Stacey's Book

 

Thoughts before reading:

I've actually never read any of the portrait books before. I'm not really sure why; possibly I was just unaware of them as a kid. My main BSC access points were the public library, the school library, and the used bookstore, so I was sometimes limited in which books I could get my hands on. It was a rare treat to go to a B. Dalton or Waldenbooks and get brand new books, something usually reserved for birthdays and Christmases. 

I'm curious about these though now, and it will be fun to learn more about the characters, especially from different points in time. Outside the same summaries from chapter two in every single book, we don't know many details about the past.

The basics:

I couldn't decide how I wanted to summarize these books, since now that I've read one I know that they are basically separate stories from the characters life put together to form an autobiography. Each chapter is a slice of life from one age. For now, I'm just going to do bullet points, and see if I like how it turns out...

The 8th graders at SMS have to write autobiographies for English class, which is the premise behind the Portrait series.

*Stacey was born April 3rd in NYC, at Mt. Sinai Hospital.

*She walked at ten months old, and was running by 11 months.

*She was talking before she turned 2.

*She loved Sesame Street when she was little.

*Her comfort object was Goobaw, her stuffed bear.

*She was born bald, and her concerned mom used to rub her head to try and make her hair grow.

*When she was 3, her parents moved from Greenwich Village to the Upper East Side. This is her first memory.

*She also remembers going to preschool in her new neighborhood, riding on her dad's shoulders, and a classmate putting his muddy boots in her cubby, right on top of her favorite book (Eloise). 

*Her parents took her to Central Park a lot on weekends when she was little, or to the Museum of Natural History.

*She had a lot of nightmares around age 4.

*For her 4th birthday, her parents took her to the Plaza Hotel, where her favorite character, Eloise, lived. Then they took a horse carriage ride through Central Park. 

*At age 5, she started Parker Academy, and became friends with Laine. She loved kindergarten.

*She was really into Cinderella at this age too. Her and Laine saw a preview of the movie, and her mom got her the book and tape from the library.

*Stacey's mom went back to work part-time at Macy's while she was in kindergarten. This was also when Stacey got interested in clothes.

*The same year, her mom got her into the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, on Cinderella's float (a perk of her job). Right in front of Macy's, Cinderella's crown fell off. Stacey caught it and returned it, and Cinderella gave it to her to keep after the parade. She missed out on being shown on tv though.

*By age 8, her and Laine were BFFs.

*Her favorite toy in grade school was a Victorian dollhouse that her grandparents gave her when she was 6.

*Laine and Stacey's parents made them take ballroom dancing lessons when they were 8. They didn't want to, so they hid in the cloakroom instead. From there, they ventured out around the block alone. This continues until they try to skip class and go all the way to FAO Schwartz, and they get caught. As punishment, they still have to take the lessons, and they have to stay apart from each other for 6 weeks.

*When Stacey was 7, her family took a vacation to a dude ranch. When she was 8, it was San Francisco. 9 was Ireland and Scotland. 10, a little island off Maine.

*Stacey dreaded the Maine trip, because she worried she would have nothing to do. She's snobby about having to stay in the middle of nowhere, and bratty to a girl her age who lives on the little island year round, Mara. Then her dad breaks his ankle, and Mara drives them to the mainland to get help. Stacey stays behind to watch Alice, Mara's one year old sister. It's her first ever babysitting job.

She ends up loving the trip, learning not to be a snob, and later credits the experience with easing her move to Stoneybrook.

*Claudia came to visit Stacey for a weekend after she had moved back to NYC with both parents (before the divorce and her return to Stoneybrook with her mom). Claud is a huge brat on the trip: cold, distant, and annoyed with Stacey for trying to show her around. (All this after Stacey bought her a bunch of junk food and hid it around her room for Claud to find, which I thought was really sweet.) After Stacey spends the weekend thinking Claudia doesn't like her anymore, Claud finally breaks down and admits she feels like she's lost Stacey, and that she's been miserable without her. 

*Stacey gets an A on her autobiography, and has learned how lucky she is from writing it.

Timeline:

Irrelevant for this series. Even though they are spread out, they're all a class assignment during the 8th grade school year.

Misc. thoughts:

*Stacey had REALLY clear memories of being 5. I wonder if she really remembers those things, or has she heard them from her parents?

*I loved the pictures of little Stacey in here! So cute!

*I did wish these stories were more spread out over her childhood, instead of covering a few big incidents. Despite that though, I did enjoy it. The stories are cute, and the concept brought back a lot of childhood memories for me.

*It was really weird to read about Stacey eating ice cream and candy, and having it be no big deal.

*Stacey is the luckiest kid ever, especially with all those amazing family vacations she got to go on. Reading all this, I'm amazed she's not a spoiled snob.

*There was a huge continuity problem, which I was sad to see in a character's autobiography... When Stacey was 12, she was back in NYC after her first time in Stoneybrook, according to this book. But that actually happened in 8th grade, not 7th. It was book #13, and the girls had begun 8th grade for the first time in #10. I could almost buy it if she was born in the fall and entered 8th grade as a 12 year old, but we've just learned her birthday was in April. Therefore, she turned 13 during the April of 7th grade, and moved back to NYC during the fall of 8th grade.

*Allison and Stacey were never really friends, aside from a week during 6th grade, according to Super Special #11. In here it makes it sound like they had been friends for awhile at some point.

*Stoney-brook is randomly hyphenated once.

*Ghostwritten by Jeanne Betancourt. A new ghostie! She needs to brush up on some of her BSC facts...

Books mentioned:

*The Eloise series, by Kay Thompson

My rating:

3 stars. Not much substance, but by this point anything new or different is nice.