#86: Mary Anne and Camp BSC

Tagline: Everyone's a happy camper...except Mary Anne!

Cover: A lantern in a hay-filled barn? That seems very unsafe. Who are the kids on the cover? A Rodowsky, or a Hobart? Karen, I think, and some Pikes? Maybe? And why am I not surprised that they have "Camp BSC" T-Shirts.

Plot!: The BSC decides to run a day camp, of course, because that's what they do. But one of the campers, Alicia Gianelli, is having a hard time being separated from her mom, for some reason. Mary Anne sympathizes, because Richard is away on a business trip and she really misses him, and no one understands. Also, there's a camp revolt, because some campers have been to REAL camps and they're unimpressed by the BSC efforts.

Points of interest:

• The book starts with an incredibly laboured 'Pike's Peak/Pikes' Peak' pun at the start at the book. Way to suck us in, AMM.
• Ooh, Stacey quit the BSC to be with her "sophisticated" friends. Neither Mary Anne or Mallory want to talk about it, even to mention it by name. I know she as their friend and all, but really, they wouldn't gossip about it even a bit? Well, maybe not these guys, or at least not Mary Anne. And probably not Kristy, who would be steamed at the affront to the club, and Claudia, who was her closest friend. Maybe Dawn?
  
• Richard announces that thanks to a merger at his firm, he's going to be traveling more, starting with a two-week trip to Cincinatti. Sharon is thrilled, because it means that she and the girls can "bach" it, or be 'bachelor girls.' What an old-fashioned term.
  
• Watson is a real, live millionaire, which is a lot more legal than if Elizabeth had married a real, dead millionaire.
  
• The BSC is worried about the two or three week lag between the end of school and the beginning of real camp, so they decide to host a day camp. As you do.
  
• Mary Anne is semi-judgemental about people sleeping late. I would be in bed right now if I wasn't writing this. I love sleeping.
• Why are Richard and Sharon always so cool with having dozens of kids on their property? With the barn and everything? Supervised by other children? Me, I would be anticipating dozens of lawsuits.
• Kristy decides that the theme of the camp is going to be "Circus," as if it isn't complicated enough.
  
• They don't even try to pretend that the BSC people are graduating out of middle school. It's just "school ended," and they go right back to eighth grade in the fall.
  
• Twenty-two children signed up for BSC camp, including most of the usual BSC Suspects, plus a lot of kids from the Little Sister series.
  
• Mary Anne takes a sidebar to point out that Logan looks really handsome on a bicycle. O...kay?
• I'm pretty sure that Alicia Gianelli goes to nursery school with Andrew, so why is she suddenly so shy and nervous and not wanting to leave her mom? Then again, she is four.
  
• They way that Vanessa Pike rhymes EVERYTHING, I'm wondering if maybe she shouldn't go in for some kind of psych consultation.
  
• Oh, apparently this is the longest that Alicia has ever been separated from her mom. Maybe nursery school comes later? I hate being confused by BSC books.
  
• Mary Anne calls Mal unfeeling because Mal thinks that it's a good idea for Alicia to stay at camp and not cry for her mom. I think Mary Anne needs come counselling, too.
  
• Karen has already been to circus camp, along with every other kid from Stoneybrook Academy. So she declares the BSC camp to be 'babyish' and leads a rebellion. Kristy vs. Karen here is aggrevating; Kristy vs. Karen in the future is the stuff of fanfiction.
  
• After getting rid of Richard, Mary Anne starts feeling lonely and weepy. So Sharon suggests a terrible video night, and they pick out Plan Nine from Outer Space, Girls, Girls, Girls, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
• They watch movies and eat Chinese food and *gasp!* don't clean up the cartons right away. Mary Anne prudes out and goes off to bed, stewing about the fact that Dawn and Sharon are close to each other.
  
• The Camp goes on a day trip to Mrs. Stone's farm, to see Elvira the goat, of course, because a goat is the height of fascination to Stoneybrook (maybe Stacey was right about the club).
  
• Mary Anne says that if she never met Dawn, she never would have discovered three-cheese macaroni, which I call bull on, because macaroni is delicious and anything ith three cheeses in it is not necessarily a health food.
• Mary Anne is waxing nostalgic about macaroni because she misses home cooked food and clean dishes. I'm failing to see what the huge problem is, mostly because my natural state is a lot like their 'baching it' state (maybe because I am a bachelor girl?).
• Mary Anne even brings up the "Maid Mary Anne" situation where she was being taken advantage of, but, proving that BSC members never learn anything, she doesn't actually SAY anything to Dawn and Sharon, about anything, like, "I really miss my Dad and this has taken me by surprise" or "I feel left out because you and Dawn are so close" or "This was fun for a bit but now I really would like the house to be a little neater" or "I think I need some help."
• Claudia deliberately singles out Becca and Carolyn in front of Hannie and Nancy to thank them for being cool kids because they don't complain about the realness of the circus camp. Which seems kind of bitchy and not the mature thing to do.
  
