Karen's Dinosaur 11-20
Baby-Sitters Little Sister #73
Karen’s Dinosaur, Chapters 11-20
It’s taken me a while to get this half done, because I’m basically doing this to try and get over my debilitating fear of being noticed. I had the shakes for an hour after I posted the first half . . . and then I kept rereading it and editing it. I had no idea snarking would be so stressful; you guys all make it look so fun and easy :p Anyway, I noticed that no one else had done this book, and since I had it I thought I might as well try . . .
Beware, there are a few minor swear words in this part; apparently I shouldn’t go near Karen books. It also might be a little more ragey and a little less snarky; I blame a Karen overload! (Ironic that she’s not actually being totally horrible in this book, but she’s still Karen so that’s all the reason I need . . . )
Part 1: http://bsc-snark.livejournal.com/656041.html
Chapter 11: Karen’s alarm clock rings at six in the morning. The first page of this chapter (which is just half a page anyway) is extremely repetitive; the word ‘clock’ is used four times, the word ‘today’ is also used four times, and because Karen’s getting ready to go, we have the word ‘I’ eight times (ten if you flip the page to finish the paragraph). Is something exciting happening? Kinda; it’s the day of the trip to the museum.
I’d almost like to think that the reason the print in these books is so big and the reason contractions aren’t often used is that even the writers hate Karen and want to meet the word count as quickly as they can.
Karen hurries downstairs for breakfast (personally, I’ve found that eating anything before you go on a road trip is a bad idea) and is surprised that both Nannie and Watson are already there (as if they have no idea that she’s excited and will be up early, since despite David Michael she’s probably talked a lot about this trip for a long time . . . and I just realized that I use a lot of parenthesis, which I blame these books for . . . looking up the word ‘parenthesis’, I also realize that I may not know how to use them properly . . . damn you, BSC!). After Karen eats, Elizabeth asks her if she has everything, but doesn’t actually check. Karen quickly grows impatient (“‘Daddy, can we go now? Puh-lease?’ I asked. ‘I cannot wait a moment longer.’ I was hopping from one foot to the other.”) and her father agrees to take her to school, even though it’s too early. Surprisingly, there are no mentions of David Michael in this chapter; he may not be awake so early, but you’d think the writer would want to increase drama and appeal to her young audience with yet another tense scene between Karen and her stepbrother.
Watson drives Karen and Hannie to school. “In the parking lot was a huge bus.” Is that grammatically-correct? It just sounds so awkward any time one of these books has a backwards-sounding sentence like that, but I could be wrong because neither of my parents spoke English as a first language and so what I was taught at home didn’t always match what I learned at school. Anyway, the bus is not a yellow school bus, and it says ‘Charter Tours’ on the side. Addie’s mother and Sara’s and Nancy’s fathers are also coming on the trip as room parents (being Canadian, I’m not too sure what that means, though I guess they’re just like the parents who tag along on field trips and help keep the kids from wandering off or being kidnapped, though I don’t think those volunteers ever got a title) so Karen isn’t the only kid there so early. Mrs. Hoffman’s already there, too, talking to the bus driver, and Watson shows some actual parenting initiative and sticks around until it’s time to board the bus, though he seems to spend the whole time talking to Mr. Dawes instead of spending time with his daughter.
As soon as the driver opens the door of ‘the wonderful bus’, Karen tells her father that he can go. Watson, in another surprising acknowledgement that he actually is a father, gives her some typical instructions: pay attention to the teacher and room parents, do everything they say, follow the trip rules, and be very careful crossing streets. He even agrees not to kiss her when she asks him not to (do seven-year-olds really care if their friends see them with their parents?) and leaves. The kids board the bus, sit with their temporary trip partners (they’ll be partnered with their pen pals while in the city), and listen as Mrs. Hoffman tells them to remember the trip rules they conveniently discussed offscreen. Foreshadowing (and spoilers): she tells the kids what to do if they get lost, such as “Do not wander away by yourself; stay where you are.” She also tells them that the bus has a bathroom, and Hannie declares it ‘the best bus ever’.
