Adri's BSC Journal

Reissued BSC?

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:26:01 GMT

#1: Kristy's Great Idea
#2: Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls

I wonder how long this'll last. The Saddle Club got through twelve books, and SVH only reissued six.

Discuss.

x-posted to babysittersclub

Yes, it is real

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 01:31:45 GMT

Scholastic Customer Service finally got back to me, and the release date that they have for the prequel is actually earlier than the one on Amazon.

Thank you for contacting Scholastic Classroom Books and Libraries regarding information on the Prequel Summer Before Babysitters Club book.

We show only that it is hardcover book which is due to be released March 12, 2010.
We do not yet have a price.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.

If we may be of further assistance, please call our Customer Service representatives Monday-Friday 6:00 AM - 11:00 PM of on Saturday, 8:00 AM - 5:00 Pm Central Standard Time. We would be happy to assist you.

Have a great day!

Sincerely,
Carol Y
Scholastic Customer Service
1-800-724-6527

x-posted to babysittersclub

Baby-sitters Club Prequel!

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:08:19 GMT

I am not making this up.

The Summer Before by Ann M. Martin
Hardcover: 224 pages
Publisher: Scholastic Inc. (April 1, 2010)
ISBN-10: 0545160936
ISBN-13: 978-0545160933

Before there was the Baby-Sitters Club, there were four girls named Kristy Thomas, Mary Anne Spier, Claudia Kishi, and Stacey McGill. As they start the summer before seventh grade (also before they start the BSC), each of them is on the cusp of a big change. Kristy is still hung up on hoping that her father will return to her family. Mary Anne has to prove to her father that she's no longer a little girl who needs hundreds of rules. Claudia is navigating her first major crush on a boy. And Stacey is leaving her entire New York City life behind...

...in order to find new friends in Stoneybrook, Connecticut.

The Summer Before . . . is a sweet, moving novel about four girls on the edge of something big - not just the Club that will change their lives, but also all the joys and tribulations of being twelve and thirteen.

OMG OMG OMG squee!

x-posted to babysittersclub

Cake!

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:53:38 GMT

The second cake in this post on Cake Wrecks would have been perfect to have at one of Dawn's good-bye parties.

x-posted to

[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<lj-user="babysittersclub">') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]

The second cake in <a href="http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2009/03/parting-is-such-sweet-sorrow.html" target="new">this post on Cake Wrecks</a> would have been perfect to have at one of Dawn's good-bye parties.

<lj-cut text="On to the most appropriate cake ever!"><img src="http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a272/wanderingfrog/Chrisgoodriddance.jpg" border="1" width="576" height="432" alt="Good riddance, Dawn!" title="Good riddance, Dawn!" /></lj-cut>

x-posted to <lj-user="babysittersclub">

I felt like doing a meme

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 03:38:11 GMT

1. Put your iTunes (or any other media player you may have) on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!

IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
We Got the Beat

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
Silent All These Years

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Ruby Tuesday

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
Crush

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
100 Years

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
It's a Heartache

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Footloose

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Fireworks

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Head Over Heels

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Crazy Train [okay, so this one is perfectly right]

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Stick 'Em Up

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Learn to Fly

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
It's Not Unusual [this one isn't accurate at all]

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Afternoon Delight

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Cornflake Girl

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Jump

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
After the Rain

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Satisfaction

WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
Vindicated

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
Whip It [this might be the funniest thing ever]

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
What's Love Got to Do With It?

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
Strange Little Girl

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
We All Sing With the Same Voice

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
Joyride

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
True Colors

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Mr. Roboto

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
Won't Back Down

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Man on the Moon

Wicked Stepsisters

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:06:32 GMT

I've been trying to complete my Camp Sunnyside Friends collection, and I think I have all of the books now except for #17, Camp Spaghetti. Recently, I found a used copy of #16, Happily Ever After, which I never read when I was a kid.

The plot: Sarah's widowed father marries Trina's divorced mother, and the friends are thrilled to become stepsisters. Sarah and Trina want to prove that their new family will be perfect and that everybody will get along all the time, so they decide to share a bedroom, even though their house is big enough for them to have separate rooms. But it turns out they hate sharing a room, because they're just too different. For example, Sarah likes to listen to music while she does her homework, and Trina can't concentrate that way at all! Oh noes!