• Mary Anne is surprised by the number of places in Stoneybrook that deliver food. Given that it is allegedly the home of a university, I am not.
  
• When Sharon and Dawn order *gasp!* pizza twice in one week, Mary Anne has. had. enough. She makes herself a hamburger! And cooks it! And participates in a toast, but her heart isn't in it. Take that, freewheeling lifestyle!
• Also, two weeks of nothing but delivery food is going to add up, fast. I'm sure the Schafer/Spiers can afford it, but still.
  
• Camp BSC has a campout and they scare the children with a ghost story and Logan jumping out from behind a stall.
  
• Mary Anne starts worrying that a week might not be enough time to get the house in order for her dad. what did Sharon and Dawn do to the house?
• Mary Anne is in a bike accident, which is a lot funnier than it should be because when it happens she's too busy shouting "Hooray for the day!" No, seriously.
  
• She ends up with a sprained ankle and tearfully begs her father to come home, which he does not, so Mary Anne ends up feeling even more alienated and alone.
  
• She desperately tries to hold on to Alicia Gianelli (remember that plot?), well past the point where Alicia is ready to join the group and have fun.
  
• Finally, Alicia tells Mary Anne that she's ready to move on, because she was missing all the fun. And that's the lightbulb moment for Mary Anne, who realizes that she was missing out on all the fun Sharon and Dawn were having with movies and take-out food and county fairs and drive-in movies.
  
• The dress rehearsal for the circus is terrible, because all the circus purists basically flaked out in the whole preparation department. But they all magically come together in the end and the circus is a success, and that's good because all the parents and grandparents and siblings came to the show, even if they had to get off work early.
  
• Chapter 15 is all about Richard coming home. He tells Mary Anne to loosen up in the future and talk about her feelings, and Mary Anne promises that she will. Until the next time something bothers her, that is.
  

Final Thoughts: This is not Mary Anne at her best. And for all of her seeming obliviousness in this book, Sharon seems like a pretty great step-mother.

#79: Mary Anne Breaks the Rules

Tagline: Boyfriends and baby-sitting don't mix!

Cover: Mary Anne is looking her mom-iest with a big oversized sweater and mom jeans, helpfully looking on while the boys play. All she needs is plate of rice krispie squares and a pitcher of Tang. Also, I'm not sure that this would have actually happened, because it's pretty clear that whenever Logan comes over she's inside, playing with the girls. Logan looks decent, if way too old to be 13, but poor, poor Jake Kuhn. He's heftier than I think any boy we've seen on a BSC cover, his tongue is sticking out in concentration, and he can't even button his jacket up properly. Also, that is the most awkward attempt at a soccer ball kick I've ever seen.

Plot!: Mary Anne is sitting for the Kuhns (two girls and big brother Jake) in one of those convenient 'lots of sitting for one family' assignments, and she notices Jake is struggling, in sports and life, and is sad that his dad lives far away. So Mary Anne asks Logan to come by and spend some guy time with Jake, which is great, until Mrs. Kuhn finds out and thinks that Mary Anne has been having her boyfriend over for heavy petting and makeout sessions. Mary Anne inexplicably doesn't tell her the real reason, so Mrs. Kuhn threatens to tell everyone in Stoneybrook. Business is slow and the BSC all turns on Mary Anne, but it turns out Mrs. Kuhn didn't tell anyone, Mary Anne tells her the real reason, and everyone ends up in a good place.

Points of Interest:

• Mary Anne starts right away with the foreshadowing: she was happy because not one person was mad at her. Hope she's ready for a whole lot of people to be mad at her!
• She calls her look 'Neat Preppy Casual.' Does everyone have to have a look that's so defined?
• She also likens her Dad and Sharon's relationship to "Beauty and the Beast." Uh...what? Apparently because Sharon tamed him from being so strict. I...guess?
• Page seven: Stacey shares that you "never" get over your parents' divorce. And while this isn't something I know about, at this point her parents have been divorced for, like, a couple months.
  
• There's a lot of talk about how bad it is that Jake's dad moved all the way to Texas. And of course Mary Anne thinks about bicoastal Dawn. But no one ever brings up how Sharon moved to another coast and took her children with her.
  