Chapter 12: The trip will be more than two hours long, so the kids play games. One of them is ‘the license plate game’ which is not explained to us, and I guess it doesn’t matter because the kids quickly declare it boring when they’ve only seen plates from Connecticut and New York. Audrey says, “‘I want to see something good. Like something from Canada.’” :)
But they don’t, probably because a lot of Canadians know Karen lives in that area and avoid it.
Karen and Hannie play magnetic checkers, and Karen falls asleep. Hannie wakes her just in time for them to notice and exclaim over the skyscrapers in the distance (and also a bridge; I suppose there are no bridges in Connecticut?) and Mrs. H states the obvious and tells them that they’re almost in New York (likely having to say this over the shouted realizations the kids are already making). Nothing else happens in this chapter except that the bus stops in front of the pen pals’ school, so I’ll comment on the picture in this chapter - Karen’s hair is cut to different lengths and frizzy, her chin is huge, she has a lump of fat on her neck (not her head, but another unusual-looking thing) and she’s missing an arm; her remaining hand still looks kind of deformed. Hannie’s teeth are either sticking out at an angle or she’s wearing a mouth guard that’s coming out; her ears are small and round, and she appears to be wearing Jeff Schafer’s green-and-white-striped shirt; it’s way too big for her. It looks like it could fit a 300-pound person, and it also looks as stiff as cardboard.
Chapter 13: One of the room parents for Miss Mandel’s class greets them and leads them inside. The kids in Ms. Colman’s class all walk with their partners in a double line. Karen notes that Park West isn’t as wide as Stoneybrook Academy but that it’s a lot taller. Most of the class goes up the stairs; Addie and her mom take the elevator. As soon as they’re in Mandel’s classroom, Karen looks for Maxie and shouts out to her. No one tells her to shut up, of course. They exchange presents (Maxie bought Karen a package of markers) and are then instructed to walk around and look at the dinosaur-themed projects Mandel’s class has been doing, which are all over the room.
Then both classes go on a tour of the school, which seems really weird to me. Approximately forty seven-year-olds are not going to be quiet, and why do the kids need to see the whole school? Anyway, they start on the top floor (the fourth) and make their way back down, Karen taking mental notes of some of the differences between Maxie’s school and her own. My suspicion that this is all part of a plan to blow through a word count can’t be confirmed, but my suspicion that the teachers and room parents had no idea what they were doing and are ‘winging it’ is kind of confirmed when, eventually, Mandel looks at her watch (it’s eleven, so the kids have spent over an hour just hanging out at the school) and they head off to Central Park for their picnic.
Chapter 14: Even though Karen is amazed by the trees that spread away to the left, to the right, and straight ahead as far as she can see she doesn’t realize that she’s looking at the park and Maxie has to tell her what she’s looking at. And this kid skipped a grade.
Karen asks if they have to climb the wall to get into the park. Maxie says no and informs her that there’s an actual entrance a few blocks away. Karen wonders if Maxie is bragging (“She seemed to know an awful lot about the park.”). Well, duh, Karen, you just told us at the end of the last chapter that the kids go to the park for sports since their school doesn’t have a gym; of course Maxie knows about the park. They discuss their lunches, see the pond where Stuart Little has his adventure, climb all over a statue, and finally sit down to eat, which is what I thought they were there for in the first place. For a field trip to a museum, they sure aren’t spending any actual time in one. Before they sit down to eat, they see roller skaters, dancers, and a man playing drums.
Chapter 15: Spoke too soon, I guess, as they’re still not eating; they’re watching people on skates, rollerblades, bicycles; and other people jogging and walking dogs; and the teachers setting out blankets and sheets for them to eat on. Nancy’s pen pal is a typical little boy who refuses to sit with a bunch of girls, and while Nancy is initially hurt by this, she feels better when she notices the boys having a burping contest. Before they eat, they start trading bits of their lunches; no one really wants Maxie’s lettuce-and-tomato sandwich. Karen thinks this is because it’s ‘boring’. Shut up, Karen, you’re probably surrounded by homeless people who would practically kill each other for a fresh sandwich they don’t have to fish out of a garbage can. They talk about their food, which turns into a discussion on what dinosaurs ate, which ones they chose, and their habits, and I roll my eyes because these kids are about as interesting as watching grass grow. (Shut up, Dawn, your hobbies are boring.) They’re on a field trip and all they can think about is schoolwork.
