Previously: Dawn has legit issues but we instead spend a whole book bringing Toddlers and Tiaras to Stoneybrook.
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Sweeney: It has been a while, Traumateers.
Lorraine: Yeeeeeah. Well. About that…
JUST KIDDING! We’re not going to actually address that at all.
Sweeney: One of the many things the various Ghost Writing Collectives have taught me is that you can bring things up without ever contextualizing it or following through with it. And you can still be considered a paid writer for doing so. No, I’m not bitter about that or anything.
Let’s get down to business.
I started this book expecting to feel empathetic towards Jessi because (1) the BSC and I have had a little time apart; absence, fonder, blah blah blah. (2) Jessi is perhaps the greatest Fun With Stereotypes example in all of Stoneybrook. -and- (3) My last few posts demonstrated an unfortunate tendency towards sympathy for these incredibly dull little brats.
Apparently, here in Traumaland, absence makes the heart grow snarkier. (Lor: LOVE.) It is a good thing that wine is cheaper than water where I live because that is clearly the only way I could get through this.
Jessi begins the book by explaining to us what bilingual means (“you speak two languages really, really well”) and how dance is a language too and, “I feel like I’m talking in circles.” You too?
Lor: She said dance is a language, for reals?
Uh, the language of CRAZY?!
Sweeney: The fact that Jessi takes the dramatic pause around introducing us to the fact that her family is black is to be expected given that this series is actually just the precursor to #whitegirlproblems and in the previous books we learned that this town in late 1980’s Connecticut has Jim Crow era racism going on.
What bothers me is that a great paragraph about how she wouldn’t have to announce that if she were white is followed by a paragraph about how she also would not have to tell you if you saw her because her skin is the color of “darkish cocoa.” Also, she goes on to describe Claudia as “exotic.” #fail
Lor: My favorite part is that she tells us she’s black, and still the Ghost Writing Collective (GWC) feels the need to further define being black by telling us the color of her skin. Dear sweet Lord.
Sweeney: EXACTLY. I wanted so badly to be able to congratulate them for that totally unexpected allusion to white privilege and then they just ruined it.
Being a product of STEREOTYPING LOLZ does not excuse Jessi the Stoneybrook plague of being painfully uninteresting. She dedicates multiple paragraphs to her morning alarm clock routine and briefly mentions her family. Every other girl has referred to her parents as Mom and Dad (although the series is light on fathers) but because the almost certainly all white GWC was having heaps of Fun With Stereotypes, Jessi’s family is Mama, Daddy, and nicknamed siblings — Becca and Squirt.
Lor: “Mama?” If you could see my dance language right now, it’d be saying, “fuck you Ann M. Martin.”
Sweeney: You’ll have to vlog this for us, Lor.
Eventually the GWC got tired of the complicated waters they were treading in, so we switch to pages of ballet terminology instead, including an explanation of the ballet that Jessi is trying out for.
Then we get the extended introduction to the BSC, which is cut and pasted into each of the 100+ books in the series, as if anyone were ever going to sit down and say, “Yes, Baby-Sitters Club #84! This sounds like a thrilling choice for the afternoon.”
Anyway, the main reason that Jessi earns no points with me comes in this chapter, when she is introducing Kristy: “She has a big mouth and loves to be bossy. Some kids don’t like her, but I do. I like lively people who surprise you now and then.”
Listen, new girl, there is nothing surprising about Kristy. You can always count on her to be a bitch. End of story.
Lor: Though “lively” is a nice euphamism for “twat.”
Sweeney: Consider that added to the Snark Squad Lexicon, and my daily vocabulary. I am going to dispense so many veiled insults in the days ahead!
The chapter ends by introducing us to the new family that ultimately forms the story, as per the formula of BSC books. This time it is the Braddocks who have two kids, one of whom is deaf. As explained by a lot of contrivance, Jessi — WHO IS IN THE SIXTH GRADE — is the only one available for the twice a week job with a 9 year old and 7 year old. Jessi is super pumped because, “working with a handicapped child sounded really interesting.”
Jessi goes to ballet class the day after her audition and we learn that she is hated by two twelve-year-olds, Hilary and Katie Beth, because catty white girls always have two first names. Jessi is given the starring role in the show, even though she’s a bit young for the part because middle schoolers are the only competent people in Stoneybrook. The claws come out in the dressing room when Hilary and Katie Beth deliver such unthinkable insults as “teacher’s pet.”
It is time for Jessi to learn sign language so that she can babysit a seven-year-old deaf child, even though she herself is only eleven, because that’s the kind of thing that is acceptable in this town. Matthew (the deaf child) has a nine-year-old sister named Hayley who is constantly described as pixie-like and grinning, which made me think of Alice in Twilight and then I just hated myself too much to continue.
Kidding, I just needed a little more wine.
Lor: It’s 9am where I am, so I’m not sure how to best combat my horror at an 11 year old watching a 7 and 9 year old. Overdose on breakfast cereal? Life is hard.
Sweeney: Fortunately we don’t have those problems in France. I’ll have a drink at 9am if I damn well feel like it.
We get a rough overview of the politics of learning sign language, versus a focus on lip reading and I get the sense that someone in the GWC had a crisis of conscience for all of the other inappropriate things happening in this book so they decided to briefly try to be educational and non-offensive. Don’t worry, it won’t last.
There is a bit about making up signs for your names, which I remember from the TV series. This is one of the few books that I remember more from the show than the book.
Haley gave Matt an “annoyed look” which Jessi could tell “meant a lot.” Later, they have a run-in with Jenny Prezzizio who is four and the notorious brat of the series, liked only by Mary Anne, because Mary Anne is obligated to like everyone by virtue of being the least interesting fictional character ever created. Jenny is an awful little twat to Matt, and Haley loses her shit. She gets mad at Matt and then, basically, at the world for being unfair. To which Jessi’s internal monologue responds, “Well, I could sympathize. In Stoneybrook being black wasn’t any easier.”
Lor: LIFE IS HARD.
Sweeney: There are a lot of interactions between Jessi and Haley, which all feel impossibly weird because I just can’t get past the fact that Jessi is 11 and Haley is 9, but the two girls are never presented as peers.
Jessi decides that what the kids need is to make friends, because apparently in the time since they moved to town, their parents never thought to do anything to facilitate that, proving once again that the middle school houses the only remotely competent individuals in this disturbing town. Jessi takes them over to the Weasley Pike house — a plot device that we’ve used before, I might add (relying on the Pike house as a go-to for a friendless kids).
Jessi and Mallory are able to convince the younger kids that Matt being deaf is actually super cool because he knows a secret language and speaking without making noise would be a great way to evade the parental units. Haley then gets to be super important and awesome because she knows the secret language, and everything is swell.
I think my favorite Jessi line of the book comes when she cuts off one of the ridiculous BSC Notebook entries: “I have to stop Dawn and Mal’s notebook entry here. It goes on forever.”
Ahem.
Unfortunately Jessi does not spare us many pages of boring babysitting shit before getting to the actual point of the story, which is that the kids were so excited about “the secret language” that they began making up signs to tease each other. (I have a big family. This sounds pretty accurate to me.)
Lor: Isn’t it a law that you have to learn all the naughty words of a language first? No?
Sweeney: Somehow the girls deduced that this means that they would (1) be super eager to learn proper ASL -and- (2) would learn it incredibly quickly.
One day Jessi ends up having to stay late after rehearsal to wait for her father. Katie Beth also ends up staying late so that her mother can talk to their dance teacher. Holy Contrivance, Batman — Katie Beth has a deaf little sister! Ah, but they are a Bad Family, who send Adele (the sister) off to a special school most of the year and nobody in the family has bothered to learn any sign language, not even bathroom (I call bullshit). Jessi talks to Adele and suddenly Katie Beth is super intrigued and it is implied that now she’s going to become an awesome sister and stop being a raging bitch to Jessi because major character flaws really do disappear after two minute exchanges.
Lor: Unless you are Lively Kristy!
Sweeney: A+
Meanwhile, “the secret language” is taking off all over Stoneybrook. Apparently, ASL is so easy to learn that all of the girls have picked it up in a matter of days and started teaching it to nearly every child in town. Claudia uses it as a babysitting game in order to get Karen to stop terrorizing Andrew and David Michael (because terrorizing other children is her specialty).
Anyway, while Matt is playing a baseball game with the Pike boys, in which they have not only miraculously learned all sports-related signs, but actually use them in lieu of speaking without being prompted to do so, Jessi has a heart to heart with Haley. She talks about sticking up for her brother but also resenting him at the same time and it’s actually a pretty cute couple of pages, but then I realize that this is another recurring theme of these books that I’m going to have to read a hundred more times and why the hell did I do this to myself?
The things I do for you people.
Haley mentions that Matt has never been to a play or a concert, which makes Jessi go all ZOMG BALLET! ZOMG KATIE BETH’S DEAF SISTER.
Also, she gets TEN free tickets to her recital. I know I continue to call bullshit on the most pointless of things in this heaping pile of contrivance, but COME ON, TEN TICKETS? Never. Everyone who had a lot of recitals or plays as a child knows I’m right.
Jessi dispenses her free tickets to her family and the entire BSC, and also gets her ballet school to invite Matt’s class at his school to attend the opening night performance because dance is all about telling stories with your body and they’ll be able to feel the vibrations of the music and basically this ballet is going to radically change their lives. Matt gets super excited and tells Jessi, “You’re my best grown-up friend.”
SHE IS ELEVEN. ELEVEN. ELEVEN. ELEVEN. STOP IT.
Lor: I need another hit of cereal.
Sweeney: Kristy babysits for Jessi’s siblings and the whole story about Matt and Haley’s struggles to fit in reopens the conversation about how Becca was alienated when she first came to Stoneybrook and Kristy seriously tries to compare it to how the rich girls didn’t like her when she moved to Watson’s house. AS IF THESE TWO THINGS ARE EVEN REMOTELY COMPARABLE. Yes, of course, that one time when you were a middle class white girl trying to adapt to your new trappings as a wealthy white girl, you totally felt a degree of alienation comparable to moving to a new school and being the only black kid. TOTES THE SAME THING, KRISTY.
l;akdjf;laskdjflk
Anyway, moving away from Twatzilla, and back to the Super Awesome Life Changing Thing that this eleven-year-old has organized, she not only arranged for those kids to attend, but she also arranged for Haley to narrate the story and Haley’s mom to sign that narration, so she’s also doing something super cool for Haley too, so high five, for that, I guess? I mean, aside from how unrealstic and improbable all of the events leading up to this moment are, that’s impressive.
Katie Beth had heard about the Super Awesome show and told her parents so Adele is in the audience and Katie Beth is now taking sign language classes and has stopped being a bitch. The sisters engage in SVH levels of crying in the last pages because they’re way excited to become sisters now that Katie Beth has gotten over the whole being a shit person thing.
And then the book ends with the whole gang going to a diner for sundaes. I swear I am not making this up.
Lor: Because black and white people can agree: sundaes are delicious.
Next time on the Baby-sitters Club: Mary Anne has a lot of bad luck which she genuinely blames on a chain letter, and we get to enjoy a blast from the past when physical chain letters were still a thing in BSC # 17 – Mary Anne’s Bad Luck Mystery.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