• Stacey says that Mary Anne is lucky because now she has two parents when she ever only had one. This seems like a really tactless thing to say. What's Mary Anne supposed to say? "Gee, Stacey - one day you could have four! oh, but I'll still only have two, with my mother being dead and all."
  
• Logan offers to strip for the girls (as kind of a joke), and Stacey gets all blushy and stops him. Mary Anne and Mallory, I could see blushing, but Stacey, I'd see her totally encouraging it.
  
• I thought that I had never read this book, but I totally remembered the description of Jessi running toe first.
  
• While Mary Anne is sitting for the Kuhns, Jake comes home after having a fight with Buddy Barrett. He called him Cruddy Carrot and Buddy called Jake Fake Prune. Which is not how I was saying his last name - in my head, I say it like, Kun, but it's more like Koon? Whatever. Where's Claudia with her phonetic spelling when you need her?
  
• The fight was over Cruddy inviting Fake to his mom's wedding, and Fake got upset because he thought Cruddy was rubbing his new stepdad in Fake's face. Which is dumb anyway, because in Here Comes the Bridesmaids, there are no kids at his mom's wedding. This whole convenient fight was for nothing!
• While on a date with Logan, they order a pizza that's half mushrooms, half pepperoni and cheese. Not that I don't love both of those things, but it seems weird to have a pizza that's just mushrooms.
• While on a date, they talk about the Kuhns. These people are waaaaaay too into these kids (and in this case, these adults) and their lives.
  
• Robert and Stacey crash their date, and Stacey is wearing a black double-breasted tuxedo suit with a satiny white tank top. They'd been to Chez Maurice with another couple, but the other guy ordered sweatbreads and that put a damper on the evening. There are just so many unbelieve things here.
  
• While playing a ball game, Nicky is assigned to be on the red team, and starts freaking out because red is a girl's colour. Maybe some shades of it, and definitely compared to blue, but you see a lot of guys wearing red, don't you?
  
• That segues into a subplot about a haunted house that is way too boring. Some kids want it to be gross, others want it scary, so they make two houses and it's just sooooo boring.
  
• The next time Mary Anne sits for the Kuhns, Logan comes over to play with Jake, as they had discussed on their date.
  
• There is a really long (for a BSC book) that's actually a montage of all of the fun times that Logan and Jake have. And then in that same chapter, Mrs. Kuhn comes home early and busts them. This book has so much filler.
  
• Mary Anne doesn't tell Mrs. Kuhn that Logan came over to help Jake, or that she's noticed Jake is a little down. I know - a BSC member who doesn't get all up in the parent's life! Only this time, it might have been more legitimate than Dawn telling Mrs. Barrett to get her shit together.
  
• Mrs. K calls the BSC and talks to Kristy, who then starts picking on Mary Anne for destroying the club's reputation. And Mrs. Kuhn doesn't even threaten to tell other parents! The BSC just jumps to that all by themselves.
  
• Mary Anne has a dream where Mrs. Kuhn comes after her with an axe. Wow.
  
• UGH. Mary Anne asks if the others are mad at her, and they say they're not mad, exactly, but they are concerned. OMG. These girls turn on each other at the drop of a hat!
• There's a description of Shannon "laughing through her nose," derisively. Snob!
• The BSC starts freaking out because noone is calling to book babysitters, and it's Halloween. Maybe the parents are taking an interest in their own children for once!
• Mrs. Kuhn comes to Mary Anne's house and apologizes to her. And while I sympathize with Mary Anne, I don't actually think Mrs. Kuhn has anything to apologize for. She came home and found her baby-sitter with her boyfriend while the kids were there. It was not something they had talked about, and she gave Mary Anne a chance to explain, and then there was a week that passed, and then when she learned the truth she went right to Mary Anne to discuss the situation. Whatever.
  
• At that day's meeting, all the Stoneybrook parents call to book sitters for trick-or-treating. So they didn't show an interest after all, they just didn't get their act together.
  
• Everything is resolved, and there's still two chapters to go.
  
• Those last two chapters are about the haunted houses, which are both successes, or something. Happy ending!
• Okay, I like this part, even though it's totally WTF. Alan Gray helped with the other haunted house, because Vanessa said they needed someone to be gross and disgusting, so Mal said "Call Alan Gray, he's an expert." I like snarky Mal. Also, just imagine how that phone call went.
  

Final thought: even when Mary Anne does break the rules, it's still kind of lame.

Friends Forever #8: Mary Anne's Revenge

Tagline: Look out, Cokie!

Cover: These photograph covers have been growing on me. This one is someone I could buy as being Mary Anne, except for the long hair (cutting off her hair was one of Mary Anne's most awesome moments and Mary Anne's Makeover is one of my favourites).