They watch the other people in the park, too; a girl playing Frisbee with a dog, a man on rollerblades dancing to music, and little kids taking a walk with their teacher. Karen, you are a little kid. But I can’t really snark that, I guess, because when I was a kid, anyone younger than me was automatically a baby, as far as I was concerned.
They go back to talking about dinosaurs and imagine dinosaurs living in Central Park (which, as Maxie insightfully informs them, was not always Central Park and was at one time ‘just land’) and I was going to say that I don’t think a lollipop counts as something to eat, but then Karen ends this chapter by ‘biting into’ hers. As an adult whose teeth aren’t what they used to be, all I can say is, ouch! As soon as Karen and Maxie have taken the last bites of their lollipops (ow, ow, ow) Mrs. Hoffman says it’s time to go to the museum. Finally. Also, the way it’s written, it sounds like everyone else was already done and Mrs. H made everyone wait patiently and quietly for two kids to finish something they can easily lick while walking.
Chapter 16: Miss Mandel shows the kids a litter can. Lady, they’re seven years old; if they don’t know where garbage goes, stop teaching them about extinct creatures and teach them the basics! (Or maybe she’s trying to be both subtle and condescending about how little Stoneybrook has?) The kids are told to partner up, and Karen takes this to mean she has to grab Maxie’s hand. I loved field trips but hated them, too, just for that reason; I never really liked being touched, and I’ve always liked to have both hands free (which is why I’d take stuff with me when I left the house and lose it; I’d set it down and forget about it).
Maxie tells Karen about the museum, which Karen is very impressed by when she sees how big it is (“It was about a hundred times bigger than the art museum in Stoneybrook”) and even though Maxie sounds a little know-it-all, Karen doesn’t think again that she’s bragging. Mandel admits that they aren’t supposed to use the main entrance, but leads them through it anyway, claiming she wants the kids to see it. (Addie and her mom have to use another entrance . . . it seems weird to me that in a city with so many people, disabled people still don’t have access to the main entrance, or at least they don’t in this book.) Karen admires the main entrance, which she compares to a palace, while Mandel talks to a woman behind a desk. (Unfortunately, unlike Mr. D in the European Vacation SS, she doesn’t accidentally end up all showy and pompous to one of the other visitors.)
The kids take yet another tour, and while I’d have loved every second of this as a kid and thought nothing unusual about it as a child-reader of this book, the adult me just sighs in frustration at the many delays. My parents were the type to think a school day on which a movie was shown in my class was a huge waste and then they’d grumble that they should have just kept me at home, so I guess I know where I get my attitude from. The kids who have been the museum before all start requesting things to see, and Pamela asks if they can go to the gift shop. The teachers say they’ll try to see everything, but that they won’t have time to go to any of the gift shops. The adult half of me knows that the teachers probably just don’t want to deal with the fact that some of these kids have money, some of them don’t, and all the drama involved with taking forty kids into a gift shop (from experience, a place filled with delicate and expensive things). The immature half of me wants to point out that they would certainly have time to go to the gift shop if they hadn’t wasted so much time in Mandel’s classroom and in the park. Obviously, the fact that Karen brought money and isn’t supposed to go to a gift shop is going to be relevant.
Ha! Even Karen knows that there’s such a word as ‘peoples’! Claudia, read some books for six-year-olds. You’ll learn stuff.
Mandel whines about time again, and I would have a lot of trouble remaining polite if I had a kid whose teacher got me to travel with so many kids into another province, where I mostly sat around all day and then had to listen to the teacher complaining that they have to hurry if they’re going to do what they damn well went there to do. She also keeps whining that she ‘just wants’ the kids to see everything.
Chapter 17: The teachers have been hurrying the kids past all the gift shops. Karen can’t resist asking if they can stop at one when they finally get to the floor with the dinosaurs; apparently she’s been saving her allowance for weeks. Hoffman says there isn’t time (using different words, she says it twice in one paragraph) and that they’ll have to hurry. Again, I’d be a P.O.’d parent if I’d had to go on this trip and then rushed all over the place because the teachers can’t plan worth a damn and have no time-management (or child-management) skills. Even if I can understand why it’s not smart to take so many kids to a gift shop (or a museum), the fact that the teachers keep blaming their incompetence on ‘time’ (which they’ve had a ton of, since they left at 7:45 A.M.) really bothers me. If they would at least admit to making a mistake or intentionally wasting time, I’d be less annoyed.
