Thoughts before reading:
I don't have specific memories of reading this as a child, but I know that I did. Stacey was my favorite babysitter, and I read all of her books I could find. It was just harder at my library to find the really early books like this one. Whenever I had money to buy a book, a Stacey book was my first choice. Growing up I thought she was so cool and sophisticated. She was social, out-going, popular, and pretty in my eyes, and I was a shy bookworm. I desperately wanted to be like her, even though in reality the sitter I was most like was Mary Anne or Mallory.
This is the original cover of this book, and the one I was able to find on ebay. It's very 80s like the other early covers, and I definitely like Stacey's outfit here. I always wanted to copy her cover looks as a kid, haha. Yes, I was that obsessed.
There is a graphic novel of this one as well. I haven't read it recently, although I do plan to at some point. I might do separate entries for the graphic novels, I haven't decided yet.
The basics:
One of the BSC's best clients, Mrs. Newton, is pregnant and supposed to have her baby soon. Kristy wants to make a plan for someone to be available to help out with her 3 year old son, Jamie, when she goes into labor. The girls are discussing how to make this work when Janine (Claudia's older sister) comes in and interrupts the meeting to show the girls a flier for the Baby-Sitter's Agency. Everyone is immediately anxious about the new competition, especially since this new group has older sitters who can stay out later. Kristy calls pretending to need a sitter, and learns that it's run by two 8th grade girls who take calls from clients and then match them with a sitter. Many of them are in high school, and they have a lot more help than the BSC.
Meanwhile, Stacey is having a hard time dealing with her parents being overprotective of her. The combination of finding out they can't have any more children and her having been recently diagnosed with diabetes has them being obsessive about taking her to new doctors and fussing over her every move. She basically has no say about her own body or medical care.
While sitting for Charlotte Johanssen, one of her favorite charges, Stacey discusses her parents with Charlotte's mother, who is a doctor. Charlotte is also down lately because she's being picked on at school and called a teacher's pet. Stacey takes her to the park to cheer her up, where she's given a balloon advertising the Baby-Sitter's Agency. Kristy and Stacey get even more freaked out about their competition, and Kristy decides to recruit some older members for the BSC.
Kristy lets two 8th grade girls she barely knows, Janet Gates and Leslie Howard, join the club. They never show up to the meeting, and later the girls find out both skipped out on their scheduled sitting jobs. After confronting the pair, the club learns they purposely sabotaged them because they are actually in the Agency.
During this time Mrs. Newton has her baby, Lucy. She admits to the girls she will be wanting an older sitter for the newborn. Other loyal clients are calling less too, and business is slipping. Stacey does get a job sitting for just Jamie one afternoon, and he tells her that his new babysitters ignore him to watch tv, invite over boyfriends, and one even burned a cigarette into the couch. Soon after, Charlotte tells her similar stories about Agency babysitters. The BSC is horrified but they don't say anything because they don't want to appear petty to clients.
Not long after, all four girls are walking home from school and see Jamie playing near the street alone, in the cold, without any winter gear on. He's home alone with an Agency sitter, of course. Now they know there is a serious danger to the kids, and finally tell Mrs. Newton. Everything else comes out as well, and she thanks them for coming forward and lets other parents know. The BSA goes out of business pretty quickly.
Stacey goes to NYC with her parents to see a new holistic doctor they found, that Dr. Johanssen has warned Stacey is a quack. He runs a series of long tests, and her parents dislike him and decide not to go back. After the long appointment, Stacey surprises them by saying she found a doctor she wants to see and made an appointment already, with Dr. Johanssen's help. The new doctor is a childhood diabetes expert, and he thinks Stacey is doing well but needs stability because she seems scared of her disease. The visit goes well and her parents promise to include her more and try to relax some.
While in New York, they stay over at the Cummings'. Laine Cummings was Stacey's best friend growing up, who dropped her and turned other kids against her when she began to have medical problems. While at the movies Laine and Stacey finally talk and make up after Laine admits to having been afraid she would catch what Stacey had, because she didn't really understand it and they had never talked openly about it.
Timeline:
November to December of 7th grade
My thoughts:
I liked that this book addressed the fact that the BSC girls are really young to be babysitting, and this fact limits what they can do, such as caring for newborns or staying out really late. From what I remember these things are never addressed in later books. Instead all the jobs just seem to fit within what they are allowed and able to do.
Kristy's fake phone call to the Baby-Sitter's Agency was actually really funny. She pretended to need a sitter for her little brother because she had a date...with Winston Churchill. And she called herself Candy Kane. Really Kristy, this was the best stuff you could come up with?
Stacey mentions that she is still "sort of" seeing Pete Black, her date from the Halloween Hop in the last book, and Claudia is still involved with Trevor Sandbourne. Continuity! Definitely going to enjoy that while it lasts.
I remembered the storylines from this book really well once I read it, and I think they held up pretty well. Stacey's struggles with her parents over her health concerns seem very authentic to me, and it makes total sense for the Club to have some competition once in awhile. The only crazy thing to me was that the parents of Stoneybrook really leave their kids with sitters CONSTANTLY, and so many different ones they barely know.
Misc.
*Kristy gets the idea for kid kits in this book, which last the series.
*Were their really malls in the 80s that had petting zoos? This seems insane to me.
*Stacey is taking advanced French in 7th grade? This is really some middle school. I doubt this is ever mentioned again.
*No middle school kid would really wear a sandwich board to school, like Kristy makes everyone do to promote the club in this book...
*A popcorn and soda at the movies in NYC costs $1.75 and Stacey thinks about how expensive things are in the city. That'd be about $20 now.
*Still no chapter 2 backstory! I wonder when that starts?
Books mentioned:
*Stacey is reading The Cricket in Times Square to Charlotte, from her kid kit.
*It's mentioned that Stacey brings a Judy Blume book with her to NYC but doesn't say which one.
My rating:
3.5 stars, I enjoyed reading this one and it went quickly. There were actually a lot of plots going on in this book, whereas the last two seemed a little thin.
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