Plot!: Mary Anne has broken up with Logan, and she's starting to move on. But Cokie (who is the yearbook editor, and Mary Anne works on features or something) has it in for her, over Logan, I guess, and starts these horrible rumours about Mary Anne being desperate and throwing herself at Logan. Mary Anne stands up to Cokie, and decides to be a new, improved Mary Anne. Also, she and her father have been clashing, because of the fire and the aftermath, but Sharon helps them work it out.

Points of Interest:

• Mary Anne is having nightmares about the fire, experiencing that night over and over and waking up convinced that she's IN the fire. That is horrible.
  
• Mary Anne thinks that Cokie is lacking in kindness and decency. Burn!
• Rick Chow is the other editor on the yearbook, and Abby and Austin Bentley are working the features with Mary Anne.
  
• Cokie plans to have an expanded "Best and Most" section, the part where people vote for the most likely to whatever. Mary Anne objects, because she wants the space used in other ways. Cokie then turns on her and says she's just upset that she and Logan won't be able to win Best Couple.
  
• Oooh, Mary Anne's dad buys her a bed, and she's upset because she couldn't pick it out, and Richard offers to return it, but she says 'whatever.' Ooh!
• I'm still a little shaky in my Friends Forever chronology. Stacey and Claudia suggest each other for flattering categories, like Most Beautiful and Most Stylish and Most Artistic, so they must be on friendly terms. Which is good, because reading the books where they're fighting is not fun.
  
• At one point, Logan comes into the yearbook office to drop off some pictures, and Cokie throws herself at him. After they leave, Mary Anne and Abby proceed to disect some of the situation, and Austin Bentley is like, "Uh, do you want me to leave?" It's actually kind of funny.
  
• Mary Anne gets upset that people treat her like she's an invisible pushover, so she takes it out on Kristy, instead of Cokie. Which...fine. But this is nothing new. It's come up over and over and over. It's why Mary Anne and Logan broke up the first time. It came up in Mary Anne's Makeover. It even dates back to the fourth book. And each time she realizes that she can speak up and still be herself...and then apparently forgets it. I think that's why I found this book so boring: it's stuff we've all seen before. And even the 'Cokie is mean to Mary Anne and then gets a comeuppance.' Been there, done that.
  
• While they're at the movies, Mary Anne and Kristy have a weird conversation about old TV shows being turned into lame movies. What about classic 80s/90s book series? (I kid. The BSC movie is a total fondue of delicious cheese).
  
• Mary Anne and her father have an out-and-out shouting match in front of an historical house tour...or something. This at least is a bit more organic, since we haven't really revisited the Mary Anne/Richard personality dynamic since the first few books of the series.
  
• After overhearing Richard and Sharon discussing her and him calling her his little girl, Mary Anne announces to herself that she's "nobody's little girl." This book could have gone in a COMPLETELY different direction.
• Cokie starts a rumour that Mary Anne begged Logan to take her back, but he said no, so she sent him a bazillion emails and desperate messages. Is Logan...really worth all this? By this point in the series he's been portrayed as a controlling dick. Cokie can have him.
  
• Also, I'm still shocked that there is email in the BSC universe.
  
• Mary Anne and Kristy come up with a bunch of lame ways to get revenge on Cokie. I'm not even going to write about them, they're so lame.
  
• Logan and Mary Anne talk about the rumour, and he confesses that he is sort of interested in Dorianne Wallingford. Wasn't she into Pete Black or something, when Stacey was into him? What is with it with Dorianne and the BSC's sloppy seconds?
  
• I'm cringing. Mary Anne tells Cokie, "When they were handing out awful, you were the first in line." I'm cringing! It's so terrible.
  
• Mary Anne, Austin and Abby count the ballots, and Cokie wins everything. Then they realize that their ballots are missing, and that the election was tampered with. They go to Mr. Fiske with their suspicions about it, and there's a new election called. Because the sacred offices of Best and Most require this much scrutiny.
  
• Wasn't there a Dawson's Creek plot about someone rigging the Best Couple election, and Joey and Dawson won when Joey and Pacey were really the couple? or something? Oh my god, I can't believe it's been over ten years since I first watched that show.
  
• Mary Anne joins forces with Cary Retlin in case she seriously needs to wreak havoc over Cokie. As bored as I was by this book, I was really intrigued by this development. I've only read a few books with him in it (Kristy Power and Kristy in Charge are the main ones), but I've really enjoyed him as a character, mostly because he messes with the BSC. I've always seen him as a foil for Kristy, but I actually like him paired with Mary Anne. It's classic good girl/bad boy stuff. Mary Anne and Cary fan fic, please!
• Oh, and he gives her a back-up plan: fill out magazine subscription cards with Cokie's address, and hold onto them in case she does something mean, I guess. It's a secret weapon to build up Mary Anne's confidence.
  