Does this book remind anybody of anything? ;-)

x-posted to babysittersclub

Karen's Eighth Birthday

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 23:00:53 GMT

I was at a used bookstore today and I was looking at It's Great to Be Eight, which I'd seen before. It has a bunch of stories about, well, being eight. There's a series of books — It's Heaven Being Seven, It's Fine to Be Nine, etc. I knew Ann M. Martin had a story in it, but since almost all of the "stories" in these are excerpts from books, I'd assumed Ann's story was something that had been previously published in a longer work that I'd already read. But I actually bothered opening the book today, and the Ann M. Martin story is something that hadn't been published elsewhere... and it's BSC-related!

It's called "8 x 2 = Sweet Sixteen" and it's also not much of a "story," just a long internal monologue. It takes place three weeks before Karen Brewer's eighth birthday, and since Karen Two-Two is of course having two eighth birthday parties, she thinks that it's sort of like turning sixteen, and she's thinking about all the things she would want if she really were turning sixteen. Obviously, it's very classic Karen! There's an inconsistency in it that irks me, though. Karen talks about Charlie being sixteen "last year," but if she were turning eight, he should already be eighteen. On the other hand, it's not as if I'm not used to time warps in BSC-land.

x-posted to babysittersclub

Caregivers on Vacation: Flying with Nannies

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:59:16 GMT

I read this article in the Globe and Mail today and it made me think of the BSC:

Someone to Watch Over Them

Oddly enough, it doesn't mention that the people you bring on vacation to watch your children should be thirteen years old.

x-posted to babysittersclub

Remember Wacky Packages?

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 19:44:23 GMT

Topps trading cards/stickers that parody consumer products, usually in a gross way? I don't know if anyone in the community has mentioned it before, but apparently card 53 in the 1991 series was a Baby-sitters Club parody, and you can see it here. I think I love it.

x-posted to babysittersclub

I did it!

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 03:21:08 GMT

I now have every Baby-sitters Club book!

My boyfriend and I were in Fredericton today, and we went to a huge used bookstore. They had tons of BSC books there, although it was mostly because there were multiple copies of earlier books and very few after about #80. There also weren't many Super Specials or other books outside of the regular series, but for some reason I had a feeling that I'd find what I was looking for there, and I did. There was a copy of Mystery #35: Abby and the Notorious Neighbor, which was the last book left that I needed.

So I've got all the regular series, Super Specials, Mysteries, Super Mysteries, Friends Forevers, Friends Forever special editions, Portrait Collections, Special Edition Readers' Requests, California Diaries, Chain Letter, Secret Santa, the Complete Guide, the Postcard Book, the Notebook, the Guide to Baby-sitting, the movie novelization, and the Ann M. Martin biography. This feels like Stage 1 of a "complete BSC book collection."

Now I can focus more on LS (I also got two of those today), The Kids in Ms. Colman's Class, new-style covers, replacing some of the more worn books in my collection with ones in better condition, foreign editions, and non-book materials. Whee!

Oh, and I'm also still looking for another copy of #89 Kristy and the Dirty Diapers because my copy is somewhere in my parents' house and it's bugging me to still have one book missing from my apartment even though I actually own them all.

x-posted to babysittersclub

I just bought a bunch of French BSC books!

Sun, 05 Nov 2006 23:02:33 GMT

You know those dreams you have where you're at a bookstore, and you find a bunch of BSC books you don't have, and every time you think you've found all the ones that are there, more keep turning up, and it's just awesome? Well, yesterday I had that happen to me in real life. Only these were French translations, since I have every book in the series except one (Mystery #35) in the regular American edition, but until yesterday, I only had fourteen in French. Now I have twenty-four, because I found ten at Value Village that I didn't already have. I am very psyched about this, as I didn't have Super Specials or Mysteries in French before. These are the Héritage jeunesse editions from Québec, not the Folio Junior ones. Every time I was about to leave, I'd notice another book and then pick that one up, too. I'm really glad I didn't overlook the Mysteries, since they're a different size than the other books so they were in the next section over. I bought the following books:

