The Baby-sitters Remember
I think I made my opinions on non-standard covers known before, although this one is not quite as eye-bleedingly garish as European Vacation. I do remember thinking it was weird that if they were going to do a super-shiny Super Special, they wouldn’t have done it for the tenth. (I was a strange kid.) The embossed handwriting is weird.
As for the rest of the cover: There’s something HILARIOUS about Kristy putting a trophy right on her bedside table. No one looks spectacularly awful, I guess, although Shannon is replacing Dawn in indistinguishable blondes. I prefer to think she’s the one on the bed looking mildly skeptical. Actually, Mary Anne’s teddy bear is pretty weird-looking in the face. I find it weird that they are almost all wearing watches, but I guess around Kristy it might be a survival tactic.
No one is thanked for preparing the manuscript, so I think this may actually be The Lady Ann. And in all fairness, there are snippets of prose here which are quite decent. However, the book is dedicated to Bad and Horrible (and also “Dash and Skye,”) and really, if any ghostie deserved a dedication it was Lerangis.
We begin with Kristy’s stupid essay about what she did this summer. In a shocking twist, Kristy tells us it’s boring, not because she’s creepily obsessed with small children and has no self-awareness, but because the topic is boring. She does some math to prove there are 110,880 minutes in summer vacation, and she can’t possibly cover everything. “How could I cram it into a two-page essay? I couldn’t. At least not in any great detail, and I do think great details are what make writing worth reading.”
First off, Kristy, if you ever have to ask “How could I cram it?” believe me when I tell you we have a list the length of the Mississippi. Secondly, part of what makes writing worth reading is being selective about what to include, you dumbbell. Just because you exist in a book series where the story has to stop short to make sure we know everyone’s goddamn hair color before the plot starts doesn’t mean the rest of us do. Thirdly, speaking of “great detail” on page 2 this is a two-page essay and on 240 it’s a one-page essay. Attention to detail, my ass.
I'd strongly recommend you exercise that right.
Anyway, this assignment has been given to every student at SMS, and it seems kind of tacky to blatantly call attention to the time warp this way. Kristy says the stupidness of the assignment has inspired her to become a teacher, just so she could assign awesome topics like “What Happened When I Woke Up The Morning and Discovered I Was the Last Person Left on Earth.” Um, creepy Nightmare Fuel? She would not assign a length, which will work really well when some smart-ass kids hand in essays like “Killed myself” or “Jerked off.” Also, frankly Kristy strikes me as someone who would become a teacher because it has one of the lowest career thresholds to being an authority figure. Although I have to say, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone actually having to write the cliché What I Did on My Summer Vacation essay.
So, to wage her war against conciseness, Kristy is going to spend 240-odd pages talking about a tween girl slumber party. She makes sure to tell us Claudia shows up in a bikini top (of course Kristy noticed that) and Mal showed up barefoot, which I don’t really know what to do with. I go bare or stocking-feet inside as much as I can, but not really as a guest at someone’s house or while going someplace. Kristy claims that when she was younger she used to drag her friends upstairs and avoid her family during sleepover parties, but now she’s much more mature, as exemplified by them eating with the Brewer/Thomas bunch and having a watermelon seed spitting contest. They also had a “marshmallow toast.” Shannon is there, although this doesn’t mean we get to skip Dawn.
For reasons of plot contrivance, Mal announces she’s been thinking about their essay assignment and keeping a list of things to include and while I am an enormous nerd, even I am rolling my eyes. Also, two handwritten pages is like, what, 750 words? Chill the hell out, y’all.
Claudia jokes that it’s a shame Mal is such a huge dork, and Mal denies it, and Mary Anne gets all worried about Mal’s feelings, but Kristy assures us Mal and Claudia were kidding. Um, Claudia was, maybe.
The raucous laughter wrought by this hilarity wakes up Karen, who is then put back to bed, and Kristy tells them they have to be quieter, and an honest-to-God pillow fight breaks out. That snarks itself, it does. Maybe Stacey’s shirt will fall off next. Elizabeth, Watson, and Nannie come to tell them to STFU and Mary Anne hits Watson in the face with a t-shirt she was throwing at Kristy. Elizabeth tells them if they wake up Emily Michelle, it’s on them to put her back to sleep. This would be more convincing if it isn't Kristy's job to do that pretty much all the time.
