 134
Crushes:
Stacey-12
Claudia-11
Dawn-5
Jessi-3
Mallory-2
Mary Anne-2
Kristy-1
Abby-0
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7 comments:
That beef tofu stew thing annoyed me so much. And that was before I became a vegetarian. (I'm a real one though, not like in these books, lol, when they call themselves vegetarians but only seem to avoid one type of meat. In that case, I was always a vegetarian, since I didn't eat every type of meat.) How is that acceptable? The meat taste and juices would be all over. Meat can get tender and break off, so picking it out would be a pain and it would be impossible to avoid every bit of meat. It also could make vegetarians sick to eat, since they're not used to eating meat.
I'm not a vegetarian, but I would never think serving this to a vegetarian would be okay! I don't even like have a bell pepper sliced up in a salad. Sure, I can pick it out, but the taste of it leaks onto the lettuce and cucumbers and other stuff (obviously, I don't like bell peppers).
I know what you mean. That happens to me with raw tomatoes. I don't like them and it leaves such a strong taste when I have to pick them off a sandwich or something.
The stew annoyed me too. There's no way meat and juices wouldn't have gotten mixed into the tofu. Anyone who cooks would know that so its hard to believe Richard would think that was okay.
Yeah, that was definitely NOT okay to serve to a vegetarian. But if Sharon is "sneaking" stuff into Richard's food that he doesn't like maybe he doesn't care anymore...
I totally agree about the beef stew thing. One thing I can't stand is papaya, so if someone makes a fruit salad with papaya in it, I can't just pick it out because its flavor will be all over the rest of the fruits.
Isabel, that's exactly why when I went to my best friend's house yesterday and brought salad, I had everything in separate bowls: sliced meat in one, cubed cheese in another, hardboiled eggs in a third, carrots in another, etc. We could each pick what we wanted and skip what we didn't.
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