#28: Sophie est de retour
#35: Mystère à Nouville!
#40: Claudia et la tricheuse
#63: Le ~~juene~~ jeune ami de Claudia
#64: Diane et la querelle de famille
#66: Anne-Marie, bonne à tout faire
Super spécial #1: Les baby-sitters en croisière!
Mystère #4: Christine et l'enfant perdu
Mystère #5: Anne-Marie et le secret du grenier
Mystère #14: Sophie et l'énigme du centre commercial

So today I have been reading random bits from the books and being entertained by changes in the translated version. Like how in #63, when Stéphane Robitaille (Shea Rodowsky) writes the letter to Jackie Robinson, he mention that Jackie Robinson played in Montréal and there's a statue of him in Montréal, which of course isn't mentioned in the original book. Even more bizarrely, in the regular book Mary Anne decides that since Jackie Robinson is dead, the letter should go to the Los Angeles Dodgers, which pretty much makes sense, but in the French book, Anne-Marie tells him to send it to the Montreal Expos, which makes almost no sense at all.

x-posted to babysittersclub

BSC Board?

Fri, 08 Sep 2006 12:17:26 GMT

I posted this to babysittersclub and am just reposting it here so I can keep somewhat of a record of posts I make there.

Just a quick question — what's the URL for the BSC board? Although I've moved into my new apartment in New Brunswick, my computer is still packed (and might stay that way for a few weeks, until we move into a two-bedroom, because there is no room in this one-bedroom), and I've got it bookmarked on my own computer, but not on my boyfriend's.

Oh, some actual news: I visited my parents for a few days before moving here, and while I was there I rounded up ALL of my BSC books that were still at their place (except for #89 Kristy and the Dirty Diapers, which I couldn't find, so I'll probably have to buy a new copy of it) and I brought them with me. So now I've got all my BSC books and paraphenalia (calendars, bookmarks, etc.) under one roof — except for the two board games and three jigsaw puzzles, which were too big to bring along this time. I also brought all my LS books. Wow, this is exciting. I'm such a total dork.

Mystery #34: Mary Anne and the Haunted Bookstore

Fri, 23 Jun 2006 01:00:22 GMT

I just read this book for the first time, and I really should jot down some of the snarky things I think when I read BSC books, because I can hardly remember any of them by the time I'm finished a book. The mystery wasn't stellar, but it wasn't completely ridiculous, either, and I liked the atmosphere of the book. I wanted to be hanging out with them at the bookstore, helping them get it ready for the opening. Because I am a dork.

About that "gravestone" in the basement. Ms. Spark says, "Larry isn't supposed to let anyone go down there until the police have finished looking at the area. Someone from the county will investigate when they find the time."

Were the police really planning to check out the gravestone, or is Ms. Spark just making this up? Because if they've actually convinced the police that they should investigate the gravestone, which is a hoax that Mr. Cates and Ms. Spark are behind, then I'm pretty sure that's illegal. Even if they didn't notify the police or anything, maybe somebody from the police department contacted them when the newspaper story mentioning the "gravestone" was published. What's up with that?

x-posted to babysittersclub

For mizzmarvel

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 02:19:18 GMT

I couldn't decide which font I liked better, so there are two of them.

Anyone who wants to can use these, although I think it was mizzmarvel who specifically hoped someone would make an icon like this.

x-posted to bsc_icons

Title of #44

Sun, 18 Jun 2006 20:26:57 GMT

I have two copies of #44 with the new cover, and I just realized something odd:

In case you're wondering, the title on the spine of that second book is Dawn's Big Sleepover, but on the title pages inside the book, it's Dawn and the Big Sleepover.

x-posted to babysittersclub

One of my Holy Grails

Mon, 08 May 2006 00:25:09 GMT

The other day I played Cranium, which is a game with a picture of a large purple brain in the middle of the game board. The whole time, I wanted so badly to start shouting, "The brain! The brain! The centre of the chain!"

Just thought I'd share.