Mallory, maintaining her dork status, writes down on the subtle details of this little affair for a “humor paragraph” in her essay. Because all good writing sequesters humor to one little section.
Shannon asks WTF is this essay, and refrains from laughing in their dumb little faces for all this whining over a two-page (or one-page) essay. Kristy whines that teachers are supposed to encourage creativity, and Jessi says it doesn’t take any thought to just write down what happened. Take that, journalists! Jessi Ramsey is on to you!
Claudia asks really dramatically what if NOTHING happened to you, in a way that makes her sound stoned. Like, deep, man. Whatever. Mal says she doesn’t mind the essay, but it would be more fun to write about the happiest day of her life (how much of a downer would that be?). Mary Anne suggests most embarrassing moment, because she might actually be a masochist, Shannon suggests most humbling experience, which is interesting, but doesn’t really sound to me like what a thirteen-year-old would most likely come up with. Jessi comes up with most vivid memory, as distinct from most important, for. . .reasons.
They sit around, thinking deep thoughts. I can’t tell if Jessi and Mal sitting on the floor back-to-back to support each other is more rampant lesbianism or buttmonkey status.
Blah blah blah talking, but Kristy says bitterly it will only be a line in her essay. Shut up, Kristy.
Chapter 1
More Kristy. Baby-sitting her siblings leads her to conclude her most vivid memory involves baby-sitting. Of course it does.
But before we get initiated into that wonder of wonders, we get a Chapter 2-style info dump. Kristy modestly says “I don’t know why I’m so good with kids, but I always have been. And I’ve always enjoyed them.” YOU ARE THIRTEEN. Even in weird Stoneybrook where thirteen-year-olds hold paid jobs and solve crimes, you have not lived enough years to “always” have enjoyed children.
Always so gracious, Kristy says Watson is really rich. As a kid, this kind of bugged me not even so much because it seemed rude (I admittedly grew up in a not-talking-about-money house), but because it made me think Ann thought I was too dumb to infer “rich” from “mansion.” Of course, now I just think that even if Watson is earning $1M a year (not just his net), he spends money in crazy disproportionate ways. Also, the other thing about referring to Watson as “rich” is it’s meant to be this Dramatic! Contrast! to the Thomas’s old life, but you don’t really feel that in the early books, imo. I didn’t think of us as “rich” when I was growing up, but my parents are very well-off in relative terms. But they didn’t randomly take groups of teenagers on vacation and rent carnival equipment on short notice and whatever the hell damn else Watson does with his money ( black market adoption?).
Blah blah blah, Kristy invents the club, which is particularly funny in this book where Richard literally calls an agency to get a sitter for Mary Anne. In this Chapter 2, Kristy is particularly obsessed with how the various pairs of BFFs have contrasting looks, so a) I think we can assume that’s a particularly Ann-ish tic the ghosties had to execute and b) isn’t diluting the rampant lesbianism tag. So she and Mary Anne USED to look alike until that skank MA cut her hair but zomg! Kristy is a bossy tyrant with no brain-to-mouth filter, and Mary Anne is a timid bundle of neuroses wrapped up in soggy Kleenex and strings of passive-aggression.
Kristy kind of weirdly talks about how pretty and popular Stacey is “and all those enviable (to some people)” things. Protesting a bit much, perhaps? Also, did you know Stacey and Claudia have lots in common but they look nothing alike! My mind, it is blown. Actually, my mind is blown by Kristy claiming that “frankly” she also disapproves of Claudia’s junk food stash. Bullshit she does, since the last book I read she literally crammed herself so full of Gummi Worms she couldn't speak.
Kristy also claims to admire Shannon for being a very dedicated student, a page after dissing Janine. It's probably just that she looks cute in her uniform.
Re: Mallory. “I think she’s been a second mother to her family for most of her life.” That’s. . .incredibly depressing. Also, Mal and Jessi look as different from each other as Claudia and Stacey.
Logan is “cute.”
And having established that, we finally begin the story.