• Mary Anne stays at Kristy's past curfew, and when she gets home Richard explodes at her. He grounds her - but Cokie's party is that weekend, and Cokie's already announced that she bets Mary Anne won't show up.
  
• Continuity! Kristy recalls the time that she snuck (or sneaked? Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls flashback!) out of the house to go to the softball iniation thing in Kristy and the Copycat. Whoever wrote the Friends Forever books was way up on their continuity - such as it can be in a series that has approximately 37 summer vacations.
  
• Mary Anne considers going out her second floor window by climbing a tree. I find that is highly unlikely, because there's no way that Mary Anne (Mary Anne!) hasn't seen Pollyanna.
• Abby drinks Mountain Dew.
  
• Mary Anne and Cary dance at Cokie's party. I'm almost squeeing with excitement over this non-couple.
  
• Cokie baits Mary Anne, so she gets up and calls Cokie a bad person with an ugly heart. Or something.
  
• When Mary Anne gets home, she is caught by Richard and Sharon sneaking back into the house. Sharon helps them both realize that neither one can sleep, both are haunted by the fire, and both of them are hurting. Then she tells them that they don't have to do it alone anymore - it's not just the two of them, it's her, too. And it's actually a really nice part.
  
• Mary Anne decides that she's not the new Vengeful Mary Anne, and she's not the old Pushover Mary Anne, but she has changed, and she's a girl who can stand her ground. Yawn.
  
• And now, because you've waited so patiently, here are the winners of the Best and Most:
  Claudia wins Best Artist
  Abby and Logan win Best Female/Male Athlete
  Cary and Alan tied for Wittiest
  Emily Bernstein wins Most Likely to Succeed and Most Intelligent
  Kristy won Most Likely to be Elected President
  Stacey wins Most Likely to be Seen in Beverly Hills

Final Thoughts: Seriously, why am I so into Cary/Mary Anne?

Friends Forever #11: Welcome Home, Mary Anne

Tagline: Nothing stays the same...

Cover: This is the first Friends Forever title I'm covering. Thanks to a fairly reasonable recent eBay purchase, I know own all of the Friends Forever books, with the exception of Graduation Day (but thanks to ANOTHER eBay purchase, that one should be arriving soon). The Friends Forever series uses real photographs of models for the cover, I guess to make it look 'hip' and 'new'. It kind of works...? I guess...? I don't know. The whole flower motif is totally late-90s girl power. Mary Anne is the one in the middle (she has long hair in these shots, even though you can't really tell in this one, and even though she definitely has short hair on the cover of The Fire at Mary Anne's House). I would guess that Dawn is on the left (and Sunny is on the right), but the book describes Sunny as having freckles, and that's what the left side model does, but the right one doesn't look like Dawn to me...it's all so confusing.

Plot!: After The Fire at Mary Anne's House, she, Richard and Sharon have been moving from rental home to rental home while they remodel the barn so they can live in it (that's covered in Mary Anne's Breakup). In this book, the house is ready to be moved in to, so they do, and it takes some adjusting. Dawn and Jeff are home for the summer (I guess it's summer...?) and they bring Sunny with them, because Sunny's mom has just died (in the California Diaries series) and a change of scenery will be good for her. But she's not dealing with her grief, and Jeff hates the new house, and Mary Anne is starting to lose it. But then Sunny breaks down and bonds with Mary Anne, Jeff decorates her room, Sunny goes back to California, and everything is okay again.

Points of Interest:

• The character bios are on the inside cover, so there's no Chapter Two. And I know that we make a lot of fun of it, but I tried reading the Sweet Valley series after the earthquake where Elizabeth is living with some weird family, but it was like #3 in the series and there was no explanation of ANYTHING and it was all kinds of confusing.
  
• Also, the BSC has been whittled down to its original Fab Four. Mallory is at private school, Jessi is taking a lot of extra dance classes, Abby is around but not sitting, and Mary Anne and Logan have broken up. Again.
  
• The book starts with "there's no place like home," so Mary Anne can ruminate on the meaning of home, and how she both has a home and doesn't have a home.
  
• One of Mary Anne's diary entries is dated June 27. So I guess it is summer. Then when does Graduation Day take place? I haven't read it yet. Do they go through another year, just in that book? There better be a good answer for this! (There probably won't be).
  
