Dawn's Book

 

Thoughts before reading:

I've never read any of the portraits before this re-read project. When I was a kid I loved Dawn, so I probably would have adored this. Currently I'm a bit down on her though, so I can't say I'm excited for this one.

The basics:

*Dawn's first assignment back at Vista is to write her autobiography, conveniently.

*Dawn's middle name is Read (which I definitely approve of!). 

*Born February 5th, at 6:45 AM, a week past her due date. 

*She was born in Anaheim, California, at St. Mary's Hospital.

*In order to finally start labor, her mom and dad walked around the beach for hours. Her mom says that's why she loves the ocean.

*She went to the beach a lot as a baby. She even took her first steps there, to where the waves were meeting the sand.

*Her first words were mama, dada, water, beach. (Ok, we all get that she's from California, but this is some real overkill...)

*When she was little she loved Legos and play-doh. One time she put the latter in her ears and traumatized Sharon. 

*Dawn was jealous when Jeff was born.

*She liked preschool, especially the blocks corner.

*In nursery school she made an Eiffel tower out of blocks and glued it together so the other kids wouldn't ruin it. 

*Her first friend was Ruthie, in Pre-K.

*When she was 6, her family moved to Palo City.

*She met Jill Henderson and Maggie Blume in first grade, and they became friends the same year.

*She used to have a yellow parakeet named Buzz.

*Sunny moved to the neighborhood from Oregon when they were all 7. Dawn was put off by the family's strangeness: they danced barefoot on their lawn, had no tv, ate things like kelp salad, owned no couches, and had a hippy car. All this makes her think Sunny's too weird to be friends with, and she's embarrassed by her. (I guess she wasn't always much of an individual...)

*The two girls only became friends after their moms got stuck in an elevator at a department store, and Sunny helped out by tapping Morse code to her mom. 

*By the time the girls were in 5th grade, their families were really close.

*That same year, the Schafers went to San Francisco with Granny and Pop-Pop for their 50th wedding anniversary. Dawn's disappointed when her grandparents bicker the whole time, until Jeff accidently tells Pop-Pop the wrong dinner time and Granny gets really worried when he's late. Then Dawn understands that they love each other, and the bickering is just teasing. 

*Sharon and Jack (finally we got his real name!) were happy together still when Dawn was ten, after 15 years of marriage. 

*By the time she was 12, however, the marriage was in big trouble.

*Dawn is scared of fire, and at 12 she was obsessed with fire safety and preparedness. (This is VERY ironic, given that her Stoneybrook house burns down after she's moved back to California.)

*During this phase, Dawn was babysitting for Clover and Daffodil Austin one day when they had an electrical fire in the kitchen. She gets the kids out safely to her house, then calls 911. After, she's a local hero, and even gets to meet the mayor.

*A few weeks after the fire, her parents announced the divorce.

*Shortly after joining the BSC, Dawn got a job with a new client, the Lazars. While there, she read a letter in their mail pile about their little girl, Sandra, having to repeat second grade. After, she's plagued by guilt for having snooped.

The next time she sat there, she helped Sandra with reading homework and accidently told her. Mrs. Lazar was furious, and never called the BSC again. Dawn was mortified and never told anyone.

*Dawn gets an A- for content, and a B for presentation.

Timeline:

N/A

Misc. thoughts:

*Ghostwritten by Jeanne Betancourt.

*Sunny's mom is back at home from the hospital.

*Nothing in here stood out very much, but I did like the story about her babysitting mishap with the Lazar family. It was a lot more realistic than most of the babysitting stuff we get to see firsthand. I don't think the BSC has ever lost a client that we knew about due to a mistake one of the girls made.

Books mentioned:

*The Madeline series, by Ludwig Bemelmans

My rating:

3 stars. This was a very average read, just not very memorable. I was disappointed to learn how young Dawn was not at all an individual, and instead learned all her principles from Sunny (who I did like).