Chapter 2
Kristy is ten, living on Bradford Court, and she talks a lot about how her mom was awesome at raising them and working and running the house. And I feel a little icky snarky some of this--I mean, I’m a single woman with two cats--but a few things come to mind. One, considering it seems to be implied that Elizabeth had Charlie by about age 21, it’s. . .impressive that she immediately landed a full-time office position and apparently advanced so significantly in four to six years, including enough not only for 7 hours of day care a day and a mortgage in not-so-cheap Stoneybrook. Also, there’s the fairly depressing references to Charlie having to write out checks for the mortgage in 107. Plus, in Kristy’s Book, she pretty blatantly leaves TEN-YEAR-OLD Charlie in charge of Sam and Kristy on a daily basis, and expected SIX-YEAR-OLD Kristy to watch infant David Michael on the weekends.
Also, as “soon as she could afford to” she hired a housekeeper, and I’ve got to say, this is giving me a flashback to that part in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn when after Francie’s father dies, her English teacher is scolding her for writing “sordid” little essays about her life, and condescendingly says SHE (the teacher) knows about poverty--some times her mother could only afford one maid!
However, the housekeeper sucks and a lot of times apparently just doesn’t show up, and Elizabeth says she can’t afford anyone else. Maybe that's because she apparently continues to pay any money towards someone who blows her off half the time.
But Kristy likes having an unreliable housekeeper, because it gives her an opportunity to “entertain kids” by playing with David Michael. Then there’s a bunch of old news about Mary Anne and Claudia, and a quite decently written paragraph about wee!Kristy wanting independence and idolizing her mother, which segues into a weekday morning chez Thomas. Bizarrely, Kristy asks if she can wear loafers and Elizabeth says no, they are bad for her feet--so she has to wait for sixth grade. WHAT. I don’t know what Elizabeth is on about, but more to the point, if they WERE bad for feet, why would it be okay for Kristy to wear them next year? (Clearly Mal’s parents hate her.) As a bonus, Kristy didn’t even want loafers, she just wanted to be told she could wear them. That was pointless.
Mrs. Culp the Slacker Housekeeper calls to cancel, and Elizabeth freaks out, and then calls Mrs. Pike to pick up David Michael from daycare when she picks up Nicky from afternoon kindergarten. (Because definitely the person to regularly impose upon is the woman with eight kids under the age of eight. Maybe she just doesn’t notice an extra.) Neither Charlie nor Sam is free to come home after school, so Kristy flails all over the place begging to please be allowed to baby-sit ZOMG, and Elizabeth says okay. Kristy dashes off to collect Mary Anne for school and brags about how awesome she is for being allowed to mind her four-year-old brother for two hours.
Chapter 3
Demonstrating the deep-seated nature of her unhealthy baby-sitting obsession, Kristy blows off her whole school day to make plans for BEST BABY-SITTING JOB EVER. “I drove my reading teacher crazy, but I couldn’t help it. Who can concentrate on Paul Bunyan stories when she’s facing her first true baby-sitting job?” AMAZING. How do I snark that?
She sprints home and officiously sets out the “healthy” snack she planned all day of graham crackers, apple slices, and grape juice. Mrs. Newton calls to check up on her and ask if she used the stove. Kristy proclaims she didn’t even use the refrigerator! Kay.
Mrs. Pike drops off David Michael, and Kristy orders him to go to the bathroom, and smiles condescendingly about his need for privacy. Elizabeth calls to check up on them.
Mary Anne calls and asks Kristy to come over, and Kristy is all snippy about GOD, I’m BABY-SITTING. Mary Anne is being baby-sat for by an aspiring hairdresser who makes MA read aloud from hair-styling manuals while she styles wigs. That’s a weird enough detail to genuinely be funny. Anyway, Kristy refuses to bring David Michael over there, or to let Mary Anne come over to them, saying “I’m sure I’m not supposed to have friends over when I’m baby-sitting.” Ha. Ha. Ha. Mary Anne’s sitter calls her to come help with pin curls. Oh, dear.