Karen is surprised by the size of the fossils; she seems to have expected little models. More backwards (?) grammar: “In a display cases were fossils and bones and skeletons and skulls of other dinosaurs.” Karen wants to look for her dinosaur and get to work, but the teachers tell them to look around first. WHY am I the only one bothered by this? Why aren’t the kids making a big deal out of it? (The way they talk, especially to adults, I wouldn’t put it past them. Apparently time-wasting is a peeve of mine.) I know they’re technically at the museum to learn and have fun, but at the same time, they must have been out of Stoneybrook for at least five hours by now, and they haven’t even started to do what they’re there for. After they read about other dinosaurs and count the plates on their backs and other fairly useless things to tie in with the uselessness of sending your kid to a school where they learn exclusively about one thing for a month, they get to work. Karen and Maxie manage a respectable amount of information on ornitholestes, but ‘very soon’ the teachers collect their posters and say that the posters will be sent back and forth between classrooms. That would annoy most kids, but of course none of these kids make a fuss.
Chapter 18: The teachers are all in a rush. Losers. (Sorry; this book’s kinda made me mad. Again.) Karen can’t believe she has to leave ‘her’ dinosaur. Did you think they were going to let you take it home, Karen? Your daddy’s not there to make it happen. While everyone else waits for the elevator, Karen takes off . . . into a gift shop. “More dinosaur things were inside.” NONE of the adults notice. As sweet as it is that she wants to buy David Michael a present, she was told many times that she was supposed to stick with the others, follow the rules, and stay out of the gift shops, and I’m one of those people who thinks kids should do what they’re told and be punished for disobedience. Again, I shouldn’t be allowed to touch BSLS books.
Maxie’s face ‘is a big question mark’. I hate that expression; I always try to picture it, and it’s creepy. Karen tells us about other purchases she’s made at other gift shops. She also tells us that she has $4.18 . . . and that’s WEEKS’ worth of allowance? Come on, Watson, that’s pathetic. Even if your kid doesn’t have to work for her money, you’re a millionaire and you spoil her in every other way. Almost everything is too expensive (of course) so Karen looks for small, cheap things and finds a basket of tiny dinosaurs that cost $1.25 each. She decides that she can buy three, apparently financially-knowledgeable enough to know about tax despite the pittance her father gives her. Karen still sounds a lot like Junie B. Jones as she waits impatiently in line, having settled on three dinosaurs to buy. “I waited on that line. I did not wait patiently. I tapped my feet.” She finally pays, runs out (Karen, your running around is probably one of the deciding factors in the whole no-gift-shops thing), and finds that her class is gone. We all knew that was going to happen.
Chapter 19: Karen runs around thinking she’s in the wrong hallway. She considers leaving the museum by herself, too. She tries to follow several rules at once by standing in one place and looking around the AMNH for a police officer, but she can’t find one, even after five minutes. Karen worries that she’ll be left behind and thinks she might have to sell one of the dinosaurs back to the gift shop so she can afford to make phone calls. The math seems all wrong, but this is already a long snark and I just don’t care. She cries a little (unlike in the Arthur episode ‘Lost’ this kid’s plight elicits none of my sympathy; she brought it all on herself) and waits five more minutes, during which she looks for someone who works at the museum but can’t find anyone, even the gift shop cashier. She thinks Maxie won’t let the bus leave without her, but knows the museum is a big place and doubts she’ll be found. She cries a bit more.
She decides that Maxie may not know which gift shop to mention, but that she’ll remember their dinosaur. Karen knows her teachers can find ornitholestes, and wonders if she can. So, breaking the ‘stay where you are’ rule and stupidly leaving her place by the elevators where she’ll be easily spotted, she runs around and finds her dinosaur, where she waits (and waits and waits). Maxie and Mrs. Hoffman eventually find her there and hug her, and the picture is filled with touchy-feely nonsense; the teacher appears to have one hand on each of Karen’s shoulders, and Maxie, too, is holding Karen’s arm. That won’t keep her nearby, guys; you need a leash.
