Bonus: Little Sister #4: Karen's Kittycat Club

Tagline: Karen has a club now, too!

Cover: I have a few Little Sister books around here, so I thought that I might as well blog those, too. I started out with the Little Sister books and then moved up to the BSC. I guess I just got used to Karen, because she doesn't annoy me as much as she does other readers of the series(es). But this book is pretty annoying. I'll get to that. The cover....the orange checkerboard is very overwhelming. I can barely even read "Little Sister." Hannie has red hair? And I think we need to stage a pigtail intervention for her. Amanda Delaney looks appropriately princessy, but no way is the cat that Karen's holding Boo Boo.

Plot!: Hannie's family gets a new pet, a cat...and Karen realizes that now she and Hannie and Amanda all have pets. So she decides to form the Kittycat Club, because....she wants a club. I guess? But they don't know what to do, so they decide to cat-sit, but they don't get a job, partly because no one needs a cat-sitter and also because no one needs a six year old cat-sitter. Karen's other friend, Nancy, is jealous because she can't join the club. It's pretty much a failure on all sides. So the club folds and Karen starts a Fun Club, and that's a success. For this one book, and then is never mentioned again.

Points of Interest:

• Hey, did you know that Karen is a Two-Two? She has two of everything!
  
• "Mommy and Seth's house is little." Yeah, because she's not a millionaire like Watson. I wonder though if it is really little or just little compared to a mansion. It's in the same neighbourhood as Nancy's house, and I never got the feeling that it was a shack, but the way that Karen describes it it kind of sounds like it.
  
• Karen rationalizes that Shannon (the dog) likes David Michael more than her because she sees David Michael more than her. Because NO ONE would ever not like Karen just because.
  
• Karen decides that The Kittycat Club is a purr-fect name for her lame club.
  
• Karen always has the same lunch: an apple, a celery stick with peanut butter, chips and milk. It feels like it's missing the main part.
  
• Hannie making fun of Amanda's four hundred dollar cat never gets old. Of all of the musketeers, I think Hannie has the most potential.
  
• Karen and Nancy fight a lot in these early books. This isn't as dumb as the Karen-Nancy sleepover fight, because Nancy has a point in this one at least, but it's still drawn-out.
  
• The club almost has a job...but it turns out that the woman who called them thought that Karen was actually Katie Bower, sixteen. If this woman can't even read a children's jumbo print flyer, how is she managing on her own? How does she read labels, on food or medication? Someone needs to be called about this.
  
• In Karen's Big House room, she has Moosie, Tickly nineteen stuffed animals, and seven dolls. And this is the room that she lives in for two days, every other week.
  
• Karen practically starts sobbing at the song 'Does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight?': "I was nearly in tears. Imagine losing the flavor of your chewing gum."
• Nancy got upset with Karen because Karen started the Kittycat Club with Hannie and left Nancy out of it. So when Karen wants to start the Fun Club, she goes to Nancy....and leaves Hannie out of it. I don't think she's actually learned anything from this.
  
• People who come to the Fun Club who we never hear from again: Heather, Nina, Kim, and Vicky. They're "girls from school."
• Karen decides that the Fun Club is a success. It kind of is a Kristy-like thing to do - take something ordinary like playing and turn it into a big giant deal.
  

Final thought: I wish there was a book about Watson and Lisa's marriage. I picture it as being like one of Judy Blume's adult books.