• In other other California Diaries continuity, Dawn and Jeff now have a little (half-)sister named Grace.
  
• Jeff is aggressively angry towards the new house. I don't think he came from California to see the house after the fire, did he? I just remember Dawn coming. So why is everyone surprised and unprepared for him to be having these feelings?
  
• Mary Anne is jealous of Sunny and Dawn's connection. I guess it's normal - she's never really had to see Dawn with her other best friend before. It still kind of feels out of place in this book, though. There's a lot going on.
  
• The three girls go to the pool for the day, and of course Mary Anne is wearing one of her outrageous beach getups. Sunny, whose dial is stuck on 'manic', tells her to take it off. Mary Anne asks, "haven't you ever heard of skin cancer?' Sunny, whose mom died of lung cancer, replies that she's heard enough about cancer to last a lifetime. Awkward.
  
• Speaking of, what did Mary Anne's mother die of? Is it mentioned in the books?
• Sunny tries to set Mary Anne up with this jock guy, and they go out on a group triple date. The guy is actually interested in Mary Anne, but she shuts him down pretty quickly. But it's okay, because Sunny is already on to the next plan.
  
• I love the lack of baby-sitting in these books. Mary Anne just goes on one job, at the Pikes, and it's less about them and more about Jeff's pain.
  
• As if there wasn't enough fuel for Byron slash, he also shows remarkable talent in interior design.
  
• Sunny feels a bit left out when the Schafer-Spiers are talking like a family, and when Mary Anne tries to talk to her about it, she flips and starts planning a rogue trip to New York. WHICH THEY GO ON, secretly, and lie to Sharon and Richard about. And they never get caught, which is surprising and kind of awesome.
  
• Sunny throws an absolute tantrum while she's in New York, refusing to leave a store and go back to Stoneybrook before they're discovered. While Mary Anne is dealing with this, she takes the time to get freaked out by a man in a sequined pink prom dress. Hey, Oiny!
• After they get home, Sunny and Mary Anne bond a bit, and Sunny decides to go back to California to grieve and be with her dad.
  
• At the end of the book, Mary Anne decides she feels like she's home. Which is good, because this is the last book that she narrates in the series.
  

Final thought: I really like the Friends Forever series. I have a hard time thinking of them as canon, but that's getting easier, and I like the actual character growth and development that they go through.

#52: Mary Anne + 2 Many Babies

Tagline: How much trouble can a bunch of babies be?

Cover: Mary Anne is at her most soccer mom here, with tight legging-like pants, an oversized sweater and push-down slouch socks. Ricky, the baby in the white and red outfit, has really pointed ears; he looks a little like Batboy.

Plot!: Once again, the BSC is baby crazy. They get a call from parents of baby twins, wanting them to sit for their twins. So Mary Anne does, and the jobs start out easy, but then they get hard, because looking after babies is hard. At the same time, the girls have an assignment for Modern Living where they have to take care of an egg and pretend it's their baby. Mary Anne and Logan are paired up, and they can't agree on anything, and they have big fights. And in the end they decide that they're too young to raise a baby, even an egg baby. Also, Dawn and Mary Anne are pestering their parents for a little brother or sister, but they change their minds after the sitting and the class. Luckily, Richard and Sharon didn't take their family planning cues from their 13 year old children, and instead offer to get them another pet, which they decline.

Points of Interest:

• Mary Anne finds hedge clippers in the bread drawer. Oh, Sharon.
• Shillaber twins shoutout! Mariah and Miranda have a new baby brother. This starts Dawn and Mary Anne talking about how awesome it would be if their parents had a baby. I just don't get it. The household had enough of a hard time adjusting to TIGGER when he moved in, how are they going to handle a baby?
  
• Dawn and Mary Anne leave an hour early to go to Claudia's. That seems...excessive. How far away is Claudia's house?
  
• Ugh. Mary Anne describes Claudia's skin as creamy. Ew. That is currently my number one pet peeve about the series. I'm dealing with it by imagining fake conversations that the ghost writers had with each other:
  
