I honestly never minded Janine. Possibly because I'm actually a little bit like her, minus the love for science and math. But I sometimes talk too much and am way too attached to my computer.
I just thought of something - who wants to bet Janine was a gamer?
I think she builds stuff in Second Life and is quietly making a mint in Linden dollars. And if Claudia ever had a good snoop in her room, she'd find a lot of manga in textbook dustjackets, and Pocky and Pretz in cunningly chosen hidey-holes.
When I reread this book last year, I thought it should be named either Mean Claudia and Janine or Janine and Mean Claudia. But then it doesn't rhyme as well. So...
I always sort of assumed that she had a longer name beginning with 'Mi' and the girls called her 'Mimi' when they were little because it was easy to pronounce. I bet Janine was one of those kids who talked in complete sentences before her second birthday. 2YO Claudia would be all 'Claudia want Twinkie!' and 2YO Janine would be all 'May I have an apple, please, Mimi?' And she would never say can I in place of may I :)
In SS2 Claudia's postcard to Mimi is addressed to Mrs L Yamamoto, which is kind of strange since L doesn't exist in Japanese. In later books it says Mimi is her real name. I don't know if it is a Japanese name or not, I looked in a name book and it said Mimi is an Italian short form of Maria. It also said that Claudia means lame.
Maybe the Kishis are millionaires from running a drug cartel or something (and they can't tell the kids they're loaded, cause Janine would ask too many questions) and they drop so much dough at Chez Maurice that everyone knows them by name.
In #33 (I can't remember the title, it's the one where Claudia thinks she's adopted) the Kishi's have a big box full of money hidden in their room. They say it's for emergencies, but Mr Kishi is an investment banker or something, so perhaps he's an embezzler, or laundering money for the Japanese mob.
Yeah, they have a cash-box for emergencies - but frankly that sounds like a pretty good idea to me. It only has a few hundo in it if memory serves. But I'm sure the Kishis are financially well off. Stoneybrook seems to be pretty upper-middle-class that way - every other dad's a lawyer or something financial.
And fourth, I can tell you from experience that saying "Oh my GAWD you are SO ANTISOCIAL!!! Stop spending so much time in your room!!!" DOES NOT WORK. Fer serious. Mostly it just makes the introverted (NOT antisocial, antisocial people will actually do nasty stuff to you, not just stay out of the way) person feel even less capable of mixing (generally they will think 'You don't even seem to like me - what in the world do you want me to come out of my room for?'). Claudia is my favourite of the BSC girls but man, I look forward to the day when she grows up enough to see Janine's point of view, and understand that she was just being herself, not having a go at Claudia with everything she did
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I just thought of something - who wants to bet Janine was a gamer?
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*is totally going to title my posts with that from now on*
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Mimi's name always bugged me, too! As you said, it's not impossible, but it's not very plausible.
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I bet Janine was one of those kids who talked in complete sentences before her second birthday. 2YO Claudia would be all 'Claudia want Twinkie!' and 2YO Janine would be all 'May I have an apple, please, Mimi?'
And she would never say can I in place of may I :)
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In #33 (I can't remember the title, it's the one where Claudia thinks she's adopted) the Kishi's have a big box full of money hidden in their room. They say it's for emergencies, but Mr Kishi is an investment banker or something, so perhaps he's an embezzler, or laundering money for the Japanese mob.
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But I'm sure the Kishis are financially well off. Stoneybrook seems to be pretty upper-middle-class that way - every other dad's a lawyer or something financial.
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