Maxie tells Karen in a whisper that she lied about how Karen got lost. Karen says she knows she was supposed to stay in one place (not mentioning the other rules she broke) and even though she broke several trip rules, her stupid Colman-esque teacher tells her she did the right thing (by wandering around by herself, looking for her dinosaur). Screw the sitting around nonsense; if my kid wanted to go on a field trip with incompetent losers like these, I’d go on the trip, too, to make sure my kid’s not running around unsupervised because apparently you can’t trust Stoneybrook’s adults to do a damn thing.
Chapter 20: It’s dark as they’re leaving the city. Karen sleeps all the way home. She tells her family about her trip, but stops herself in case it upsets David Michael. “I did not mention that I had sort of gotten lost.” Because you know that would be a lie, you little brat; you ‘sort of’ ran off, broke the rules, and have lied about all of it.
Karen gives David Michael all three dinosaurs after dinner. He’s supposed to be doing homework but is reading comic books. That’s the end of the David Michael school storyline. He and Karen apologize, cheered by the thought that maybe they’ll get to go back to the museum someday, and he gives one of the dinosaurs back to her as a souvenir from her trip.
And that’s that. Sorry for the rage; I’d like to have a kid someday, and the incapable adults in these books really bother me. Plus, Karen. :p
Karen’s Dinosaur, Chapters 11-20
It’s taken me a while to get this half done, because I’m basically doing this to try and get over my debilitating fear of being noticed. I had the shakes for an hour after I posted the first half . . . and then I kept rereading it and editing it. I had no idea snarking would be so stressful; you guys all make it look so fun and easy :p Anyway, I noticed that no one else had done this book, and since I had it I thought I might as well try . . .
Beware, there are a few minor swear words in this part; apparently I shouldn’t go near Karen books. It also might be a little more ragey and a little less snarky; I blame a Karen overload! (Ironic that she’s not actually being totally horrible in this book, but she’s still Karen so that’s all the reason I need . . . )
Part 1: http://bsc-snark.livejournal.com/656041.html
Chapter 11: Karen’s alarm clock rings at six in the morning. The first page of this chapter (which is just half a page anyway) is extremely repetitive; the word ‘clock’ is used four times, the word ‘today’ is also used four times, and because Karen’s getting ready to go, we have the word ‘I’ eight times (ten if you flip the page to finish the paragraph). Is something exciting happening? Kinda; it’s the day of the trip to the museum.
I’d almost like to think that the reason the print in these books is so big and the reason contractions aren’t often used is that even the writers hate Karen and want to meet the word count as quickly as they can.
Karen hurries downstairs for breakfast (personally, I’ve found that eating anything before you go on a road trip is a bad idea) and is surprised that both Nannie and Watson are already there (as if they have no idea that she’s excited and will be up early, since despite David Michael she’s probably talked a lot about this trip for a long time . . . and I just realized that I use a lot of parenthesis, which I blame these books for . . . looking up the word ‘parenthesis’, I also realize that I may not know how to use them properly . . . damn you, BSC!). After Karen eats, Elizabeth asks her if she has everything, but doesn’t actually check. Karen quickly grows impatient (“‘Daddy, can we go now? Puh-lease?’ I asked. ‘I cannot wait a moment longer.’ I was hopping from one foot to the other.”) and her father agrees to take her to school, even though it’s too early. Surprisingly, there are no mentions of David Michael in this chapter; he may not be awake so early, but you’d think the writer would want to increase drama and appeal to her young audience with yet another tense scene between Karen and her stepbrother.