  Ghostwriter #1: Hey, ghostwriter #2.
  Ghostwriter #2: Hey, ghostwriter #1. What's up.
  G1: I'm just wrapping up work on #55.
  G2: Nice. I'm almost done Mystery #7. Hey, what kind of Claudia outfit did you include?
  G1: A fringe vest, culottes, yellow boots, red socks, a cowboy hat, and a side ponytail. You?
  G2: A tie-dyed unitard, a skirt made of ties, feathered earrings, lace-up sandals, and a sombrero.
  G1: Awesome. Is it summer for your book?
  G2: Yeah, again.
  G1: Me, too.
  G2: Oh, I wanted to tell you, I managed to work all of our suggested phrases into Chapter Two.
  G1: No way. I've only ever managed about 75%.
  G2: I know, it wasn't pretty but it's all there. Creamy, bi-coastal, an exaggerated 'long,' mansion and millionaire, steady boyfriend, orthodontist appointments, diabetes, ew, Nancy Drew, California Casual, genius, math, perm, broken leg, French, contacts, War and Peace, sophisticated, dibble, fresh, day-glo, exotic, an individual, Stamford, barre, six mentions of divorce, junior members, triplets, Kentucky, and ice cream.
  G1: I can never bring myself to write California Casual.
  G2: Yeah, I know. Although it's describing her as an individual that I have the hardest time with.
  G1: Hey, did you cram the BSC information together with the chapter two stuff, or did you leave them separate?
  G2: No, I left them separate. That way there's less room for the real plot, because it just doesn't make any sense. I mean, it directly contradicts the last book I wrote.
  G1: Tell me about it. (beep beep) Oh, I have another call. (new call) Hello?
  AMM: Ghostwriter 1? It's Ann M. Martin.
  G1: Oh, hi, Ann. How are you?
  AMM: You know, I think you should call me Ms. M. Martin. We don't know each other that well.
  G1: Okay, Ms. M. Martin. How are you?
  AMM: Fine, thank you. I was just having tea like a Lovely Lady and I had a Great Idea.
  G1: What was it?
  AMM: In Chapter Five, I want you to make an I Love Lucy reference. To the time when she and Ethel worked in the chocolate factory.
  G1: (sigh) Okay, Ms. M. Martin. I'll make sure it's in there.
  AMM: Great. Do you want to talk to my cats?
  G1: That's okay. I'll catch them next time. Bye.
  AMM: Bye. (hangs up)
  G1: You still there?
  G2: Let me guess - I Love Lucy.
  G1: I need a drink.
  

• In Modern Living, the teacher asks who is capable of parenting of being married, or living on your own. And Mary Anne thinks that she is, because she babysits a lot. Gah. Really, Mary Anne? I had so much hope for you.
  
• Oh, it gets worse. She also thinks that she and Logan are ready to 'take the big step.' As long as 'the big step' means getting fake married in your 8th grade class.
  
• Shawna Riverson is drawn as being really ditzy. But in Claudia and the Middle School Mystery, she's supposed to be an A student and really capable of organizing stuff.
• Four boys in the class have to marry each other. But they have to pretend that one is a girl, because there HAS to be a husband and a wife. Otherwise it's not a marriage! Boy, attitudes were really different back in 1992!
• Their first assignment is to figure out if they can afford to live on their own and pay all of their bills. What 13 year old can do that? Unless they're receiving money from some kind of trust or something, I guess, or if they're emancipated minors of some kind, but I hope it's an exercise designed to show them that they can't take care of themselves yet.
  
• Whoa! Microwave popcorn! That seems really advanced for AMM.
  
• The Modern Living class is given eggs, and have to pretend that they're children. I remember being really nervous that one of my classes was going to try that, but they never did.
  
• This is bringing back memories of Degrassi Junior High, the episode Eggbert, where Spike is pregnant and Shane wants to kind of be involved, so she gives him the egg to look after. Spoiler alert: It doesn't end well.
  
  
  
  
• I know I'm giving you a lot of non-book content in this one, but it's kind of a boring book.
  
• Mary Anne and Logan walk around for the whole book calling each other Dear and Sweetheart. I think they're getting into this a little too much.
  
• Kristy "marries" Alan Gray and they name their egg Izzy. She takes him on a job to the Papadakis' house, and Alan calls to check on them. And then Kristy tells him that the egg is shy and nervous and then they talk about the egg's socialization and development. No, really. They talk for so long that Hannie and Linny and Sari wander off and do their own thing. And that's what I call Bull on. Yes, Kristy would be into a school assignment, but no way would she neglect her baby-sitting duties while on the job. Think of the club's reputation!
• Mary Anne and Logan name their child Samantha.
  
• Stacey "marries" Austin Bentley and their egg is named Bobby. She shows how sophisticated she is by not really being into the project that much. Then she sits for the Gianellis and Alicia is terrified by the egg, because she saw it in a bed. So she calls her 'husband' to come over and take the baby, and realizes how difficult it is to be a single parent.
  
• Dawn marries some guy named Aaron Albright and her egg is named Skip, and she hates that name. She would have named the egg Douglas. But she does PSA that she is never ever changing her name, no matter who she marries.
  
