#2: Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls

Thoughts before reading:

I remember checking this one out from the library a lot as a kid, even though I never owned it. I always liked Claudia, and I liked the spooky title of this one, so it was a favorite. As a kid I didn't have anything in common with Claudia, so I didn't relate to her, but she inspired my love of Nancy Drew books and made me want to be an artist, even though I had no artistic talents whatsoever.

Going into this I didn't really remember the plot at all. There's sadly no graphic novel adaption of this one either. I do love the cover though. Claudia actually looks like a 12 year old kid here. Also, the baby on the cover is a little Kirsten Dunst!

The Basics:

This book starts off with our four girls hanging out together, bored and looking for something to do. Mary Anne is flipping through a newspaper and she sees a story about the Phantom Caller. He's a jewelry thief operating in the area who calls the house he's targeting to see if anyone is at home before coming to rob them. If someone answers, he hangs up without saying anything. The girls get nervous about dealing with potential burglars while babysitting, so they make plans (booby traps, coded phone calls, etc.). Kristy decides to bring the club notebook to school every day so they always know where each other are babysitting in case someone needs help. Not long after all this, a few of them receive hang up calls while babysitting, and become more nervous.

The other plot going on in this book is Claudia's big crush on Trevor Sandbourne, a kid in her grade she thinks doesn't know she even exists. She wants to go to the Halloween Hop with him, but is too nervous to talk to him and ends up dumping jello on his lap in the cafeteria at one point. 

One night Claudia and Kristy are babysitting for Jamie Newton and his cousins when they start to hear noises outside. Claudia sees a prowler out front and calls the police, who rush over and catch Alan Gray outside. He's been stealing the BSC notebook at school to see when Kristy is sitting because he likes her and was too nervous to just ask her out. Claudia's mystery caller? Trevor Sandbourne of course.

Both girls agree to go to the dance with these boys, despite their behavior. Everyone but Mary Anne ends up attending and having a good time. And of course, right after the dance, the real Phantom is caught by police.

Timeline:

October of 7th grade

My thoughts:

Ok, where to even start with this one? I get that these boys are only 12 years old, but stealing the club notebook to see where they are sitting, so they can call and repeatedly hang up? This is creepy stalking behavior, and it's not really addressed in the book at all. Even the cops just seem mostly amused, and both girls agree to the date! Come on, these guys have been terrifying you for weeks! Plus just what exactly was Alan Gray doing outside the Newton's house? All of this is just explained away as them being too nervous to actually ask, but really? That doesn't explain all the creepy behavior. 

Also, since this is a Claudia book, she talks about her struggles in school a lot and how her family is helping her with her homework. After one of her homework sessions, she's excited to go and read her Nancy Drew book. You know, the ones she has hidden all around her room because her parents don't approve of them. They aren't "real" literature. Shouldn't Claudia's parents be glad that their daughter, who has no interest in school and is often flunking, wants to read anything at all? I've never understood this. Plus, her mom is the town librarian! She should be thrilled and encouraging ANY love of reading. 

There's also a babysitting chapter where Kristy is sitting for Karen and Andrew at Watson's house. Their cat, Boo Boo, gets out and kills a mouse on Mrs. Porter's porch. For those who don't remember, she's the neighbor Karen thinks is a witch. Mrs. Porter puts the pieces of dead mouse in a bag and brings them to Kristy! WTF. No wonder all the kids are terrified of her!

Misc.

*I remember being SO impressed by Claudia having her own phone line when I was a kid!

*No chapter 2 yet! The background detail is mixed in to the early chapters, which is so much better.

*Stacey has a broken VCR... I can so relate to this 90s childhood woe.

*Claudia tells us about her crush: "Trevor Sandbourne is the most gorgeous boy in the entire 7th grade at Stoneybrook Middle School. And he happens to have the most romantic name in the whole world." Haha! Well, it does sound like a soap opera name...

*I always loved how Ann M. Martin gives nods to other children's books in hers. I like to think it was to encourage a love of reading in kids even more. There were a lot of mentions in this book, so I'm going to start keeping track of them in case anyone else is interested in this.

Books mentioned:

*Claudia is reading the Nancy Drew book The Phantom of Pine Hill

*Kristy reads a Ramona Quimby book to Karen

*Claudia's reading The Pond by Robert Murphy in her English class

*Kristy's reading The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare for her English class

*Mary Anne is reading The Secret Garden

My rating:

3.5 stars. I enjoyed re-reading this, especially since it used to be a favorite, but I didn't recognize the weirder aspects as a kid. Back then I probably thought what the boys did was romantic...

