As promised, here are my thoughts on Dawn and the We <3 Kids Club.

Dawn was my favorite member for quite some time. I liked her LOOOOONNNG white blonde hair. Being a platnium blonde myself, I envied her, as my mother didn’t let me grow out my pageboy until fifth grade or so. I also was what my boyfriend calls an “aspiring vegetarian.” And California seemed even more glamorous to me than New York City. Finally, I, too, wanted to be seen as a laid-back individual.

As we all know, Dawn is rarely actually a laid-back individual. This book is indeed one of those times where she defies her chapter 2 characteristics and is anything but laid-back.

This is a Dawn-in-Palo City book. I happen to enjoy reading about Palo City a fair amount. I am a big California Diaries fan. Thus, this is a book I reread fairly frequently. There are so many crazy things in this book, starting with the laid-back lack of school bells! OMG! I went to school on the East Coast and never had bells either, but I digress.

First moment of craziness–the W<3KC gets famous! They are in the newspaper and on TV! Dawn has a laugh like pealing bells! Kristy gets really jealous. Oh, Kristy. Kristy is pretty annoying in this book, so I don't want to focus on this part too much. Basically, despite the fact that the BSC has more business than they can handle, Kristy wants to equal, if not better, the W<3KC media attention.

But the W<3KC can't handle it! They are too disorganized! Dawn steers them in the right direction, starting with an appointment book for the CORRECT YEAR.

In this book we also get to spend more time with Carol Olson. Dawn’s newfound respect for Carol from California Girls! flies out the window when Jack and Carol announce their engagement. Dawn sees it necessary to steal her dad’s credit card, book a flight to Connecticut out of LAX, and rechristen herself “Marisol.” Lo and behold, she is not welcomed with open arms in Stoneybrook. Dawn=delusional. Mary Anne=rocking an LL Bean nightgown.

If I had done this at thirteen I would have been in such deep shit. If I did this at 22 I would still be in deep shit. All Dawn has to do is work back the cost of the plane ticket–a nice large sum, to be sure, but still.

Dawn’s punishment, however, is not mentioned in any subsequent book. It’s possible she worked it off fast, what with all the extra baby-sitting jobs the W<3KC got after their media blitz, but still.

Dawn’s actions also cause Jack and Carol to break off their engagement. Poor Carol. I would feel so bad if my future stepdaughter flew across the country to get away from me.

But don’t worry, she always pulls herself up to the top of heap. I still don’t really understand what that means. Jeff doesn’t either.

So yeah, this book pretty much encourages children to steal from their parents if they don’t like their future stepparents. After all, the punishment won’t carry over into the next book and you’ll totally get what you want: a break up! Yay!

For next time: Mallory Pike, #1 Fan.

Stoneybrookite.com was up for regular, non-domain squatter sale, so I snapped it up. Now blog.stoneybrookite.org, stoneybrookite.org, and stoneybrookite.com will all point to this site.

The reason why I’ve been slacking off on posting lately is because I have a lot of work to do before I graduate in May, and it’s difficult for me to sit down and ponder long enough to come up with something to post about. So I decided that until my graduation, I’d try a new format and post my thoughts of a specific BSC book. Regular posting will resume before the end of May.

First up is Kristy’s Great Idea. As well as the first book in the series, it is the first BSC I read. I got it in a set of three from the Collector’s Club with Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls and The Truth About Stacey at the end of first grade. I guess you could make the case that this is the book that got me hooked, but, truth be told, I don’t think that it would have mattered how much I actually enjoyed the book. I was so in love with the idea of reading the BSC that the quality of the book didn’t matter. It just seemed like such a grown-up thing to me, especially since my mom had to use my brother’s Scholastic book club form to enroll me.

As I’ve mentioned before on this site, I actually enjoy the later books more than the early books. They just have a different feel to them. While it’s cute to see them forming the club and everything, it feels very different from the later books. Plus it’s always strange to see the girls in seventh grade rather than eighth, and having Mal be a sittee rather than a sitter. I think that KGI is probably the most realistic book of the entire series, and I think we lose some of the Thomas family closeness later on. Plus, you don’t really see the sitters mouth off to their parents and teachers in later books like you do in this book, which I appreciate.

Hmm, maybe I like this book more than I thought I did!

Next up, in case you’d like to read along with me: Dawn and the We <3 Kids Club.

Over the past few months I’ve taken to reading 1bruce1 as I am falling asleep. Here’s the thing about the SV universe and me: I read one or two Sweet Valley Kids as a kid (the one about the Orchid Club is the one I really remember), read Elizabeth’s Diary and then one of the ones in the trilogy about modelling/fashion magazines much later. But that’s pretty much it. It seems strange to me now that I never really got into Sweet Valley. I remember really enjoying the Sweet Valley Kids books I had.

I suppose it comes down to the fact that for the other series I read–BSC, GirlTalk, Saddle Club–my mother had enrolled me in book clubs where three books were sent to my house once a month. I also remember her believing that I was a bit too young for Sweet Valley High when I was in elementary school. I suppose the question is would I have like SV better than Stoneybrook, had I ended up actually buying the books and reading them? In BSC, although I suppose I felt differently when I was the age of the clients, I am bored by the baby-sitting and prefer the “Stacey” kinds of plots, dealing with drama and boy troubles and shopping. This is more along the lines of Sweet Valley-esque stuff. But then again there is something that just seems… trashier about Sweet Valley.