• One of the couples in the class lost their baby: she was in the tin they keep her in when they left school, but when they checked at the park she was gone. They say that they don't know she got out of the tin. Except...she didn't. She's an egg. Either there's a hole in the tin, or something or someone took her out. I can't snark too much on a lost child, but these people seem to be forgetting that it's still just an egg.
  
• Mary Anne thinks that she'll wait until she's a lot older before she gets married. Like, when she's 22.
  
• At the end of the class, they hand in a 32-page, typed, single spaced paper. That seems...like a lot. They also have to write a good-bye letter to their egg, twenty-one years in the future. That would be in...2013. So their Egg would be now 17 years old...if it wasn't an egg.
  
• Mal wants eight kids, just like her mom. I have a hard time believing that.
  

Final Thought: I had no idea so much Degrassi Junior High was on Youtube. This is really making me happy.

#73: Mary Anne and Miss Priss

Tagline: Too perfect to play? Jenny thinks so.


Cover: The two pictures are pretty much the same, but shrunken, which makes the background look a little more...wild in the newer version. Also, Mary Anne is rocking the slouch socks and baggy sweatshirt look. It makes her legs look really short, and since she's s short person to begin with, she must look really short in person? Speaking of short, Jenny's proportions are really odd. And is Mary Anne left handed? She's wearing her watch on the right side, which is the way I wear it but not the way right handed people usually wear it. The blond girl is giving off a bit of a Karen vibe but maybe it's Hayley Braddock? And the one triplet is busting out with a "Yo, this is whack!" Whack, indeed.

If Mary Anne was 12 when the series first started in 1986, when this book was published she would have been around 20.

Plot!: Mrs. Prezzioso has started Andrea in baby modeling, which makes Jenny jealous. Jenny tries to get attention by dressing up, then by dressing down and finally by making messes. Mary Anne decides to confront the parents, but surprise! They've been paying attention to their child and don't have to be clued in by the babysitter. Eventually, Jenny gets a modeling job too and also joins the kickball team and it all works...somehow. Meanwhile, Mallory is feeling taken advantage of because her parents expect her to help around the house by babysitting but she's still not allowed to rejoin the BSC. So she decides to talk to her parents. Confrontations all around! And she gets to rejoin the BSC. And in C-plotville, the triplets run a kickball team and it's a mess, but the BSC helps them get it together and it works out, too.


Continuity Fairy: Mary Anne says that all of the Pikes have chestnut brown hair, except Mallory. I thought in the earlier books Nicky also had reddish hair? Also, there's a big difference between the reddish brown that she's described as and the carrot orange that she's usually sporting on the book covers.


Points of Interest:

• Claire Pike calls them "flutterbys." Nofe-Air.
  
• Mary Anne cries at Pollyanna. Among other things.
  
• She wears clip-on earrings! Whoo hoo!
• This is at the point in the series where Dawn is in California, Mallory had mono, and Logan's volleyball team made it to the state tournament. Is there a sport Logan doesn't play? Although I guess that's realistic, considering he's a 13 YEAR OLD BOY. Who has a state tournament for 13 YEAR OLD BOY TEAMS?
• "Besides," Jordan burst out, "Mallory is only a year older than us. Why should she get to be on her own and not us?" Not only on her own, but taking care of other children! Why is Jordan the voice of reason?
• Mary Anne does a lot of gasping in this book, like when Mrs. Prezzioso orders a sitter indefinitely. When I was little I always pronounced that name as "Perezzo." I always read it as Bryan and not Byron, either.
  
• Mary Anne refers to American Sign Language as Ameslan. Sure.
  
• Heh. Jenny calls the Pikes pigs, because they're playing in the dirt.
  
• The Schafer-Spiers eat Health Loaf: meatloaf without meat, made with walnuts, carrots, zucchini, and tomatoes. It actually kind of sounds okay.
  
• After sitting for Jenny twice, Mary Anne goes right to abnormal psychology textbooks and diagnoses Jenny as having a "deep-seated emotional disturbance."
  
• A lot of the "Andrea is a baby-model" stuff feels lifted out of the Claudia/Rosie Wilder stuff
• Ann M. Martin's vision of a career woman: "Ms. DeVries wore a navy blue linen suit with navy blue heels. Her collar-length blonde hair seemed to be glued in place like a helmet."
  
• Mrs. Prezzioso tells Mary Anne that the money is going into the girls' college funds. How is that any of Mary Anne's business?
• Mallory rejoins the BSC. Everyone pretends to be happy.
  

Final Thoughts: This book had a lot more chances to be outrageous but just falls kind of flat. Maybe because no one cares about Jenny Prezzioso.