#1: Kristy's Great Idea

Thoughts before reading:

I definitely read this one as a kid, but I never owned it back then and I don't really remember my impressions of it. Kristy was one of my least favorite babysitters, so I never spent my hard earned allowance money on her books. I did own a few I got as gifts later on, but that was it. I remembered a lot of the plot of this going in though, since this is the basic background book that is recounted in chapter two of EVERY SINGLE book going forward. 

I also read the graphic novel adaptation of this not too long ago, and I really enjoyed it! The graphic novels cover all the story points but without some of the clunky unnecessary text, and the illustrations are spot on. It's fun to see things I had to picture as a kid laid out, like Claudia's room, Watson's mansion, etc. 

I do like this appropriately 80s cover a lot. Other than Kristy, everyone looks how I would picture them. I can't even tell which one she is supposed to be. 

The Basics:

 This covers the club's formation and everyone's very first sitting jobs. I think we all know the story behind Kristy's idea: she gets in trouble in class, has to write an essay on decorum, overhears her mom trying to find a sitter for her little brother, and suddenly realizes how much better it would be to call one number and reach a bunch of sitters at once, etc. She tells Mary Anne and Claudia, who then invites Stacey. They make fliers, call clients, and put an ad in the paper. At the first meeting, each girl gets a job. Stacey sits for David Michael and meets Sam, who joins them for a candy land tournament. Kristy sits for a new client and has a misunderstanding when they turn out to have dogs instead of kids. Claudia sits for Jamie, but his poorly behaved cousins are unexpectedly included in the job. Mary Anne sits for Watson's kids, the first to meet them. These misadventures give Kristy the idea for the infamous club notebook (those handwritten entries we will be seeing for the rest of the series). 

One of the other main plots in this book is Kristy's mom dating Watson, who Kristy hates. She's jealous because he's a good father to his kids, and she never hears from hers. She does stuff like refusing to watch his kids, and refusing to eat dinners he brings over. Then Watson's ex-wife breaks her ankle and he has to go to the hospital to help with the insurance, so Kristy finally has to sit for Karen and Andrew. They bond a bit over having divorced parents, and she ends up liking them and warming up a bit to Watson. Just in time, because shortly after he becomes engaged to her mom.

Towards the end of the book the BSC gets into their first fight because Stacey lies about being in New York to avoid the pizza party (because of her diabetes, of course). She finally admits the truth, everyone is very supportive, and the book ends with the slumber party. 

Timeline:

Kristy has the idea for the club the first Tuesday of 7th grade, so September? 

My Thoughts:

This book didn't cover anything I didn't already remember really well, but it's a nice introduction to the characters and story. Also nice not to have the chapter 2 background. I think we all skipped those as kids?

I've heard a lot of hate about how Kristy acts towards Watson in this book, but I didn't really find it surprising... she's jealous because she never even hears from her dad, and Watson sees his kids all the time, not to mention he's taking up her mom's time. Plus, she's 12, and in this book the girls actually act 12. Kids are brats at that age... I know I was. 

I thought it was cute how all the girls showed up so early to the first BSC meeting because they were so excited. They even hung a sign outside Claudia's bedroom door and were jumpy when someone knocked on the door, thinking it was a client at first. I would definitely have been the same way at that age. 

I also remember, even when I was really young, thinking how unrealistic it was that so many people would trust 12 year old kids to babysit for them. Obviously I can still see that and later on in the series it will probably be way worse, but so far I was pleasantly surprised. Their clients are mainly their own families, family friends, and neighbors that live very close and have known them their whole lives. Even as the series stretches on, I know they sit for the same people a lot, and the jobs are usually very short, like 2 hours while a parent goes to a doctor's appointment. 

This book did have a little continuity problem already, with the Summer Before. At the beginning when Kristy is talking about Claudia, she makes it sound like they were never very close. In later BSC books I'm pretty sure it says they were, and in the Summer Before they definitely were. A big part of the plot was all three girls being sad over growing apart.

Misc:

*Sam's in the math club; he's perfect for Stacey, haha! I loved them as a kid, might have been my very first ship ever.

*Don't Claudia's parents ever look around her room? They don't seem that trusting to me...