Watson drives Karen and Hannie to school. “In the parking lot was a huge bus.” Is that grammatically-correct? It just sounds so awkward any time one of these books has a backwards-sounding sentence like that, but I could be wrong because neither of my parents spoke English as a first language and so what I was taught at home didn’t always match what I learned at school. Anyway, the bus is not a yellow school bus, and it says ‘Charter Tours’ on the side. Addie’s mother and Sara’s and Nancy’s fathers are also coming on the trip as room parents (being Canadian, I’m not too sure what that means, though I guess they’re just like the parents who tag along on field trips and help keep the kids from wandering off or being kidnapped, though I don’t think those volunteers ever got a title) so Karen isn’t the only kid there so early. Mrs. Hoffman’s already there, too, talking to the bus driver, and Watson shows some actual parenting initiative and sticks around until it’s time to board the bus, though he seems to spend the whole time talking to Mr. Dawes instead of spending time with his daughter.
As soon as the driver opens the door of ‘the wonderful bus’, Karen tells her father that he can go. Watson, in another surprising acknowledgement that he actually is a father, gives her some typical instructions: pay attention to the teacher and room parents, do everything they say, follow the trip rules, and be very careful crossing streets. He even agrees not to kiss her when she asks him not to (do seven-year-olds really care if their friends see them with their parents?) and leaves. The kids board the bus, sit with their temporary trip partners (they’ll be partnered with their pen pals while in the city), and listen as Mrs. Hoffman tells them to remember the trip rules they conveniently discussed offscreen. Foreshadowing (and spoilers): she tells the kids what to do if they get lost, such as “Do not wander away by yourself; stay where you are.” She also tells them that the bus has a bathroom, and Hannie declares it ‘the best bus ever’.
Chapter 12: The trip will be more than two hours long, so the kids play games. One of them is ‘the license plate game’ which is not explained to us, and I guess it doesn’t matter because the kids quickly declare it boring when they’ve only seen plates from Connecticut and New York. Audrey says, “‘I want to see something good. Like something from Canada.’” :)
But they don’t, probably because a lot of Canadians know Karen lives in that area and avoid it.
Karen and Hannie play magnetic checkers, and Karen falls asleep. Hannie wakes her just in time for them to notice and exclaim over the skyscrapers in the distance (and also a bridge; I suppose there are no bridges in Connecticut?) and Mrs. H states the obvious and tells them that they’re almost in New York (likely having to say this over the shouted realizations the kids are already making). Nothing else happens in this chapter except that the bus stops in front of the pen pals’ school, so I’ll comment on the picture in this chapter - Karen’s hair is cut to different lengths and frizzy, her chin is huge, she has a lump of fat on her neck (not her head, but another unusual-looking thing) and she’s missing an arm; her remaining hand still looks kind of deformed. Hannie’s teeth are either sticking out at an angle or she’s wearing a mouth guard that’s coming out; her ears are small and round, and she appears to be wearing Jeff Schafer’s green-and-white-striped shirt; it’s way too big for her. It looks like it could fit a 300-pound person, and it also looks as stiff as cardboard.
Chapter 13: One of the room parents for Miss Mandel’s class greets them and leads them inside. The kids in Ms. Colman’s class all walk with their partners in a double line. Karen notes that Park West isn’t as wide as Stoneybrook Academy but that it’s a lot taller. Most of the class goes up the stairs; Addie and her mom take the elevator. As soon as they’re in Mandel’s classroom, Karen looks for Maxie and shouts out to her. No one tells her to shut up, of course. They exchange presents (Maxie bought Karen a package of markers) and are then instructed to walk around and look at the dinosaur-themed projects Mandel’s class has been doing, which are all over the room.
Then both classes go on a tour of the school, which seems really weird to me. Approximately forty seven-year-olds are not going to be quiet, and why do the kids need to see the whole school? Anyway, they start on the top floor (the fourth) and make their way back down, Karen taking mental notes of some of the differences between Maxie’s school and her own. My suspicion that this is all part of a plan to blow through a word count can’t be confirmed, but my suspicion that the teachers and room parents had no idea what they were doing and are ‘winging it’ is kind of confirmed when, eventually, Mandel looks at her watch (it’s eleven, so the kids have spent over an hour just hanging out at the school) and they head off to Central Park for their picnic.
Chapter 14: Even though Karen is amazed by the trees that spread away to the left, to the right, and straight ahead as far as she can see she doesn’t realize that she’s looking at the park and Maxie has to tell her what she’s looking at. And this kid skipped a grade.
