Throwback Thursday: The Babysitters Club #12 - Claudia and the New Girl

Hi!

I've been really looking forward to getting to this book, mainly because Claudia is my favourite member of the BSC (and probably one of my top book characters in general), but also because the style has been thin on the ground throughout the last few books. 

Firstly, the whitewashing is especially strong on the UK/Ireland cover of this one - could be Claudia Kishi, could be Darlene Conner. Who knows. A couple of years ago, blogger Phil Yu (aka Angry Asian Man) re-imagined some of the US covers to reflect what Claudia might have actually had to deal with during her time as a sitter, and while they are intentionally very funny, they're also a stark reminder of how Claudia should have been represented on these covers. 

We kick off with the aformentioned Claudia, who is finding it hard to concentrate in class. We've read in a previous book how Claudia sometimes feels like she's less intelligent than her sister and her peers, and this book is no different. She's struggling with schoolwork and focus. Then, suddenly, all Claudia's prayers are answered when a glam new girl, Ashley, walks into her classroom. 

Claudia knows immediately that she wants to be friends with Ashley - they both have very individual styles of fashion, they're both into art, and Claudia feels like at long last, she will have someone her own age who will understand her passion for art. Ashley does - but unfortunately that's ALL she sees. She's really dismissive of the BSC, and she encourages Claudia to try and spend more time on her art than "the uselessness" of babysitting. Frankly, she's a bit up her own arse and entirely too judgemental for a white girl wearing what's described as "an Indian headband". The club members are really upset when Claudia blows them off to spend time with Ashley, and Claudia ends up being pulled in both directions just trying to make everyone happy and find some time to do what she loves. The girls do some really shitty things to Claudia, including eating and/or hiding all her snacks, leaving her some rotten notes and entries in the club notebook, and short-sheeting her bed (which I had never heard of, but sounds like a really irritating sibling prank). 

The fashion in this book is predictably some of the best we've seen so far:

"[Ashley was wearing] a very pretty pink flowered skirt that was full and so long it touched the tops of her shoes - which I soon realized were not shoes, but sort of hiking boots. Her blouse, loose and lacy, was embroidered with pink flowers, and both of her wrists were loaded with silver bangle bracelets."

"[Ashley] was wearing a long, all-the-way-to-her-ankles dress with three rows of ruffles at the bottom. A strip of black cloth was tied around her head."

"Ashley was wearing a puffy white blouse, a blue-jean jacket, a long blue-jean skirt, and those hiking boots again. Beaded bracelets circled both wrists, and she'd tied a strip of faded denim around her head, like an Indian headband."

"[Claudia] was wearing a very short pink cotton dress, white tights, and black ballet slippers. I had swept all of my hair way over to one side, where it was held in place with a piece of pink cloth that matched the dress. Only one ear showed, and in it I had put my big palm tree earring."

This is the first time where we see how passionate Claudia is about art - when Ashley's last name is announced as Wyeth, Claudia asks her if she's related to the famous painter Andrew Wyeth (who painted one of my all time favourite pictures, Christina's World).  Claudia struggling at school and prioritising her artistic endeavours over her education was important representation - especially in the late 1980s. So important, in fact, that it inspired a generation of Asian women to follow their creative passions and continue to proudly break traditional stereotypes often placed upon them by society. There's an short documentary on Netflix about it, I really recommend you watch it - it's called "The Claudia Kishi Club". 

Meanwhile, Dawn's brother Jeff is still having problems adjusting after their parents divorce, and in a frankly bizarre scene, he calls Dawn when she's babysitting the Perkins girls and tells her he has been called in to the Principal's office at school but he can't get a hold of their mother. Dawn rocks up to the office, two little kids in tow, to try and speak to Jeff's teacher. Dawn is twelve? Thirteen? 

As usual, everything works out in the end, and Claudia even ends up having a sculpture displayed in a local art gallery. Everyone makes up, and all is right in Stoneybrook once more. 

Doritos (location undisclosed)

Bazooka Bubble Gum in her hollow book

Cookies under her pillow

Twinkies in her sock drawer

Pretzels in an old pajama bag

Crackers in the Monopoly box

Marshmallows in a shoe box

Licorice Sticks under her mattress

Claudia's English class are doing a project on a selection of books that have won a Newbery Medal. The Newbery Medals were started by the American Library Association in 1922, named after "the father of children's literature 18th century bookseller John Newbury, who is credited with making children's literature "a sustainable and profitable part of the business market". They are awarded annually to an author who has made "the most distinguishing contribution" to children's literature. You can view the full list of Newbery winners here. 

Claudia plays a game called "Red Light, Green Light" with some children she's sitting. We called this game Statues as kids, it's where one person faces away and the others try to creep up behind them before they turn back around. 

Claudia mentions having watched Woodstock, a 1970s documentary on the famous 1969 New York festival of the same name. I personally prefer the 1995 Wigstock movie, an equally defining moment in culture that can be seen on YouTube across 8 parts starting here. 