I suppose that we’ll never know, as I don’t feel like starting another book collection and reading the 1bruce1 snarks is entertaining enough for me. But for those of you who read both, which do you like better and why? How would you compare them?

My friend’s millionaire stepfather likes to take people on vacation, so I’m going with six of my best friends for Europe for 17 days! It’s going to be so dibble and I’m going to make everyone keep a diary so we don’t forget one detail of this awesome trip!

Just kidding.

I really AM leaving for Europe tonight, though. But instead of a friend’s millionaire stepfather paying the bill, I just have a lot of credit card debt.

Speaking of which, remember in Here Comes the Bridesmaids! when Mr. Kishi won’t let Mr. Schafer pay for Claud’s ticket? What about Baby-Sitters on Board, Shadow Lake, BSC in the USA? Do you think the girls’ parents paid Watson/Jack back? They didn’t really mention this detail. Considering that for the Europe and the Hawaii trips, the girls had to raise half of the money it seems a bit odd.

Anyway, I don’t now if I’ll blog or not. If I don’t… just keep contributing to the wiki!

I always enjoy reading the Letters From Ann on her site. In this letter, Ann takes us through her home.

Here is Ann sitting at her “desk”. As you can see, there is no computer! Ann is writing a book out on a yellow legal pad in this picture. There’s also what looks to be a finished manuscript–the next Main Street book perhaps? You can also see Sadie lounging in the lower right corner. Ann seems to have a fondness for strong, dark wood furniture and woodwork.

Ann’s kitchen. Can you spot the Wizard of Oz street sign? I also spy some cat tchotchkes. Ann’s kitchen is actually smaller than I imagined. Perhaps it opens up into a larger eating nook. The notecards that seem to be hanging precariously over the stove worry me–seems like a fire safety risk. Cook carefully, Ann.

Ann likes to exercise in her den. Sadly, in this shot she’s just sitting in her chair. Looking at her tv, I see that Ann has still not made the switch to a DVD player. Maybe she was holding out during the HD-DVD/Blu-ray battle? I also notice that there is no cable box. I hope that Ann is prepared for when analog broadcast ceases. She has until February 17th of next year.

Here is Ann’s complete collection of BSC books. I wish this were a higher quality pic so I could see what languages the books were. I once called Scholastic to see what exactly these nineteen languages were that the books were published in, but no one had an answer.

Ann at her sewing table. She seems to really like working at the end of long wooden surfaces.

And here, Ann appears to be making a Christmas card. How Claudia! Ann also has some heavy-duty tools laying around: a hammer, a blue electronic device that I can’t identify. And some more vaseline lotion like she had in the kitchen. Ann must also suffer from winter skin like me. I recommend LUSH Dream Cream.

And lastly, an oil painting Ann painted in second grade. Is it better than a Hodges Soileau painting? You decide!

Ann’s house features many small flower prints, dark wood, and the color yellow. That seems very Mary Anne to me.

MizzMarvel posted this article on her livejournal.

The article states:

When they get older, Logan, Eli and Collin Penn may blanch at the notion they wore nail polish to their first news conference. But it’s the only way their parents know how to tell the boys apart right now. The identical triplets were born Wednesday at North Shore University Hospital on Long Island — an event so rare that an obstetrician estimated it might happen just once in 200 million births.

I’m interested in whether Ann knew how rare identical triplets were when she made Adam, Byron, and Jordan Pike identical triplets. Until today, I had never given it a second thought. I had assumed that the ratio of fraternal triplets to identical triplets was the same as that for fraternal twins to identical twins. I had no idea that it was something which would merit national coverage.

Do you think that Ann just made the Pike triplets identical because she is so into big families and thought it was cool? She also seems to be very interested in identical twins, as you have Marilyn/Carolyn, Miranda/Mariah, and Abby/Anna. The only fraternal twins in the series I can think of are Tasha and Terry Hoyt, who, of course, could not be identical.

It seems to me like Ann really didn’t do her research here, because it seems like something would have been noted about the attention that the triplets received at birth. As MizzMarvel noted, I think it would definitely be something that Mal would have had issues with, since she was a lowly single, non-identical birth whereas BAJ got a ton of attention at birth.

It’s relatively well-known that Cary Retlin is named after a real person, and so are his brothers Ben and Steig. Some may also know that Steig Retlin did Amalia’s sketches in California Diaries.

So I googled him, to see what he’s up to these days, and he has a website called Plastic Flesh with a ton of his recent work on it. Awesome! And if you go on myspace you can find his and Cary’s profiles, which I won’t link to but they’re there nonetheless. Cary in real life is pretty cute, although a bit too outdoorsy for my taste. He definitely doesn’t look like a Mischief Knight, but maybe it was different when he was thirteen.

Anyway, it seems as if Cary in real life is friends with David Leviathan, who was an editor of the BSC. I think that’s the connection there, rather than Ann.

If you haven’t already, go to wiki and start editing! I haven’t had time to do much editing myself–lots of stuff before graduation–but everyone working on it has been doing a really awesome job.

So here’s the secret project I’ve been hinting at… a brand new BSC Wikipedia, using actual wikipedia software. Go check it out and edit some pages, there’s been a ton of work done on it already!

I am busy with schoolwork, preparing for my future, and the launch of a Very Special Stoneybrookite project on Monday (hopefully). But for now, it’s time for Fun With Photoshop.

I saw this picture of Jennifer Missoni on GFY and thought, “Wow, Mary Anne with dyed blond hair.” To make the transformation complete, I gave her MA’s short brown hair. Apologies in advance for lack of mad skills: