#98: Dawn and Too Many Sitters, Chapters 1-3
I’m cursing myself for having gotten rid of so many of these when I moved out of my parents’ house. Once upon a time, my bookshelves were a veritable rainbow of pastel spines and Hodges’s Uncanny Valley landscapes. Now the only ones I can find are Jessi’s Wish and the clusterfuck du jour: Dawn and Too Many Sitters.
That said, this should be good ( Read more... )
. . . Also, the ‘point’ of the multi-member club was that parents can call one number and be guaranteed an available sitter, but yes, that should also mean that the girls don’t have to miss extracurricular classes and stuff.
“Dawn martyrs a little about how her Stoneybrook friends tease her for her beliefs, but she doesn’t care.” - I hate it when she says they tease her, because I’ve never seen it. I’ve seen Dawn lecture Claudia and the others on their diets; I’ve seen Dawn whine (lying, too) that Claudia never provides healthy snacks at BSC meetings . . . what I’ve never seen is Claudia complaining that her friends expect her to share her personal stash of junk food without paying her back for it, or that her friends never clean up the messes (I don’t recall any mention of the club members cleaning up after a meeting) they make in her room. Claud caters to each and every one of them, and gets no thanks, if I remember right. She just gets Dawn whining about how ‘not Californian’ her hospitable friend is.
“ . . . They’d just rather you didn’t ruin their grandmother’s priceless fur with jank-ass red paint.” - . . . Did Dawn ruin some old lady’s belongings because they clashed with what she approves of?!
These books have a tendency to describe ‘disgusting’ health food, most of it sounding pretty normal, like a salad sandwich. Juice in cereal might actually be a good example of ‘gross’ health food.
“‘I have to admit, after all my long bicoastal visits, I have become used to big farewell parties.’” - They’re just happy to see you go, Dawn. I wouldn’t brag if I was you . . .
“Carol starts sobbing over breakfast, and I hope it’s just her time of the month, because she’s known Dawn and Jeff for less than a year and they’re about to spend the summer with the mother they haven’t seen in months, so it’s not her damn place to make them feel guilty. I really hate this, both in books and in real life: raining (pun intended) on someone’s parade because you’ll miss them *sob sob* SOOOO much. ESPECIALLY an adult doing so to a kid. Carol, do you want to make Dawn and Jeff feel like they can never leave home without emotionally shredding you? Because that is what you are doing.” - I can’t agree. Sometimes people cry when they’re sad, and it can’t be helped. Crying is natural and sometimes healthy (‘sometimes’; what Mary Anne does is not). Not everyone is out to manipulate others. I do think adults should keep it together when dealing with kids, but I don’t think it’s fair to make Carol the bad guy, especially since it’s implied that she shouldn’t feel at all attached to Dawn and Jeff because she’s not their ‘real’ mother.
A LOT of books for kids have all the women/girls screaming/crying when none of the men/boys are doing either of these things. It’s always bothered me. My fiancé gets teary at sad parts of some movies, and then he looks at me and laughs because I’m dry-eyed. It would bother me that he thinks he shouldn’t cry and that I should because of our genders, if I was the one crying . . . haha :)
“Jeff rouses Dawn for breakfast at 8:15 in the morning, explaining that Richard won’t serve unless they’re all in the kitchen.” - In my family, it was ‘first come, first serve’ (and ‘you snooze, you lose’). Richard alternates between being one of the few parent characters in these books who seems to actually care about his daughter and a man obsessed with perfection, forcing his family to do things his way, all the time, no middle ground, no matter what they want.
This is also the book in which Dawn’s description of Mary Anne includes Mary Anne’s pierced ears - WHEN did Mary Anne get her ears pierced? Didn’t she swear in that BSC summer camp SS that she would never get her ears pierced?
Great snark! I’ve never been able to force myself to even TRY snarking a Dawn book; she annoys me too much! :p
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