Stacey is wearing Moonlight Mist perfume and Claudia remarks that it smells like roses. This has to be Helena Rubinstein's Moonlight Mist, a fragrance released in the 1950s under both her main brand and her husband's Gourielli line. There's a beautiful high quality print ad currently listed on eBay that you can view here. 

Tissues at the ready for the next book, because Stacey's about to skip town. 

Throwback Thursday: The Babysitters Club #11 - Kristy and the Snobs

Hi!

Remember at the end of the last post back in September a whole four months ago when I said "I'll be back next week, I promise, I have it drafted already"? 

This week we're up to Book 11, with the spotlight on my least favourite sitter.

Our miniature soccer mom Kristy opens up this book about snobs by being, well, a massive snob. She declares her new neighbourhood to be "full of snobs" because it's an affluent area and the neighbours appear to have money. This book also kicks off with a passing comment about how an elderly dog is limping, WHICH IS NEVER A GOOD SIGN. Louie is taken to the vet who diagnoses him with...being elderly.

Kristy runs into some preppy girls & they have a brief interaction in which they call each other names, and meets one of them later when she's out with Louie. Shannon Louisa Kilbourne and her dog "Princess Astrid of Grenville" slag Louie off, and suddenly I'm #TeamKristy all the way. GET HER, KRISTY. 

When Kristy is sitting for some neighbours, Shannon prank calls her & tells her the house is on fire. Kristy freaks out before she realises what's happening and THIS. MEANS. WAR. Kristy gets Shannon back by sending "a man dressed as a stork" to her house to drop off "a huge package of diapers". Kristy, please. Who paid for this? This pranking goes back and forth, each one more juvenile than the last, until the girls eventually realise that they're not too different from each other after all. 

The inevitable happens and Louie passes away, in a very sad scene (I BAWLED) that involves the family making the decision to put him to sleep. Shannon comes through and tells Kristy that she can have one of Astrid's puppies if she wants, the girls all become friends & Shannon joins Logan in becoming an official associate member of the BSC. 

The style in this one is thin on the ground, as it tends to be when Kristy is the lead character, but luckily we have Myriah and Style Queen Gabbie Perkins to save us: 

"In Gabbie's room, she found Myriah wearing a pink party dress with white tights and shiny Mary Jane shoes. But Gabbie had a different idea about getting dressed up. She was wearing one of her mother's slips, a necktie belonging to her father, a feather boa, a straw hat, sunglasses and snow boots" 

Notable events in this book include:

The Perkins' shortlisting the names "Randy for a boy, or Randi for a girl" for their new baby. According to the CSO, there hasn't been a single Randy OR Randi born in Ireland between 1964 and 2019 (There is, however, a mini Sharon resurgence happening - after dropping off the face of the country for three years in 2014, the Sharons are on the rise again with 11 babies named Sharon in 2017, 2018, & 2019. Go team!).  

The Pikes all having the Chicken Pox (with Claudia still expected to babysit them) and winding each other up by doing "the bizzer sign", a hand signal they invented to annoy each other. My twins also had something like this, it was a sound that they used to SCREAM at each other until I banned the two of them from saying it, so I can absolutely vouch for how annoying something like this can be. 

Gummi Bears stashed inside her pillowcase

M&Ms (location undisclosed)

Stacey reads an article called "Getting What You Want: Dealing With Difficult People the Easy Way". This could possibly be a reference to the famous self-help book by Robert M. Bramson entitled Coping With Difficult People, first published in 1981. 

The Tenth Good Thing about Barney by Judith Viorst is mentioned, it's a children's book about dealing with pet loss.

Stacey knocks over some Lincoln Logs at the Delaney's house - I had never heard of these but they're very cool little logs used to build toy cabins & houses. They were inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame in 1999.

Book 12 is up next, Claudia has competition when a new artsy fartsy girl comes to town. What will happen? Excellent style, that's what. 

Throwback Thursday: The Babysitters Club #10 - Logan Likes Mary Anne!

Hi!

Buckle up, because the lack of style from last week is MORE than made up for by the presence of our second school dance so far in the series, the Remember September dance. 

But first - Logan Bruno. He's the new kid in school, hailing from Louisville, Kentucky (speaking of Kentucky - justiceforbreonna.org). He also just happens to be the spitting image of teen heartthrob Cam Geary, Mary-Anne's #1 Crush. She likes him. And, as is evident by the title, he likes her back.

I'm sorry, can we just address this cover for a second? Logan looks like he's sixty years old wearing a Boris Johnson wig. The UK/Ireland cover art never seemed to accurately depict the characters, Stacey and Dawn look nothing like they're described and Claudia is continually whitewashed. But this poor Logan guy takes the biscuit. I can almost hear Brad Mondo shouting "T-18 won't do shit!" at that yellow hair. Also, I had that jacket. 

So - because Kristy moved to a new neighbourhood when her mother married Watson, she now has access to a whole new babysitting client list. Unfortunately, she gets a little too over-enthusiastic with her advertising and the girls end up with too much work. Enter Logan - he was a sitter back in Kentucky, but can the girls really take a boy into the club? 

In the end, they agree that Logan will be their official alternate, taking up any jobs the girls can't do, but he won't go to the meetings because of the awkwardness they all felt when he was in Claudia's room when someone said the word "bra". 

Mary-Anne turns thirteen in this book, and as you can tell from this cover, she's over the MOON about it - the girls throw her a surprise party, and in true Virgo style, she walks out. In Ann M. Martin's letter to the reader, she talks about how Mary-Anne was the last of the group to turn thirteen, and thirteen they would all stay from that point on. She didn't want them to age out of the series, and she also wanted the shyest, most quiet girl in the group to be the first one to have a boyfriend. 

My favourite thing about this whole book was that one of the boys Mary-Anne and Logan sit for has a pet grasshopper, who is a boy, and who is named Elizabeth. And everyone is just completely accepting of it. Another pet makes his debut, with the arrival of Mary-Anne's first ever pet cat, Tigger. 

My second favourite thing is that we see the return of the Klondike number, when we learn that Logan's number is KL5-1018. I'm going to link this Washington Post article about the Klondike-5 phenomenon again, because I adore the whole concept of there being an alternate universe in which phone numbers are this simple. 

The Remember September Dance prep kicks off with a shopping trip for Mary-Anne, who also has a pretty cute birthday outfit (presumably she's wearing trousers too). 

For her birthday: Tiny hoop earrings and a gold chain bracelet that belonged to her mother, and a bright vest over a short-sleeved white blouse.

For the dance: A full white skirt with "London, Paris, Rome" and illustrations of landmarks on it. A pink shirt, baggy pink sweater, and white slip-ons with pink and blue edging. 

The outfit game is also strong with the other girls, apart from our Queen Claudia who only has one outfit mentioned this time (but it's a cracker). 

Mary-Anne's Birthday: Dawn wore hot-pink shorts, a big breezy island print shirt, and a white tank top. Claudia wore short, tight black pants and a big white shirt with "Be-Bop" and pictures of rock n' roll dancers on the front. 

The Dance: Stacey wore a white t-shirt under a hot pink jumpsuit. Dawn wore a green and white oversized sweater and stretchy green pants. Kristy wore a white turtleneck shirt, pink sweater, and blue jeans. 

Gumdrops and pretzels hidden in her pillowcase. 

Doritos.

Did you know that Doritos only came to the UK (and by extension, Ireland) in 1994?! This is what the logo on Claudia's bag looked like in 1988: 

Honourable mention for Dawn's lunch - strawberries, granola & yogurt, dried apple slices.

I'm 99% sure that I didn't know what granola was until I was about 25. 

The movie Meatballs is mentioned. Released in 1979, this was the first film to feature Bill Murray in a starring role. 

Paddington Takes the Air, Dr. Seuss' Happy Birthday to You and Tik Tok of Oz are books that appear in the Kid-Kit. I love how many real childrens books the author references.

Until next week (I promise, I have it drafted already)

Throwback Thursday: The Babysitters Club #9 - The Ghost at Dawn's House

Hi!

Book Nine in the series sees Dawn as the main character/narrator, it's the second book from her. You may remember from previous recaps that her last main storyline was when she became a twelve-year-old personal assistant/secretary/divorce mediator/childminder to Mrs. Barrett, who had impeccable fashion sense but a poor grasp on what "babysitting" actually constitues. 

In this book, we hear a little more about Dawn's family life. She lives with her mother Sharon and her nine year old brother Jeff in Stoneybrook, while her Dad lives in California. Dawn and Jeff shun the usual kid-favourite snacks in favour of "health food" like tofu, cottage cheese, salad (all I can hear is that guy from Hocus Pocus saying "they're very health conscious in Los Angeles") and crackers. I should keep track of how many packets of crackers Dawn and Stacey eat over the course of this series, because it's literally all they ever have while the others are eating Rolos from a shoe or wherever Claudia has hidden them. 

Dawn calls her Dad a "Disneyland Daddy" - a term that was so widespread at one point that it was defined on several legal websites. It's essentially a term used to describe a parent who, due to having less custody of a child, slips into the role of "entertainer" in order to make up for not being around for the mundane parenting tasks. I don't know if this made much of an impression on me as a kid - my own Dad wasn't around but it was highly unlikely he'd ever be taking us to Disneyland (spoiler: he did not) so I don't remember having any particularly strong feelings about Mr Schafer one way or the other. 

We pick this book up two weeks after the last book, in which we discussed the holiday that saw Stacey have her first kiss (thankfully not with the eighteen year old man she was crushing on), and Dawn is feeling a bit left out because Stacey and Mary-Anne keep talking about the holiday. I can relate, when I was in Secondary School a group of my friends all went to work in Mosney for the Summer (before it was a Direct Provision centre) and it was all anyone talked about for the first couple of weeks back at school. 

The main storyline of this one is that Dawn's house is old and creepy, and she is convinced that there's a secret passage somewhere on the land. There is, and when she finds it, it leads.......straight to her bedroom. The girls all get scared because they think there's a ghost, in particular the ghost of some guy who went missing (it's all very Now and Then-y) that Dawn reads about in the wonderfully titled "A History of Stoneybrooke" by the even more wonderfully titled "Enos Cotterling", who sadly is not real. 

As with many of the Babysitters Club books, this one  has a couple of incredible life lessons, one being the way Dawn speaks about the children she minds. She describes how the club never ask "what is this?" when looking at a picture or piece of art made by the kids. Instead, they ask "tell me about it" so they don't hurt their feelings and end up calling a picture of someone's Granny "a beautiful drawing of an elephant". This is something I still do with my own children, and it ensures that they are always proud of what they create and never embarrassed or ashamed that they did something "wrong". 

One thing that I loved about this book, and something I could identify with in every possible way, was that one of the kids Dawn babysat had a cabbage patch doll. The doll was named Cindy Jane but her "real name" was Caroline Eunice. Cabbage Patch dolls were HUGE in the 1980s, and they came with an adoption certificate as opposed to any kind of ownership certificate. The doll would be pre-named, which didn't always go down well. My own Cabbage Patch doll arrived to me christened Avis Freddie. She was, from that day to this, known as Mavis. 

At this point in the proceedings, I feel like I have to mention Babyland General Hospital, which has enjoyed a recent resurgence in popularity due to Tik Tok. The mere thought of it gives me the creeps, but should you want to witness the "live birth" of  Cabbage Patch dolls from a "mother cabbage", knock yourself out: 

I need to get me some of that imagicillin. 

That's really it for this book - some positive representation for children of divorced parents, with some spook thrown in. And thankfully, very little of Kristy. 

Unfortunately, we also get very little of Claudia, which means the style is thin on ground this time, the only mention being:

"A ring with a fierce green dragon's head on it"  that I imagine looked exactly like this. 

Snack watch, however, was much more successful.

A bag of chocolate kisses from a hollow book on her shelf

I feel like everyone my age, at some point in their life, wanted the following things: A metal detector, A Mr. Frosty, Clarks Magic Steps shoes, and a hollow book. I have still yet to own any one of these things. I'm presuming that chocolate kisses are the Hershey's ones that come wrapped in foil. 

There were a LOT of movies and books mentioned in this installment, the most notable being:

The Odd Couple

Dawn compares her and her mother to Felix and Oscar, the titular couple from the TV Series produced in the 1970s (which, incidentally, was co-created by Garry Marshall, who appeared in Hocus Pocus as the devil)

European Vacation

Or to give it the full title, National Lampoon's European Vacation. Released in 1985, starring Chevy Chase, directed by Amy Heckerling (who also directed Clueless).

Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase

Originally published in 1930, this book was adapted for film a few times, most recently in 2019.

Harold and the Purple Crayon

A children's book by Crockett Johnson originally published in 1955 about a little boy who creates the world he wants with a crayon.

Chutes and Ladders

A board game called Moksha Patam that originated in India in the 13th century to teach children Hindu Dharma and Hindu values. The British took the game to England in 1892 and changed it to suit themselves, renaming it to Snakes and Ladders (never not at it). It was then brought to the US by board game giants Milton Bradley in 1943 where it was rebranded "Chutes and Ladders". 

Until next time,

Throwback Thursday: The Babysitters Club #8 - Boy-Crazy Stacey

Hi!

So, in the last book, we ended with the information that the Pike family were going to go to Sea City on holiday and needed two sitters to go with them. Stacey and Mary Anne are the lucky pair, and off we go. 

The U.S version of the series included a "Dear Reader" letter from Ann M. Martin at the back of every book that explained how she came up for the concept of each story. This one was based on family holidays she had herself as a kid - Sea City is based on Surf City in New Jersey. 

Stacey served as my introduction to diabetes (I'd imagine many of us can say the same). As an adult, I really appreciate this - it wasn't who she was, it was just something she lived with and had to manage. Her friends were all understanding and accepting, and Claudia always had some plain crackers or popcorn for Stacey while the others snacked on candy.

So, it's August 1987 and the girls are all gathering at Kristy's new home for a last hurrah before the new school year. Stacey bemoans the fact that she really wants her ears double pierced, which led to an obsession with me wanting, and getting, mine double pierced. When the gang arrive, Kristy is sitting at the front door reading People magazine. 

One of the August 1987 issues of People featured Ryan White on the cover, a teenager who contracted AIDS via a blood transfusion. The whole article (Breaking America's Heart) is available to read on the People archive and I'd highly recommend it, it's still a powerful piece of writing 32 years later. I love that Kristy was reading something like this - I'm hoping it was intentional on behalf of the author to show that the kids were aware of what was going on in the world. Actually, reading this recent New Yorker article featuring Ann M. Martin, I'm convinced that it was intentional. 

Back to the story - Stacey and Mary Anne are going to Sea City for two weeks to be "mother's helpers" and mind the eight Pike kids. I LOVE that Stacey muses on the term, wondering if they should be called "parent's helpers" as they'll be helping Mr. Pike too. She boldly packs a bottle of Sun-Lite, which I assume is the same as the Sun-In we used to use to lighten our hair in the 1990s. 

At Sea City, Stacey almost immediately spots a couple of hunky lifeguards that she reckons are about seventeen years old and immediately declares herself in love with the blond one. She wears her new bikini proudly, and Mary Annes eyes "nearly bug right off her face" when she sees how skimpy it is. The hunky lifeguard is wearing "Noskote and lipcoat" which are both Sunscreen, but teenage me thought he was sporting lipcote, which was a lipstick sealer that my mother wore. 

Stacey is jealous of other girls who are friendly with the guards, and grumbles about not having "the supreme honor of doing favors for them. These girls got to bring them sodas and pick up anything that fell off the sand, one was even asked to fix them sandwiches for lunch". Stacey soon begins to neglect her responsiblities and forget why she's there, leaving Mary Anne to do the bulk of the babysitting while she obsesses over Scott, the eighteen year old lifeguard who calls her cutie, princess, love, honey, sweetheart, beautiful and continues to flirt with her even though she has told him from the beginning that she is thirteen. He later gives her his whistle (which is ridiculous, I mean it's a fairly crucial piece of equipment for a lifeguard). Stacey buys him a massive box of chocolates, but then sees him kissing a different girl (thankfully one his own age). 

Stacey is embarrassed and decides to avoid Scott for the rest of the holiday, and meets a boy her own age, Toby. She has her first kiss and all is right with the world once more.

The two notable outfits this week both come from Stacey: 

To Kristy's House: A pink shirt with bright green and yellow birds splashed all over it. A pair of baggy shorts, a wide green belt around my middle, silver bangle bracelets and a pair of silver earrings shaped like bells.

On Holiday: A white cotton vest over a pink cotton dress and a big white bow in my hair. 

Reading this as a teenager, I probably just fangirled over Scott and felt inadequate. I had regular crushes on people but generally was so lacking in confidence that I wouldn't have dreamed of having a kiss at 16, never mind 13. Reading it as an adult, I'm glad that this was a part of my little bubble when I was a child. Subtle little things (like the "parent's helper" quip, the part where Mary Anne's Dad openly cried, Stacey being perfectly responsible with managing her diabetes and the fact that there was a boy sitter on holiday) are what I definitely needed to read about in that era, when I consumed a huge amount of American teen TV and the only peers I saw were pretty cheerleaders who were devoted to boys. I'm glad that Stacey saw through Scott and came through the whole experience with a fond memory to look back on rather than something that could have been really damaging.  

No snack watch this week as Claudia didn't really feature, but the Pop Culture references were strong: 

Stacey packs an Agatha Christie mystery book. 

Mary Anne is reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. 

The group make an ice-cream stop at Howard Johnson's - HOJO were once as popular as McDonalds, with 28 ice cream flavours on the menu. Only one official branch remains. 

Mallory read The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and talks about Elizabeth Barrett Browning 

The younger kids mention Charlie and the Chocolate Factory 

See you next week!

Throwback Thursday: The Babysitters Club #7 - Claudia and Mean Janine

Only links to Book Depository or Amazon are Affiliates. 

Hi!

Firstly, the response to this series has been so great, so thank you! It's nice to know that the BSC hold a special place with loads of us of a certain vintage. In that vein, Aoife has done a great post about where she thinks the main club members would be now:

Pretty Purple Polka Dots: The Babysitters Club - Where Are They Now?

This week, I'm up to Book 7 and my favourite sitter, Claudia Kishi.

It's July, so there's no school, but the Kishis are all still busy. Claudia is taking art classes, her older sister Janine takes advanced summer courses at the University, and their parents are off to work (her mother is a librarian and her father is a partner in an investment business). Claudia thinks that Janine is blah, and Janine thinks Claudia is immature. Their mother thinks they're both jealous of each other.

The way Janine speaks is reminiscent of the time Joey Tribbiani discovered a thesaurus - "I was simply trying to uphold my end of a meaningful conversation with my sibling". This drives Claudia up the walls, as she already feels like she lets her family down by not being as smart or interested in schoolwork. Unbeknownst to her, Janine wishes that she had Claudia's circle of friends and feels that her only role in the family is to become a physicist. 

In this book, we learn that Claudia's family are Japanese immigrants, and arrived to the U.S when her Grandmother Mimi was in her thirties. Mimi is a calming influence, always supportive of Claudia and doesn't seem to be as obsessed with success as Claudia's parents are. Unfortunately, also in this book, Mimi has a stroke and this serves as one of those classic BSC "life isn't fair" storylines. Honestly, I feel like at times these books prepared me for adulthood better than anything I ever learned at school. When Mimi gets ill, the sisters have to figure out how to work together. Janine isn't actually "mean" (Claudia's kind of mean, tbh), she's just devoid of personality and doesn't have anything in common with Claudia. 

We get another reminder of the infamous BSC phone number, KL5 - 3231. In a previous recap, I linked a really good article about the use of Klondike in TV shows and books - here's another great one if you fancy a trip down a Pop Culture wormhole: This is Why the Fake Phone Numbers in Movies Start With 555

The rest of the story involves a Summer Play Camp that the club set up, which is the usual Karen Brewer/Morbidda Destiny nonsense, Jenny Prezzioso (the original Toddlers & Tiaras kid) swanning about in party frocks, and the washing of a dog that ends up with Mallory Pike painting his nails and the ever-problematic Kristy saying "You don't think Louie looks too much like a girl, do you? If anybody asks tomorrow, I'll just say his name is Louella"

My moment of the week is a shoutout to Auntie Nora, whoever she is. There's a christening party happening at the Newtons, and Nora is clearly planning to get lit to the tit on cocktails because she has her very own bespoke jar labelled "Auntie Nora's Swizzle Sticks". You go, Auntie Nora. 

Notable outfits this week include:

Claudia: Black jeans, a bright blue t-shirt and a snake bracelet above her elbow

Stacey: Knee-length lime green shorts, matching green high-top sneakers, long white t-shirt with a yellow Taxi Cab on the front.

Dawn: Striped pants with suspenders over a red shirt.

Claudia: A big, loose white shirt with black splotches all over it, white pants that come to just below her knees, with dainty gold sandals that laced partway up her legs. She wore pink flamingo earrings and beaded bracelets. 

Cupcakes in her desk drawer

Licorice in her pencil case

M&Ms in her jewelery box

Gumdrops "somewhere"

Snacks, books and clothes must have been really cheap in Connecticut in the 1980s, because I have no idea how Claudia is able to maintain this level of materialism on a 13 year old babysitters wage. 

This week, I'm adding a new section that I hope to go back and include on the other installments - a Pop Culture watch. The series mentions so many TV shows, books and movies from the mid 80s right up to the late 1990s, and I think it'd be a shame to ignore them. 

Claudia is addicted to Nancy Drew books, and mentions a number of titles that she owns: 

The Clue of the Tapping Heels

The Message in the Hollow Oak

The Clue in the Crossword Cipher

The Phantom of Pine Hill

I remember seeing Nancy Drew books in the library as a child but don't recall reading many of them. All of the ones mentioned above are real titles. She also mentions that she has a copy of  The Guinness Book of World Records in her room. 

Bohren's Movers get a shout out via an old t-shirt worn by Kristy, they're a family owned moving business based in New Jersey. 

For the kids, Candy Land crops up in this installment. It's the board game that presumably served as a source of inspiration for Candy Crush, given that the main screen looks exactly like the traditional board. To date it's still popular, selling over a million copies a year.

The Saggy Baggy Elephant by Kathryn Jackson was mentioned as one of the younger kids favourite books. We had a Great-Aunt who regularly sent us little Golden books from the U.S  - they're still being published, and are available on Book Depository.

Next week is the one in which a thirteen year old girl develops a crush on an adult man, who completely encourages it. Brace yourselves. 

Throwback Thursday: The Babysitters Club #6: Kristy's Big Day

Nothing to disclose.

Hi!

After a short (okay, almost a year long - I'm a Gemini, it's not my fault) hiatus, and the news that our favourite group of sitters are getting a whole new TV show soon courtesy of Netflix, it's time to dive back in to our weekly recaps and see what the girls are getting up to in book six. 

Kristy Thomas (my least favourite, FYI) takes the lead in this one.

Kristy's mother Elizabeth is marrying Watson, a millionaire. He has two children, Andrew and Karen (who gets her very own very annoying spin-off series). After the wedding in September, the plan is for everyone to move across town to Watson's mansion.

But, because things going smoothly does not an interesting read make, disaster hits when Elizabeth is told she will be in Europe for work in September. Plus, OH NO, the Realtor has just found a buyer for their house. They have to bring the wedding forward immediately so they can move to Watson's.

Holy loose plot, Batman.

Co-habiting obviously is not acceptable in Stoneybrook in the late 1980s (even though Watson and Elizabeth have six children between them), so there's a huge panic and it's all hands on deck. This means that all of Elizabeth's family are coming to stay for the week to help organise a quick wedding, bringing with them a frankly ludicrous eleven children under ten. Add in Kristy's younger brother and almost step-siblings, and that makes fourteen kids - the BSC's most adventurous undertaking yet. Elizabeth and Watson are paying them a massive $120 each to watch the fourteen kids for the week.

It's fairly solid BSC stuff from there on - Karen being a massive arsehole and scaring younger kids with stories about aliens and witches and Morbidda Destiny, other kids misbehaving, etc. Eventually the wedding goes ahead without a hitch and Kristy gets to wear her gross-sounding yellow dress with "the special shoes that they can dye to match" for her role as Bridesmaid.

The special moment this week goes to the phone call from Mrs. March, which went like this:

"Hello, this is Marmee March. I need a sitter for Amy tonight, someone who has experience with little women."

If you know, you know. 

Also worth mentioning is another school dance - this time called  The Final Fling. 

This series (and SVH) served as my introduction to many, many American words and concepts, including two found here - for years I thought "hors d'oeuvres" and "orderves" were two different things, and I thought a "pocketbook" was a pocket sized book and that people in America must really love reading if they bring miniature books with them everywhere.

On to the notable outfits - given that we get very little details about Kristy's dress apart from the fact that it's yellow, the outfit spot this week has to go to the one who never lets us down, Claudia Kishi:

Claudia was wearing a black leotard & skintight red pants under a white shirt that was so big it looked like a lab coat. She had pinned her long black hair back at the sides with red clips. 

A huge bag of M&Ms under her bed in a box labelled "ARTWORK: STILL LIFS AND PORTRTTS"

A snickers in the drawer of her jewellery box

Ring Dings from the "STILL LIFS" box

A roll of Life Savers from her pocket

M&Ms and Snickers are fairly self explanatory, We've seen Ring Dings before in Book 4, and Life Savers are essentially Polo Mints and my beloved Polo Fruits that have vanished off the face of the planet. 

Until next week! Or next year, who knows.

Throwback Thursday: The Babysitters Club #5: Dawn and the Impossible Three

Nothing to Disclose.

Hi!

This week almost didn't happen because Polyvore shut down without warning and took all my outfit sets with it - if you also used it, you can retrieve your data before May 28th by signing in to your account here: https://account-update.polyvore.com/cgi/data-tool.

We're up to Book Five - and it's the turn of California girl Dawn Schafer.

The book starts with a little recap of who everyone is, and what has happened so far. Dawn has recently moved to Stoneybrook with her little brother Jeff and their mother, Sharon (a former flame of Richard Spier, Mary-Anne's Dad). Dawn is a super-healthy avocado-loving all-natural girl that would be bang on trend in 2018 - I'm fairly sure this was my first introduction to tofu. And probably avocados. 

Mary-Anne has become a new woman since Book 4 - her Dad has now relaxed a little and let her stay out later, plus she has contact lenses and JEANS. Jeans! The ever-stylish Claudia Kishi and Stacey McGill have a discussion in this book about using egg rinse and lemon in their hair to keep it shiny - I too used lemon in my hair at school, because one of my friends told me it'd lighten it. See also: household bleach, Sun-In....none of which worked on my hair (thankfully). The more I read these books the more I realise how much of an impact they had on me as a child - I remember buying a pair of dice earrings purely because I knew they were the type of thing Claudia would have worn. 

Anyway - I'm rambling. Back to the plot of this book. Dawn books a job sitting for the Barrett kids. Their mother is a young, really stylish woman - I've included her iconic outfit in this weeks collage - but their house is an absolute shit hole. Here's what Dawn encounters when she first walks in:

I noticed that Suzi's jumper was coming unbuttoned, and that Mamie's diapers were drooping and the hem was falling out of her overalls. A grubby bandage was wrapped around one of Buddy's fingers. All three kids needed to have their hair brushed.

I looked in the living room. It was a sight. Newspapers and toys were scattered everywhere. A plateful of crumbs sat under a lamp. Something red had been spilled on the coffee table and was never wiped up. Our house might have been disorganized, but the Barretts' house was a pigsty.

I dared to glance in the kitchen. What a mistake. The sink was overflowing with pots and dishes, napkins and Popsicle wrappers, and about a million TV dinner trays. The breakfast dishes were still on the table. I could tell exactly what Mrs. Barrett had served because the remains were in plain view. Soft-boiled eggs (the yolks, now crusty, glued to the plates); orange juice (dried pulp in the glasses), bananas (peels on the table), and Pop-Tarts (crusts stuck in a glass).

Yick. Ew, ew, ew.

Dawn sorts the house and the kids, Mrs. Barrett is delighted, and then comes to rely a little too much on Dawn (WHO IS TWELVE) to keep doing it. And not only the cleaning and childminding - fielding calls from her ex-husband and landing her in the middle of a fairly toxic custody situation. Dawn puts her foot down, says no, and makes Mrs. Barrett realise how unfair she is being. 

Speaking of unfair, Kristy is being a wagon as per because Mary-Anne and Dawn are becoming close friends, and Kristy is jealous. When is she ever not jealous?

Here are the notable outfits: 

Stacey: A simple pink t-shirt under a baggy jumpsuit with big pink and red flowers all over it.

Dawn: Blue jean shorts and a white t-shirt that said 'genius inside'.

Mrs. Barrett: A silk blouse, sleek linen suit, brown heels and gold jewellery.

The special mention this week goes to Puff, the Magic Dragon - not actually a song about marijuana, but a really bloody sad tune about the end of childhood. I cried.

Gummi Worms hidden in her desk drawer

How does Claudia have any teeth left? Gummi worms are gelatin-based worm shaped jellies made almost entirely from sugar. 

Throwback Thursday: The Babysitters Club #4: Mary Anne Saves the Day

Nothing to Declare

Hi!

We're up to book four, and it's Mary Anne Spier's turn.

Mary Anne lives alone with her overprotective Dad, Richard. Her mother died when Mary Anne was very young, and her Dad has some incredibly strict rules. Mary Anne must wear her hair in braids (okay, Richard), dress very conservatively (penny loafers, sweater vests and corduroy skirts) and be home at 6pm sharp. She can't stay out as late as the others when she's babysitting, and she is forbidden to wear trousers to school because........I have no idea. Luckily, she's close to Claudia's Grandmother, Mimi, who is teaching her how to knit.

Mary Anne feels like her Dad is infanilizing her, to the point where her bedroom still looks like a nursery, with pink ruffles everywhere and childish pictures on the wall. All she wants is to paint her walls navy and yellow and hang posters of kittens and New York, dammit Richard!! At one point she does stand up to him and call him "her jailer", which doesn't go down too well.

As a kid, I'm sure I just detested Richard and had no interest in his uber-conservative ways, but in this one, we get a LOT of back story. He's an overworked lawyer, he's a single parent, his wife died from cancer over a decade ago, and he wrote poetry to his high school girlfriend who had awfully disapproving parents. I'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt.

In this book, we are introduced to Dawn Schafer, California girl. Dawn has recently moved to the neighbourhood with her mother Sharon, and becomes friendly with Mary Anne after the BSC have a massive falling out with each other. With the girls not speaking, Dawn proves to be a godsend - least of all when Mary Anne has an emergency while babysitting little Jenny Prezzioso. The way Mary Anne deals with Jenny convinces her father to loosen the reins a little, plus his old high school girlfriend may be closer than he thinks...

The main outfit mention in this book goes to the one Mary Anne says she'd love to wear if she had control over her own clothing choices - I also had to put Stacey's "one is a dog and one is a bone" earrings in there too.

"Just once, I'd like to go to school wearing skintight turquoise pants, Stacey's "island" shirt with the flamingos and toucans all over it, and maybe bright red, high-top sneakers." 

A special mention to the extra-juvenile/absolute dire unprofessionalism of going to Jamie Newton's 5th birthday party and spilling punch on each other, stepping on each others toes, and throwing wet paper towels at each other. Yes, girls, yes. Please, mind my newborn child. How Mrs. Newton didn't throw them all out is beyond me.

Ring-Dings hidden in a pajama bag.
Ring-Dings appear to be some kind of hybrid between a tea cake and a wagon wheel. They're now called Ding-Dongs. I don't know what a pajama bag is. I presume some kind of bag to put your pajamas in but - why?!

Throwback Thursday: The Babysitters Club #3: The Truth About Stacey

Nothing to Declare 

Hi!

Continuing on with the recaps of my favourite childhood series, we have one from Stacey.

Stacey McGill has only been in Connecticut for a few months - before, she and her parents lived in New York in a building that overlooked Central Park. They left for a few reasons, one being Stacey's diagnosis with diabetes.

Stacey's parents are always looking for new discoveries that may help their daughter, so when they hear about a holistic doctor that specialises in experimental treatment, they think it will cure Stacey. Only - Stacey mentions him to the mother of one of the kids she babysits, who just so happens to be a doctor, and she's not impressed - he doesn't have a great track record. So, what's Stacey to do?

I'd wager that I had never even heard of diabetes before reading this. It gives a really great insight into what a 12 year old might go through - from struggling with having to watch what she eats and injecting her medication, to worrying about how it will affect her friendships. It's a really sensitive look at how a pre-teen deals with an illness, and it definitely made me more aware of what other people may be going through.

The wider issue going on here has Kristy absolutely FUMING - there's a new babysitting crew in town. They're older, they're cheaper, and they can stay out later. Kristy will stop at nothing to take them down - even if it means booking them for fake jobs to get information, or making the other girls wear sandwich boards around school advertising the club. There's also a mention of a poster with the slogan "YOUNGER IS BETTER" on it. Absolutely no comment.

This book mentions something that will be instantly recognisable to anyone who pays attention to phone numbers in books or films - a telephone number beginning with KL. In this book, Kristy gives her number as "KL5-2321". The Washington Post did an article last year about these numbers, I'll link it for fellow pop culture nerds to read (I found it really interesting) - A Directory for Klondike 5 - The Most Famous Telephone Exchange in the World.

Unfortunately, there were no real outfits to speak of, but Stacey did talk about some of her favourite accessories:

"Dinosaur brooch on a beret, red sneakers covered with beads and glitter, leg warmers covered in footprints, and plastic butterflies in my hair"

My favourite quote, however, is this one, referring to a woman who had given birth a few weeks before:

"I was surprised to see that Mrs. Newton still looked, well, fat. Not pregnant, exactly, but not the way I'd thought she would look after the baby was born."

THANK YOU, Ann M. Martin, for not squeezing poor Mrs. Newton into a pair of skintight jeggings.

A roll of Life-Savers hidden in a shoebox under her bed.
Life-Savers are pretty much identical to Polo Mints. As an aside, can you still get Polo Fruits?! I loved Polo Fruits......also, I found out while searching this that there are 23 mints in a standard roll of Polos. There's one for your next table quiz, fellow middle-agers.

A bag of Gumdrops and a packet of Saltines from under the cushion of her armchair.
Do we have gumdrops in Europe?! They look like they taste of the cheap fruity pastilles that come in Easter Eggs or Gingerbread House kits. Saltines are small square plain salted crackers.