*The first BSC client ever was Kristy's mom. Very fitting, I know whenever I tried to start a business as a kid my parents/friend's parents were the main or only clients. And yes, I did constantly try to start businesses as a child, thanks to my obsession with these books!

*Claudia's spelling seems better here than it does later on.

*First BSC wage: $3.50

*I always thought Karen's Morbidda Destiny thing (her neighbor being a witch with a secret name) was her overactive imagination, but in this book it says the older kids in the neighborhood told her about it?

*The phone numbers on the fliers use the KL format for the fictional 555 phone numbers. I had to look it up, I'd never heard of those before.

My rating:

4 stars, an enjoyable nostalgic read

BSC: The Summer Before

I realized after my last post that I should start with this book instead of Kristy's Great Idea if I wanted to go in chronological order. I bought and read this a few years ago when I was on a nostalgia kick but had honestly forgotten about it until recently. 

This was published in 2010, so I was long past my childhood obsession with the books by then. I only discovered this book existed when I first got nostalgic years ago for my childhood favorite books and started collecting them. I think this was around the same time they started re-printing the BSC books with "modern" covers and changing things in the text, like VCRs to DVD players. I absolutely hate the new covers, and the fact that they changed the original text. What's wrong with a book being specific to the time it was written in? All the 80s and 90s culture is part of the fun, especially the awesome campy covers. 

This book covers the summer before Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia and Stacey start 7th grade, starting with the last day of 6th grade and running right up to where Kristy's Great Idea begins. Despite the younger age of the characters, I thought this book was more mature and had better characterization than some of the others, either a reflection of the author's growth as a writer or the change in YA book market since the 80s. 

Like the Super Specials, this one switches through everyone's perspectives, something I always liked as a kid reading these. This addition to the franchise definitely adds some new depth to the original four characters and their families/backstories, as well as vividly capturing that feeling you get as a kid when school ends and you have the whole, long summer to look forward to.

During this summer, each girl is caught in that awkward place between being a little kid and being a teenager, feeling unsure where you fit in anymore. Claudia is starting to be interested in clothes, make up and boys. She has new friends, her first boyfriend, and feels distant from Kristy and Mary Anne for the first time. Kristy is trying to enjoy her vacation but struggling with her mother's new boyfriend (Watson, of course), and missing her father, who she rarely even hears from. Mary Anne is learning about her mother's past via some old things she found in her attic, while also trying to move forward into a new part of her life. This is challenged by her strict father, but she grows a lot over the summer, especially when she begins baby-sitting. Stacey has just finished a terrible 6th grade year, during which she learned she had diabetes after quite a few health struggles, and dealt with losing all of her friends. After several public incidents caused by her yet undiscovered diabetes, her best friend Laine turns on her, and she is bullied by most of her class. Her parents decide to move and give her a fresh start, and things have become so lonely at home she's relieved to leave. 

Overall, I gave this book 4.5 stars. I really enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to continuing the series. 

The beginning...

I've always loved to read, and growing up, the Babysitter's Club was my absolute favorite. I actually came to the series from the Little Sister books. Karen's Witch is the first "real" book I ever remember reading, and from then on, I was hooked. I still credit that book with starting my love of reading, which is thankfully still going strong. Of course it wasn't long before I moved on to the Babysitter's Club books, which I loved even more. I still fondly remember them, and how much I loved going to the used bookstores near where I grew up to look for new ones. This often meant trading in ones I had already read, so I only still have a handful of favorites left now.

Lately with interest in the series coming back, and the netflix show coming out, I've been thinking about the BSC again and wanting to re-read them as an adult. For the past few years, I've been collecting the original editions as a hobby, which gave me the idea to try writing about them as I read them. Especially since there are so many, it will be fun to rate and document the experience. I never got to read them all as a kid, so a lot of them will be completely new.

I know there are already a lot of blogs about people trying to re-read these books, but all the ones I've found are pretty snarky. While this is in good fun, I don't want to rip apart the books that were such a big part of my childhood and reading life. I want to revisit them with fondness and just enjoy the journey. Hopefully there are others out there who have noticed this same thing and will enjoy the difference. I know they are probably not nearly as good as I remember, and the later ones get pretty terrible, but I still think the experience will be a lot of fun. 

So, enough rambling! Coming soon, the book that started it all, #1 of our 131 original volumes.