Also, I got some most excellent news from my boyfriend — he's a librarian, and his library had a big book sale on the weekend. He managed to score me a copy of #127 Abby's Un-Valentine, which is one of the two BSC books I don't have (the other is mystery #35, Abby's Notorious Neighbor, in case anyone is ever trying to unload a copy). Sadly, I have to wait almost two weeks until he comes to town to visit me, but it's okay because I still won't be that far along in my readthrough, anyway. I kind of forgot I was doing a readthrough for a while, anyway. Life and other books get in the way sometimes. Also, my mom was staying at my place for a couple of weeks, and while she is now cool with all the BSC books in my apartment, she is probably still not so cool with me actually reading them.

Anyway, last regular-series book I needed... acquired! Squee!

x-posted to babysittersclub

Worst. Video. Ever.

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 17:13:35 GMT

I posted this to babysittersclub and I'm just sticking it here, too, for my own future reference, even if I can't currently think of a reason why I might need to find it again in the future. Hey, it could happen.

I watched Claudia and the Missing Jewels for the first time last month, and it was bad. Really, really bad. I didn't bother posting about it then because it wasn't bad in an entertaining way, it was just bad in a very boring way, and I couldn't think of any good snarky comments to make about it. It was too boring to even be deserving of snark. (My brother did say, upon seeing the so-called jewels, "Um, those aren't jewels," but that's not snark; that's just common sense.) I'm currently reading the BSC thread on TWOP from the beginning, and people there have at least managed to snark it a little.

That reminded me: I want to know if people who have actually seen all of the videos think that Claudia and the Missing Jewels is the worst BSC video ever, or if any others are even worse. The only other BSC video I've seen all the way through is Kristy and the Great Campaign, which was much better than the Missing Jewels, and I'm just hoping that there isn't a video that's even worse.

"My fandom" icons

Sun, 09 Apr 2006 18:30:38 GMT

Supposedly “my fandom” icons, such as some of the ones that can be found here, are so over now. But since BSC fandom is all about revelling in that which is “so over,” I made some “my fandom” icons.

There are only three others, but I put them all behind a cut anyway.

1) 2) 3) 4)

1) Image from #67: Dawn's Big Move, found on Amazon, text inspired by the completely whacked BSC timeline.
2) Image from #38: Dawn and the Older Boy, found on Amazon, text inspired by #4: Mary Anne Saves the Day. (Yeah, I know Dawn can stay out past ten, but I think it really looks dorkalicious with that image.)
3) Image from #100: Kristy's Worst Idea, found on fiona.co.jp, text inspired by, um, the entire series.
4) In case anyone doesn't know, OTP stands for One True Pairing, and the little ten-year-old boys in question are Byron Pike and Jeff Schafer. Inspired mainly by bscslashfic. Yes, I know they're not usually ten years old in the actual fics.

If you use any of them, I'd appreciate it if you'd credit wanderingfrog or eikonoklast (my sadly-neglected icon journal). If anyone has any requests for some fandom-mocking icons, or I guess any type of icons, let me know and I'll see what I can do. My school term finishes up this week and I hope that'll leave me with some more time to fritter away like this.

x-posted to babysittersclub and eikonoklast

BSC characters named after real people

Sun, 02 Apr 2006 23:10:33 GMT

I don't know if anybody's ever brought this up, 'cause I hadn't been reading babysittersclub regularly since last summer. I was reading Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan, who is a young adult author and editor of Scholastic's PUSH imprint. He did some work on the BSC, plotting and such. On the Acknowledgements page, there are some names you'll all recognize, such as Bethany Buck and Ann Martin. There are also two other names you'll recognize for slightly different reasons: Shira Epstein and Cary Retlin.

Heh. So I guess somebody at Scholastic, likely David Levithan, named Shira and Cary after real people. I knew about the Perkins family, but I didn't know about this.