Karen asks if they have to climb the wall to get into the park. Maxie says no and informs her that there’s an actual entrance a few blocks away. Karen wonders if Maxie is bragging (“She seemed to know an awful lot about the park.”). Well, duh, Karen, you just told us at the end of the last chapter that the kids go to the park for sports since their school doesn’t have a gym; of course Maxie knows about the park. They discuss their lunches, see the pond where Stuart Little has his adventure, climb all over a statue, and finally sit down to eat, which is what I thought they were there for in the first place. For a field trip to a museum, they sure aren’t spending any actual time in one. Before they sit down to eat, they see roller skaters, dancers, and a man playing drums.
Chapter 15: Spoke too soon, I guess, as they’re still not eating; they’re watching people on skates, rollerblades, bicycles; and other people jogging and walking dogs; and the teachers setting out blankets and sheets for them to eat on. Nancy’s pen pal is a typical little boy who refuses to sit with a bunch of girls, and while Nancy is initially hurt by this, she feels better when she notices the boys having a burping contest. Before they eat, they start trading bits of their lunches; no one really wants Maxie’s lettuce-and-tomato sandwich. Karen thinks this is because it’s ‘boring’. Shut up, Karen, you’re probably surrounded by homeless people who would practically kill each other for a fresh sandwich they don’t have to fish out of a garbage can. They talk about their food, which turns into a discussion on what dinosaurs ate, which ones they chose, and their habits, and I roll my eyes because these kids are about as interesting as watching grass grow. (Shut up, Dawn, your hobbies are boring.) They’re on a field trip and all they can think about is schoolwork.
They watch the other people in the park, too; a girl playing Frisbee with a dog, a man on rollerblades dancing to music, and little kids taking a walk with their teacher. Karen, you are a little kid. But I can’t really snark that, I guess, because when I was a kid, anyone younger than me was automatically a baby, as far as I was concerned.
They go back to talking about dinosaurs and imagine dinosaurs living in Central Park (which, as Maxie insightfully informs them, was not always Central Park and was at one time ‘just land’) and I was going to say that I don’t think a lollipop counts as something to eat, but then Karen ends this chapter by ‘biting into’ hers. As an adult whose teeth aren’t what they used to be, all I can say is, ouch! As soon as Karen and Maxie have taken the last bites of their lollipops (ow, ow, ow) Mrs. Hoffman says it’s time to go to the museum. Finally. Also, the way it’s written, it sounds like everyone else was already done and Mrs. H made everyone wait patiently and quietly for two kids to finish something they can easily lick while walking.
Chapter 16: Miss Mandel shows the kids a litter can. Lady, they’re seven years old; if they don’t know where garbage goes, stop teaching them about extinct creatures and teach them the basics! (Or maybe she’s trying to be both subtle and condescending about how little Stoneybrook has?) The kids are told to partner up, and Karen takes this to mean she has to grab Maxie’s hand. I loved field trips but hated them, too, just for that reason; I never really liked being touched, and I’ve always liked to have both hands free (which is why I’d take stuff with me when I left the house and lose it; I’d set it down and forget about it).
Maxie tells Karen about the museum, which Karen is very impressed by when she sees how big it is (“It was about a hundred times bigger than the art museum in Stoneybrook”) and even though Maxie sounds a little know-it-all, Karen doesn’t think again that she’s bragging. Mandel admits that they aren’t supposed to use the main entrance, but leads them through it anyway, claiming she wants the kids to see it. (Addie and her mom have to use another entrance . . . it seems weird to me that in a city with so many people, disabled people still don’t have access to the main entrance, or at least they don’t in this book.) Karen admires the main entrance, which she compares to a palace, while Mandel talks to a woman behind a desk. (Unfortunately, unlike Mr. D in the European Vacation SS, she doesn’t accidentally end up all showy and pompous to one of the other visitors.)
