Thoughts before reading:
Weird as this now sounds, this was one of my favorite BSC books when I was a kid. As my well worn copy (I still have it!) can attest, I was a little obsessed with this. I loved the BSC world when I was a kid, not just the club... the kids, families, minor characters, places, etc. Plus I just loved facts. Around this same age, I was also obsessed with the Guinness Book of World Records. When things were hard at home or in school, I'd use this to learn the basics about a family, then play a game in my head where I was one of the kids in that family and had their parents, siblings, home, and life. This was something I'd done since reading the Little Sister books and first getting hooked on reading. Pre-BSC days, I'd pretend to be Karen: I even had a game where I packed to switch houses. Hannie was a particular favorite of mine too... I was drawn to her happy, calm seeming family. (Is this whole thing really weird or really resourceful? I can't decide. Either way though, it worked. I had a huge imagination, what can I say?)
This is divided into sections, which I'll go through and give interesting facts and an overview on. It also has a full color map of Stoneybrook, which I loved to study.
The basics:
*Club Facts*
-Gives a basic overview of stats and history, with citations for everything (which book, which page number the information is from).
-Covers through book #100
-Gives club history by book
-Everything looks really accurate. The ghostwriters should have made this earlier and referred to it when writing...
-A lot of this section is chapter 2 recap stuff, just cited and more detailed.
-Also includes the club rules and job rules.
*The BSC Members*
-Includes basic stats, personality, family, experiences, history, and books narrated for each member.
-This is the first time/place we've gotten everyone's birthdays:
Claudia: July 11th
Kristy: August 20th
Stacey: April 3rd
Mary Anne: September 22nd
Dawn: February 5th
Abby: October 15th
Jessi: June 30th
Mallory: May 2nd
Logan: January 10th
Shannon: March 17th
*The BSC Family Members*
-Details houses, rooms, family rules, cars.
-Really detailed too, lists anyone ever mentioned even once, alive or not, pets, and distant relatives.
-Even Ben Brewer has an entry.
*BSC Clients*
-This was mostly what I used the book for, because it lists every family the club has ever sat for, and all their basic information.
-However, there is still nothing in here about those mysterious Odhners... they aren't even listed in here.
*Other BSC People*
-SMS employees and teachers
-SMS students
-Misc. kids (from hobbies, ballet classes, other schools, high schoolers, elementary schoolers who aren't clients, etc)
-Misc. adults, like neighbors, merchants, authors, even adult babysitters
*Places*
-General town info
-List of street names
-Nearby towns
-Businesses in Stoneybrook
-Schools
*Things*
-Summer camps
-Businesses started by kids
-Teams/groups
-Krusher's stats
-List of all the books mentioned in the series, real and fictional. (I wish I knew about this sooner, haha, I could have been using it!)
-Magazines/newspapers
-TV shows, movies, radio
-Toys/games
-Products/recipes
-Events
*Beyond Stoneybrook*
-Things and people from California, Hawaii, Kentucky, Iowa, NYC, Camp Mohawk, Oakley, the Ocean Princess, Sea City, etc.
Misc. thoughts:
*I was going to list interesting facts, but I've already done that book by book, so nothing really stood out. I thought this would have new info in it, but it's just everything we know from the books, compiled together.
*David Levithan helped with this!
*Mallory did get her ears pierced in #21, like I thought.
*This series has so many errors that I looked closely for any in here, but this was really accurate. Why didn't they make something like this early on and reference it??
*This confirms that Tiffany Kilbourne is 11, something I had wondered about. It seemed like a possible error, since she's treated so much younger than Mal and Jessi.
*No rating for this. It isn't a book you read, it's more like a reference book for the series.
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