Some Googling indicates that Shira Epstein is a friend of David's from Brown University, from which they both graduated in 1994. She then went to graduate school in theatre education at NYU, and her email address is (or was) shiri812@aol.com. I'm not going to do any more Googlestalking because I should technically be doing schoolwork. There is a Cary Retlin who is 31 years old and a Planning Commissioner in Olympia, Washington, but I don't have the time to Google poor Cary any more, either, so I have no idea if that would be the right person.

x-posted to babysittersclub

Drabble, icons, RPG

Sun, 03 Jul 2005 21:01:14 GMT

Although they're now on Challenge #11 over at bsc100, I hadn't tried any of the challenges, so today I posted a drabble in response to Challenge #1 - New Clients. It has the distinction of being my first piece of BSC fanfic to appear anywhere outside of my brain. That is its only distinction. I'm putting it behind an LJ-cut.

bsc100 Challenge #1 - New Clients
Title: So Much More Mature
Character: Claudia Kishi
Word Count: 100

The Baby-sitters Club doesn’t sit for many newborns, not even now that we’re fifteen and so much more mature than we used to be, but CeCe’s mother and grandmother trust me unconditionally. I’m not that interested in sitting for infants, because usually they cry all night, but CeCe is a solid sleeper. Her mom is lucky. Tuesday night was my first time sitting for CeCe, and it was uneventful.

"How was she, Claud?" CeCe’s mom asked as soon as she walked in the door.

"Good as gold, Stace," I answered truthfully, as Claudia Charlotte McGill slumbered peacefully in her bassinette.

I made a few new icons lately.

The Mary Anne and Logan icon with the Joni Mitchell lyrics isn't one I plan on using myself.

I'm playing Stacey in the new Stoneybrook High RPG, and right now I'm trying to make an icon for her. I was going to use Lindze Letherman, but Stacey's hair should really be straighter than the picture I was using, now that she's not perming it anymore, and cassandraclue pointed out that usually a character's PB is much older than the actual character, which I hadn't really thought about, as I haven't RPed online before. I am going to try making a new icon with Kaley Cuoco. We'll see how it turns out. Here is the Lindze icon — although I won't be using it for the RPG, I think it is very original-series Stacey, so I might just use it as an icon here sometime.

Happy Birthday, Jessi!

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 22:52:26 GMT

Jessi Ramsey turns eleven again today! And, by the way, she's still black!

x-posted to babysittersclub

M#32, CD#3, #113

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 02:25:59 GMT

Here are some thoughts on some BSC books I've read recently. There are spoilers for Mystery #32: Claudia and the Mystery in the Painting, so I'm putting it behind an LJ-cut.

I liked this mystery. It's exciting without being ridiculously far-fetched, and I like BSC books where the subplot actually has some connection with the main plot. One thing drives me mad, though — why is the solution to the main mystery the exact same as the solution to the mystery in #29: Mallory and the Mystery Diary? Did the writers and editors think that no one would have read both books? Also, ff Claudia knows so much about art, why didn't she know that a famous artist used to live in Stoneybrook? I know Grandmother Madden only got famous after she died, but you'd think this would be something Claudia might have heard about.

California Diaries #3: Maggie
I love Maggie. Out of everyone in BSC-land, she's the character who's the most like me. (Probably miss_myu and I would get along quite well.) I love Maggie's books. (Well, I haven't read the third, but I love the first two.) But is it just me, or do most of her poems and songs kind of suck? There's very rarely any vivid imagery, just a bunch of empty phrases that could be about anything.

#113: Claudia Makes up Her Mind
Wow. The plot of this book is stoopid. What kind of school is this, where you send a kid back to Grade Seven and then, after a few months, put her in Grade Eight again? Because it'll be so much easier for her to keep up with eighth-grade work now that she's missed several months of it, of course. Geez. I guess it's the same kind of school where you take every single student on an all-expenses-paid week-long trip out of state for no apparent reason every year. Well, every year except for twelve or so of the years that the BSC members were at SMS.

12 - I don't understand why Kristy decides that Claudia being the Color War coordinator for the seventh grade is new business and they can't talk about it until the meeting starts. It's not club business, so you'd think she wouldn't want Claud to talk about it during meeting time.

57 - Why is Ron Tibbets asking Claudia how to spell "limerick"? Claudia can't spell anything.

