Thoughts before reading:
This is the first book so far that I never read as a kid. I already mentioned that Kristy was one of my least favorite babysitters, so I only read a few of her books. I wasn't interested in weddings either, so there wasn't any appeal to this one at all. Still, I'm looking forward to reading one that will be brand new, the first of many.
I also have really not been liking Kristy in the last few books AT ALL. She's been a lot worse than I remember, so I'm looking forward to reading from her POV again to see what I think.
This one has a nice cover, other than poor Andrew. The look on his face is kind of creepy, and I'm not sure what is going on with his hairdo...
The basics:
Kristy is having a family dinner with her mom, three brothers, Watson, Karen, and Andrew, where it's announced that the wedding will be in September. Her mom and Watson have been engaged since book #1, so that would be about a year. All the kids will also be a part of the wedding, and Kristy is excited to find out she will be a bridesmaid. However, very shortly after this, her mom finds out she has to go on a business trip in September during when the wedding would be. To top that off, their house has sold after only two days and the new family wants to move in by July 15th. They were all moving into Watson's mansion anyway, but now they only have about a month to do so.
After a brief panic, it's decided that the wedding will now be in 2 1/2 weeks, at Watson's house. A bunch of aunts and uncles are able to come and help out the week beforehand, but between all of the adults coming there will be fourteen children total. Kristy's mom frets that nothing will get done with so many children underfoot, which is definitely true, but then Kristy steps in and offers up the BSC to help. It's decided that the children will spend 9-5 Monday thru Friday of that week at Kristy's house, watched by the 5 members of the BSC. Each girl will get $3/hour, which works out to $120 for the week, $600 total.
The last week of 7th grade comes and goes, and then it's the week before the wedding, also the week of the big BSC daycare. All the girls are excited and make plans for activities, dividing the kids up by age so that everyone has a group of 3 kids of a similar age, with one group of 2 babies. We then go through the day care group day by day, while each chapter counts down to the wedding. Despite being overwhelmed by the chaos of so many kids, everything goes pretty smoothly. There are just small problems like crying kids, some bickering, and Karen scaring everyone with her stories, as usual.
On the last day of the group, the BSC gets the kids all dressed up for the rehearsal dinner that night. There is another mishap when one of the kids mixes everyone's clothes up on purpose, but it's also resolved fine. Everyone attends the rehearsal, and then the wedding the next day. Both go smoothly. Kristy is just worried about what to get her mom and Watson for a wedding gift, until she decides to make them a family tree to frame.
Timeline:
June of 7th grade: the end of the school year, plus the first week of summer vacation
My thoughts:
Most of the 14 kids in the playgroup have never met any of the sitters before, and they don't all know each other. Some of them are cousins, but it doesn't sound like they see each other often. Four of the kids are Watson's friend's kids. Considering all of this, the job goes WAY too well. There are no big problems, and the kids all listen to the girls pretty easily. Managing that many kids would be really hard, even divided up. I'm surprised all the adults agreed to the arrangement.
Part of the job one afternoon is taking all the boys to the barber to have their haircut for the wedding. Taking one kid to do something they don't want to do is hard enough for a parent, so this is a pretty big thing to ask. I can't believe the adults can't bother to take a couple hours off and do this themselves.
Overall, I wasn't missing anything by not having read this one. The whole book is really just the sitting job, so we don't really get any side plots or even the girls interacting much. Even the wedding is just a brief bit at the end, which I guess makes sense from a kid's POV. I found this one to be really slow.
Also, Kristy was just fine from her own POV. I'm definitely noticing already that everyone is perfectly tolerable if they are narrating, no matter how they have seemed in the other books. I guess that makes sense, but it means that in any book with conflict there will be a bias towards the narrator. It would be interesting to see some big events through different sides, but past events are rarely mentioned.
Misc:
*We get to see Nannie, Kristy's maternal grandma, a few times in this book. I loved her as a kid, and wished I had a grandma with her spunk and awesome pink car.
*Kristy's really excited to wear a dress and be in the wedding, and she feels glamorous getting all dressed up. She really isn't so much of a tomboy all the time, like is constantly mentioned. There's nothing wrong with a girl dressing casual and being into sports...it doesn't require any label.
*Claudia and Trevor Sandbourne have broken up. She goes to the Final Fling dance with Austin Bentley instead. Kristy goes with Alan Gray, who she likes as a friend, and Stacey goes with Pete Black. Dawn and Mary Anne don't go.
*Big continuity error in this one, too. It says Watson's ex-wife and new husband are Sheila and Kendall? Their names are actually Lisa and Seth... how hard is it to get something like this right? You would think they keep a family tree or character list chart of some kind...
*For those interested, a list of the kids from the daycare group and their ages, since that's mainly the whole plot of this book:
Luke-10 Katherine-5
Ashley-9 Andrew-4
Emma-8 Peter-3
David Michael-7 Patrick-3
Berk-6 Maura-2
Karen-6 Beth-1
Grace-5 Tony-8 months
Pretty crazy, right?
Books mentioned:
None again. No time for reading!
My rating:
3 stars, an okay read but very slow.
No comments:
Post a Comment