David Michael wants to play outside, and Kristy frets about not being able to hear the phone. Mimi comes by to check on them. Kristy decides they can play in the back yard if they leave the door open but the screen door closed and Louie to “protect them.” Basically every woman in Stoneybrook calls all afternoon to check up on them, including Mary Anne’s sitter, who drags over poor MA with her hair in rollers.
David Michael skins his knee, but recovers enough to make a macaroni sculpture. Elizabeth comes home and marches around inspecting the house, including giving Kristy a bit of grief for not having the back door locked. But she acknowledges Kristy did all right, she fires the housekeeper, and a dangerous obsession was born.
That was incredibly dull. Sorry!
Chapter 4
Stacey writes a letter to her dad, telling him about the most vivid memory game/poser/obsession. On the opposite page is a pic of Stacey and Laine, neither of whom are dressed particularly outrageously. Stacey is wearing penny loafers, for heaven’s sake. (Hmm. . .do penny loafers cause diabetes?) Anyway, I’m not really convinced Stacey would rehash this particular memory with her dad, but whatever.
The first day of sixth-grade and Stacey is planning to make it her best year ever-get straight As, join the soccer team (what?) and make new friends. At breakfast she downs two huge glasses of juice (OMINOUS MUSIC) and admits she ate a whole bag of potato chips the night before, but they all figure she’s having a growth spurt. But Stacey doesn’t want to stick around and be measured because she doesn’t want to be late to meet Laine, because, in so many words, Laine is kind of an asshole tyrant like Kristy, just more sophisticated.
She and Laine meet up and Stacey pontificates about how Laine should have a more positive attitude about school, and Laine, pretty fairly, points out she sounds like a Hallmark card, or their principal. Stacey gets a little bit huffy internally-she DOES believe “we are all beautiful people” ( except Tess), but doesn’t want to pick a fight.
Laine switches to juicy gossip, and this chapter earns the “where does Ann come up with these names” tag as we learn that the Laine/Stacey clique, or “our group,” as Stace calls it, consists of Val Schirmer, Deirdre Dunlop, Sally El-Meligi and Marty Shulits, except Marty is switching schools. Laine says they’ll have to “replace her” and granted, I was never one of the “popular” girls, but I just have trouble believing as many girls micromanage their “group” of friends like this as they do in books/tv/movies. (I’m not saying teenage girls can’t be mean and petty and superficial; I’m just saying the particular trope of formally controlling the group size seems unlikely.) Stacey thinks this sounds snobby, although frankly, I’m not sure it even stacks up to the militant stance against outside friends the BSC generally takes.
They wait outside for the rest of The Group (it’s a “rule”) and Val reports Marty is off to a boarding school in Massachusetts. Laine is offended Marty didn’t inform her personally.
Also, zomg! A new girl! This, of course, is the (in)famous Alison Ritz, and Stacey defies Laine by inviting her to sit with them at lunch, and says she liked her a lot. At home, Maureen measures Stacey and finds she’s grown an inch and a half, but lost four pounds, and says Stacey’s hungry because her body is trying to catch up with her height, but she should pig out on healthy foods.
Deirdre calls announcing a zomg! sleepover on Friday and Stacey urges her to invite Allison, even though Deirdre says Laine won’t like it.
Chapter 5
Indeed, Laine is disapproving, but Stacey persists, leaving Laine with no recourse but to tell her if she keeps drinking so much juice she’ll get fat. Now that I believe. Oh, middle school girls.
The week goes by, and Stacey starts to feel crappy, although she is “eating like a horse and drinking like a fish” in the words of Henry. . .the doorman. I truly hope this doesn’t sound snobby, but I’m not sure why Stacey would be discussing this with him? Not like, “ew, doorman cooties” but just. . .why would she be discussing it with any casual acquaintance, really? But she doesn’t tell Maureen because she doesn’t want to miss the slumber party, although by the time Maureen walks her over “because she didn’t want me walking those mean city streets alone,” she’s actually shaky.
The party begins, and Laine gives Allison snotty New Yorker grief for getting lost on the way. Stacey calls her “Allie,” which never happens at another point in the story; I think it’s meant to seem friendly but it actually comes off as kind of rude. (I do not approve of people taken it on themselves to use diminutive names.)
They order pizzas, and I’m sure the guy at Ernie’s is thrilled that they start placing the order without even having discussed the toppings. Alison wants anchovies and all the girls are like “shun! SHUN!” but Stacey suggests having them put on two slices. Deirdre’s family is all barred from the living room so the girls can eat their pizza and watch a “weird, old movie.”
They go back to Deirdre’s bedroom and eat more junk food, and Stacey has to ask for more soda because she’s so thirsty. Laine snides that she probably ate an anchovy, and Stacey boldly drags her out in the hall and tells her to stop being such a brat. There’s not enough room for all the sleeping bags on the floor, so they draw straws and Stacey and Laine get the bed.
Stacey is dreaming about drinking a soda under a waterfall (I have no idea if that’s a real thing, or just a trope) when Laine wakes everyone up shrieking about how Stacey wet the bed. And really, that would be such a genuinely awful experience I can’t snark much here. Laine runs off still shrieking into the shower like a drama queen, and everyone stares at Stacey, including the rest of Deirdre’s family. Stacey asks to call her parents and Deirdre’s mom says she’ll do it, and suggests Stacey go into the “other bathroom” and clean up. But a two-bathroom apartment on the Upper West Side (which probably averages out at $5,000/month minimum in today’s money, based on my minimal snark research) isn’t as rich as a mansion. So I can always snark Ann’s total lack of perspective, I guess.
Laine is still showering when the McGills collect Stacey, and Allison gawks in the back about how gross it is. Stacey tells her mom she doesn’t feel well, but Maureen thinks she just means how humiliated she is.
Chapter 6
Stacey wakes up the next morning with a feeling that everything will be different from now on-not just socially, but that something is wrong with her body. Her parents, though, have sent her off to a fancy child psychiatrist (oh, New Yorkers!), who may actually be one of the more relatively competent adults ever seen in the BSC-world. He gets enough of a rapport for Stacey to tell him she’s sure everyone in school knows, and he sympathizes, then asks if she’s ever wet the bed before. She panics, figuring he will know if she’s lying with magical psychiatric powers, and he clarifies he means recently, “not when you were a child.” I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and trust he’s being diplomatic and not that a child psychiatrist really doesn’t think an eleven-year-old is a child. Anyway, Stacey admits she wet the bed a couple of weeks ago, but was embarrassed, so she quietly changed the sheets in the middle of the night. He asks a few questions about how much she’s drinking, if she’s dizzy, and then calls Maureen in and tells her he thinks Stacey has diabetes, and needs to see a doctor right away, and talks to the receptionist at Stacey’s pediatrician when she doesn’t get it.
So! Two weeks go by, Stacey is diagnosed, hospitalized, and learning to give herself injections, and we get an expanded version of the explanation of diabetes, which backs away a bit from the NO SUGAR EVER! (But other carbs are totally irrelevant.) In spite of all this, Stacey is hopeful she can just follow her diet, do her insulin, and get back to normal, but no. Her former friends are awful, including Allison, who has gotten a lot of mileage out of telling the bedwetting story, apparently with such panache Laine formally invites her into the group.
Even when that story dies down, kids think she’s a hypochondriac seeking attention, or contagious, and she keeps winding up in the hospital or fainting since they can’t get her blood sugar controlled.
The parts of this describing the frustration of a chronic illness, especially when you are doing the “right” things and not feeling better, is actually not bad. But all the dramatic school stuff is told in really skimpy summary (we don't even get the falling-in-soup moment), so meh. Eventually Ed announces his transfer to Stamford, and Stacey is thrilled with the chance to start over, and tells us she makes such good friends that even though she tries to keep it a secret, she can’t, and then it doesn’t matter anyway.
This isn’t a BAD chapter, but it’s not one of my favorites, I think because we got most of this story in other Stacey books and it doesn’t really add much.
Chapter 7
Claudia! This chapter, however, I think does a pretty good job at what the book should be-it’s not rehashed from earlier books, and it creates a pretty good iconic Claudia-or should I say CALUDIA-moment.
Picture of wee!Claudia coloring, wearing a kind of weird matching shirt and skirt and boots, and coloring at a table while kneeling, which seems really uncomfortable. She’s writing about this in her journal for yet another session of summer school.
She describes being six, just slowly learning to read, while Janine is doing “middle school stuff” in fourth grade. Claudia doesn’t have a BFF, but her life is pretty sweet with Mimi and an endless supply of Crayola crayons. She informs us she almost never watched Evil Television because she was so busy drawing, because it’s definitely not possible to draw while the tv is on.
However, Claudia does not love school, and we get a rehash of Horrible Mrs. Fredrickson. She reiterates that Mrs. F yells every day and that prompts Kristy to get in fights at recess, but even though Kristy thinks they she is tough, they still have to be walked to school by Janine, who “hates the job.” Clearly evidence she is Mean.
Anyway, Claudia goes to collect the other girls and there’s a passage I think is meant to be foreshadowing about how she doesn’t like Kristy’s dad. I remember think that was Significant as a child reader, but now I think Patrick really seems much more of the charming rake type than the kind of scary father that would make a neighbor “pray” he wasn’t the one to open the door and it feels like the author trying too hard.
Kristy and Claudia go to pick up Mary Anne, and Claudia allows she likes Mr. Spier, even if he isn’t “fun.” Mary Anne appears kitted out in her skirts and braids and carrying Keds for gym class, and they set off for school, ostensibly supervised by Janine. Claudia also claims to be fascinated by Janine walking and reading at the same time.
On this particular day, Mary Anne is crying because they have gym that day. I loathed gym class as much as the next chubby, klutzy bookworm, but if MA genuinely cries just for the mere existence of gym, I think someone should look into that. Claudia says it’s also art day, which makes them happy, even though their art teacher is as horrible as Mrs. Fredrickson.
Kristy, MA, and Claudia in first grade, pictured above.
Miss Packett announces she is giving them art homework, to draw a self-portrait, and I’m not really sure of the value of assigning it as “homework” at this age, which she attempts to justify by saying she doesn’t want them to be influenced by their friends. Whatever. A goodly number of kids would forget, or not have the “right” kind of paper, or do it but forget to bring it back, or get it wrecked on the way to school. She scolds Claudia for not listening (Claudia is already planning her portrait) and refuses to answer a question after calling on Mary Anne--she gets half the sentence out of her mouth and Miss Packet. Seriously. I mean, neither Kristy’s loudness or Claudia’s attention span should be completely discombobulating to a halfway competent elementary school teacher, but if you can’t handle timid, goody-two-shoes, desperate to please Mary Anne, I don’t even know what your damage is.
Kristy yells out a question about what medium to us (we never find out what poor MA wanted, and Miss Packett nastily says they can use anything they want and yells at Kristy.
After art class they have to do a worksheet, and Mrs. Fredrickson scolds Claudia the whole time for wiggling too much, because sitting in silence doing a worksheet is an excellent use of first-grade classroom time. Claudia thinks maybe her self-portrait will be so beautiful it will not only please Miss Packett but also Mrs. Fredrickson, which is kind of heartbreaking. Then they go home and the girls all agree they know exactly what to draw.
Chapter 8
Claudia excitedly tells Mimi about her Very Important Art Homework, which Janine scoffs at in a way I think is meant to sound mean and genius snobby, but sounds pretty typical older sibling to me. Claudia announces she will use every color, and Janine snarks “What a surprise,” which is actually kind of funny, even if Claudia hasn’t evolved to her full-on Mrs. Frizzle/deconstructed pumpkin/Pebbles stage yet. Claudia tells Janine that Janine could not even draw a house, and Janine is like, “Why would I want to?”
Click to viewSo Claudia settles down to draw the famous “beautiful, wild, free” butterfly portrait, which is genuinely pretty sophisticated, conceptually, for a six-year-old. It takes her two hours and requires a few breaks, which I can imagine if she did it kneeling the whole time. She carefully rolls it up and secures it with a rubber band, and begins to obsessively move it around the house to keep it safe for the next day.
