Thoughts before reading:
I LOVED this book when I was a kid. It was another all time favorite, and one of my most re-read. I still have my childhood copy, which I also bought used for $1.65, according to the sticker inside. This also has the distinction of being one of the very few BSC books I re-read a lot after my BSC phase was over. I really hated middle school, and struggled a lot to adjust to it after how much I had loved elementary school. Gym class was one of the main reasons for this, and always the low point of my days. It was the bane of my preteen life, something I dreaded all day, every day, even on weekends. I was a clumsy, dorky kid, not even remotely good at any sport. In PE class I was teased because of this, mainly by boys, just like Mal is in this book. So, in 6th and 7th grades, whenever I was having a particularly hard time in school, I would reach for this book. I'd also reach for it if I was being teased, or just having a bad day. This story made me feel less alone.
This is one I've been looking forward to re-reading. Hopefully it holds up at least a little.
The basics:
Jessi tells Mal that their gym class will be mixing with the boys for the upcoming volleyball unit, and Mal is horrified. Usually their class is only girls, and that's already bad enough. She starts really dreading the class, which puts her in a terrible mood. She even tries to pretend to faint before the first day of volleyball, but she waits so long to try it that the locker room is empty and no one is there to see.
Her first volleyball game goes just as bad as she'd feared: she's afraid of the ball, unable to hit it, and annoys her teammates by always missing. The other team notices all this and starts targeting her, knowing she won't hit it back. Kids start teasing her, and even the teacher singles her out, giving her a hard time for being fearful of the ball.
After school, Mal's bad day continues to rage on. She has a terrible sitting job at the Newtons. Jamie's jealous of his baby sister Lucy again, so he's not listening and being a real handful. This gets Mal thinking about how a lot of her problems are caused by boys. The BSC compares notes and decides a lot of kids are being more wild and hard to deal with lately, and Mal points out to them that they're all boys. Stacey explains that the boy clients are not all bad, they're just skewing their own statistics by only looking at the ones who have been a problem. (Thank you for the logic, Stacey!)
The second day of volleyball, Mal gets hit in the face by the ball. She ends up exploding in anger and yelling at her teacher, which gets her benched. Delighted by not having to play, she decides the solution to her problem is to just refuse to play from now on. The next class, she walks off the court and benches herself, which earns her the first detention she's ever gotten. She still feels great about the decision, until hearing the school will notify her parents. Ben Hobart advises her to "grin and bear it" instead of refusing, but when she says no he promises to wait for her outside detention everyday.
Mal starts stealing the detention notices out of the mail before her parents see them, but Ben points out she's going to fail gym and still have to explain that, so she decides she has to play again. She doesn't even make it through one whole game before quitting though, due to her team complaining that she's making them lose. The teacher has a talk with her about being a quitter, which has no effect, so she makes Mal stay after school to wash all the sweaty pinnies. (Like a mesh vest: I had to look it up.)
Mrs. Pike eventually finds one of the detention notices, but she's sympathetic and advises her to ask for extra help in class, and try talking to the kids who are teasing her. Mal agrees to try, and begins by talking to her gym teacher, Ms. Walden. She says no to the extra help, but has the boys' teacher talk to them about easing up on Mal. It does help, although her playing never improves. (In real life, the boys would just treat her worse after getting talked to about it...)
Volleyball finally comes to an end, and the class begins an archery unit, which Mal ends up being really good at. Ms. Walden tells her she should try out for the archery team. She does, and makes it. This improves her confidence, and school isn't so bad again. Her brothers even make her a cake to celebrate.
Meanwhile, after an incident where Ben Hobart comes over to study with Mal after school, but her brothers won't stop teasing them or leave them alone, they end up having to move to Ben's house. His brothers are sweet and well behaved, so they actually get their homework done there. She starts thinking his brothers are angels, despite Ben telling her they are far from it. They end up deciding to trade brothers for a night. Predictably, they act like terrors at Mal's house, particularly around her sisters.
Timeline:
Cold weather, so it's winter sometime.
Misc. thoughts:
*Ghostwritten by Suzanne Weyn.
*I also loved words growing up, just like Mal does.
*Byron's still mentioned as not being as athletic as Jordan and Adam are. Good continuity!
*Mal says her looks never mattered to her until she met Ben, which is definitely not true. She was always really fixated on them.
*Apparently Mal got her nose from her grandfather.
*I've said it before, but WHY can't Mrs. Pike ever watch her own children?? I'd be really annoyed and resentful of this if I was Mal. In here her mom asks her to watch Claire while she makes phone calls. Mal says no, because she has to study, so Mrs. Pike does it herself. Yet apparently she can't watch anyone else at the same time, because this is all during the time that Mal and Ben get tormented by her brothers and can't study. These people are such incompetent parents, I will never get over it.
*Another reason I liked this book so much was because the gym unit is volleyball. That was always my least favorite, and I actually had gym teachers who teased me about being afraid of the ball instead of helping me or at least being adults about it.
*Mal is lucky that her gym class isn't always co-ed though, like mine always were. It doesn't meet every day either, just three days a week. We had it every school day, rain or shine.
*I could definitely tell why I loved this so much. It's basically identical to my PE experience, and I dreamed of just refusing to play, the way Mal does. I still wonder, reading this, why schools do this to kids?? PE is fine, but making clumsy, unathletic kids play team sports with athletic, competitive kids is a terrible idea. It's not good exercise either, since the worse you play the less you end up actually doing anything. You'd think they could figure out something else to traumatize fewer kids and improve the work outs, which are the entire point.
*Jamie Newton was a huge brat in here: he actually acted like a real 4 year old! Only now, 59+ books in, this book has the most realistic babysitting job yet! I babysat a lot, and this was what it was actually like. During that terrible job Mal has with Jamie and Lucy, he won't listen, makes a bunch of messes, throws and breaks his crayons, calls Mal names, hides from her until she's frantic, breaks a vase, picks up the broken glass and cuts himself, and cries/struggles with her constantly. Lucy cries a ton too, and needs diaper changes at all the worst moments. Spot on!
*Mal tries to improve her gym class by ironing her gym clothes, LOL...
*Hasn't Mal surely struggled in gym class before this book though? She hates it so much now that it's affecting her whole life, but we've never heard anything about it before.
*This book says Buddy Barrett is 7, but he's always been 8 before.
*The Zuni pen pal program is mentioned again in here (from Dawn and the Big Sleepover).
Books mentioned:
None
My rating:
3.5 stars. Entertaining, but after finishing I'm honestly surprised I drew so much comfort from this as a kid. Everything wraps up so nice and unrealistically for Mal. Our PE units were all team sports, with nothing solo or different like archery. So for a kid like me, class never really improved. We just went from one rough sport experience to another. I guess the comfort just came from relating to her, and knowing that my torture would also end, even if it wasn't until summer vacation.
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