59 - I refuse to believe that Claudia, thirteen-year-old fashionista chick, can recognize a picture of a Sherman tank when she sees one, without anyone having to tell her what it is. A tank, yes. But a Sherman tank? That specific? Uh-uh, no way. (I thought, I bet this book was written by Peter Lerangis. I checked, and it was. Plenty of thirteen-year-old guys know what a Sherman tank is, but how many thirteen-year-old girls would?)

74 - In Kristy-handwriting: Okay, so Jackie Rodowsky's, um, butt is a little sore. But that was his fault... - C'mon, Kristy, we know it was your fault. [Insert pedophilia joke and S&M joke here.]

133 - Josh assures Claudia that the two of them can get into a PG-13 movie, because they never check him. Hahahahaha. Ohsocute, and yet oh so lame.

x-posted to babysittersclub

Keep cool

Mon, 27 Jun 2005 02:35:32 GMT

There's a heat wave here, so I spent much of this afternoon wading in a bathtub full of cold water, reading Super Mystery #4: Baby-sitters' Christmas Chiller in an attempt to beat the heat. I am so lame.

I don't know what this is, but I just bought it on eBay

Fri, 24 Jun 2005 02:51:32 GMT

Probably it's some sort of book club edition.

Also, tonight I got a copy of Baby-sitters Little Sister Playground Games at a used bookstore. There was no price on it, so the guy working there let me have it for free.

x-posted to babysittersclub

#112 Kristy and the Sister War

Wed, 22 Jun 2005 21:01:52 GMT

A few days ago, I read #112: Kristy and the Sister War for the first time. Some thoughts:

23 - It's been mentioned before, but bears repeating — Tiffany Kilbourne is the same age as Mal and Jessi, but she's a baby-sittee, not a baby-sitter. Uh, why? I'm going with the theory that she's in Grade Five and thus a year behind them in a social-development kind of way, but this still doesn't explain much.

50-51 - “The reason for this war is that Shannon is a Big Meanie.” Oh, I guess that explains why Tiffany is a baby-sittee.

64 - Washington Mall has a place called the Cheese Outlet?

82 - Kristy is upset when Steve buys two tickets to a movie she doesn't want to see. Well, why the hell didn't they discuss what movie to see before they got to the ticket counter? That's what normal people do.

85 - “I knew that she and Maria were just fooling around with the idea of having a crush on a boy. After all, they were too young to be interested in dating.” Since when is eleven too young to have a real crush on a boy? I'm sure it was too young for you, Kristy, but not all of the rest of us are like you.

93 - Shannon refers to Tiffany and Maria as “two little kids” but she is friends with people who are the same age as Tiffany, such as Mal and Jessi. Kristy also refers to Tiffany and Maria as “two little girls” on page 51.

105 - Kristy drags Alan Gray into the middle of the gym and starts dancing with him in front of everyone to cheer up the people at the dance committe meeting and make them stop fighting. Who is this person, and what has she done with Kristy Thomas?

110-111 - Tiffany and Maria are terribly upset that their parents and Shannon aren't coming to watch them at the Stoneybrook All-Kids Dance. Maria sobs, “It's the first party we ever planned by ourselves, and they aren't even going to be there to see it!” Even when I was Maria's age, I didn't want my parents at my parties. (Unless the party was getting boring, in which case I wanted my mom to come up with a cool game we could all play, and then leave once everyone was having fun.) Can you imagine anyone bursting into tears because their parents won't be coming to watch them at their first boy-girl dance? I can't. There's about thirty seconds of video footage of my elementary school graduation dance; it's me yelling at my dad to go away.

122 - Okay, the part where Tiffany and Maria think they're fighting over Jordan Pike, but then realize that each of them actually likes a different triplet, but they got mixed up? That's awesome.

128 - Kristy and Shannon are totally cool with their parents chaperoning the middle school dance. I know the whole point of the book is that the Kilbournes haven't spent any time together lately, but in Shannon's Story, Shannon stayed home from a French Club trip to Paris because her mom was chaperoning. You'd really think she'd rather have quality time with her folks at an occasion other than a school dance.

x-posted to babysittersclub