The next day, they go back to school. Kristy wants to show off her portrait, but Claudia is terrified hers will get damaged if she unrolls it, which kicks off Mary Anne’s anxiety. Kristy grabs for it, and Janine, from behind them, tells her to cut it out, which means Janine, age 9, reading a book, and forced into baby-sitting against her will, is demonstrating more competence than the BSC does 80% of the time, in that she observes a kid being obnoxious and tells her to knock it off, rather than blatherinng on about how adorable said kid is and how leet her baby-sitting skills are. Kristy grumbles but does, in fact, cut it out, and speculates Alan Gray probably drew a gorilla.
On Friday, Miss Packett collects all the drawings and displays them to the class one by one, which totally seems like a good use of their twice-weekly art time, especially since she doesn’t say anything but “Very nice” over and over again. (I mean, not that sic-year-olds should be critiqued, but you could have a nice little conversation about something in particular you liked, or something.) Claudia begins to get nervous when she sees that everyone has drawn a face “with brown or black or blond hair” (no evil gingers in that class!).
Miss Packett unrolls Claudia’s and stares at it, frowning, then asks whose it is. Claudia realizes she forgot to put her name on it. She tentatively raises her hand and Alan Gray starts snickering, followed by most of the class (not Kristy and Mary Anne, although they look confused.)
Miss Packett screeches at the class to be quiet, and then scolds Claudia for them laughing, because apparently she’s neck-in-neck with Mrs. Fredrickson for worst teacher ever. She yells at Claudia for not taking anything seriously, and says she asked for a self-portrait, like THIS and gestures at the other drawings.
Claudia doesn’t say anything, because she doesn’t want Miss Packett to see her cry. I really can’t snark this except to repeat how awful the SES faculty seems to be. I do find it interesting how much Ann wanted to be a teacher and then quit after one year, because either her ideas about teaching are truly warped, or she has a lot of latent bitterness. The only thing that could have taken this further would have been if Miss Packett ripped the drawing in half (I think that happened in one of the Emily of New Moon books--I need to reread those!)
Claudia walks home, miserable, and Kristy and MA try to commiserate by saying how mean Miss Packett is, although they don’t really get what Claudia was doing. Luckily, Claudia arrives home and flings herself into the arms of Mimi, Best Grandmother Ever, and finally bursts into tears. She tells Mimi the story and Mimi’s mouth drops open in shock and horror, the reaction of any adult with an ounce of empathy and common sense. Claudia miserably says this proves she’s just dumb--she can’t read, she can’t write, she can’t sit still, and she even messed up her art homework because she couldn’t understand the directions. This is not only sad, but makes me want to shake the Kishi parents and the entire SES faculty for not intervening more until sending her back to seventh grade (which was idiotic, anyway).
Mimi, continuing to be the most awesome person in Stoneybrook, says firmly that Claudia understood the directions better than anyone, and marches over to SES, Claudia in tow. She finds Miss Packett, and Claudia wonders if she will yell, but in the “gentlest, most polite voice,” she says “Miss Packett, I would like you please to respect my Claudia’s intelligence and imagination. . .Of all your students, Claudia is the only one who truly understood your assignment. You asked the children to draw themselves the way they see themselves. And my Claudia sees herself as a free spirit, like a butterfly. So that was what she drew.”
Woo! After having totally pwned Miss Packett in a faultless, Miss Manners standard way, Mimi leaves.
Claudia says on Monday Miss Packett apologized to her, and I’d love to hear the content of that apology, because she did SO MANY THINGS wrong, and also, Mimi basically called her out on being so incompetent an art teacher not to understand a pretty basic interpretive element. Anyway, Claudia doesn’t care so much about that--the important thing for her was hearing Mimi verbalize how much she loved Claudia and valued her art, and how that made her begin to think maybe she could be an artist one day.
And she added her name to the butterfly drawing, giving us the famous CALUDIA we know and love. And that’s a way more convincing error than “Who are you and who are mom and dad?”
Next up is Jessi, Logan, and Mallory, so many eye-rolls will ensue. Also, I had a crazy dream last night where I found a "Mallory" bookmark in which her name was Maholara Eannne Pike, and half the bookmark was devoted to Karen, and also a really involved romantic entanglement for Mary Anne based on "Mary Anne's School Mystery" with a boy named Tod (one "D") and Logan got all jealous and stuff. I just felt like sharing that.