The kids take yet another tour, and while I’d have loved every second of this as a kid and thought nothing unusual about it as a child-reader of this book, the adult me just sighs in frustration at the many delays. My parents were the type to think a school day on which a movie was shown in my class was a huge waste and then they’d grumble that they should have just kept me at home, so I guess I know where I get my attitude from. The kids who have been the museum before all start requesting things to see, and Pamela asks if they can go to the gift shop. The teachers say they’ll try to see everything, but that they won’t have time to go to any of the gift shops. The adult half of me knows that the teachers probably just don’t want to deal with the fact that some of these kids have money, some of them don’t, and all the drama involved with taking forty kids into a gift shop (from experience, a place filled with delicate and expensive things). The immature half of me wants to point out that they would certainly have time to go to the gift shop if they hadn’t wasted so much time in Mandel’s classroom and in the park. Obviously, the fact that Karen brought money and isn’t supposed to go to a gift shop is going to be relevant.
Ha! Even Karen knows that there’s such a word as ‘peoples’! Claudia, read some books for six-year-olds. You’ll learn stuff.
Mandel whines about time again, and I would have a lot of trouble remaining polite if I had a kid whose teacher got me to travel with so many kids into another province, where I mostly sat around all day and then had to listen to the teacher complaining that they have to hurry if they’re going to do what they damn well went there to do. She also keeps whining that she ‘just wants’ the kids to see everything.
Chapter 17: The teachers have been hurrying the kids past all the gift shops. Karen can’t resist asking if they can stop at one when they finally get to the floor with the dinosaurs; apparently she’s been saving her allowance for weeks. Hoffman says there isn’t time (using different words, she says it twice in one paragraph) and that they’ll have to hurry. Again, I’d be a P.O.’d parent if I’d had to go on this trip and then rushed all over the place because the teachers can’t plan worth a damn and have no time-management (or child-management) skills. Even if I can understand why it’s not smart to take so many kids to a gift shop (or a museum), the fact that the teachers keep blaming their incompetence on ‘time’ (which they’ve had a ton of, since they left at 7:45 A.M.) really bothers me. If they would at least admit to making a mistake or intentionally wasting time, I’d be less annoyed.
Karen is surprised by the size of the fossils; she seems to have expected little models. More backwards (?) grammar: “In a display cases were fossils and bones and skeletons and skulls of other dinosaurs.” Karen wants to look for her dinosaur and get to work, but the teachers tell them to look around first. WHY am I the only one bothered by this? Why aren’t the kids making a big deal out of it? (The way they talk, especially to adults, I wouldn’t put it past them. Apparently time-wasting is a peeve of mine.) I know they’re technically at the museum to learn and have fun, but at the same time, they must have been out of Stoneybrook for at least five hours by now, and they haven’t even started to do what they’re there for. After they read about other dinosaurs and count the plates on their backs and other fairly useless things to tie in with the uselessness of sending your kid to a school where they learn exclusively about one thing for a month, they get to work. Karen and Maxie manage a respectable amount of information on ornitholestes, but ‘very soon’ the teachers collect their posters and say that the posters will be sent back and forth between classrooms. That would annoy most kids, but of course none of these kids make a fuss.
Chapter 18: The teachers are all in a rush. Losers. (Sorry; this book’s kinda made me mad. Again.) Karen can’t believe she has to leave ‘her’ dinosaur. Did you think they were going to let you take it home, Karen? Your daddy’s not there to make it happen. While everyone else waits for the elevator, Karen takes off . . . into a gift shop. “More dinosaur things were inside.” NONE of the adults notice. As sweet as it is that she wants to buy David Michael a present, she was told many times that she was supposed to stick with the others, follow the rules, and stay out of the gift shops, and I’m one of those people who thinks kids should do what they’re told and be punished for disobedience. Again, I shouldn’t be allowed to touch BSLS books.
Maxie’s face ‘is a big question mark’. I hate that expression; I always try to picture it, and it’s creepy. Karen tells us about other purchases she’s made at other gift shops. She also tells us that she has $4.18 . . . and that’s WEEKS’ worth of allowance? Come on, Watson, that’s pathetic. Even if your kid doesn’t have to work for her money, you’re a millionaire and you spoil her in every other way. Almost everything is too expensive (of course) so Karen looks for small, cheap things and finds a basket of tiny dinosaurs that cost $1.25 each. She decides that she can buy three, apparently financially-knowledgeable enough to know about tax despite the pittance her father gives her. Karen still sounds a lot like Junie B. Jones as she waits impatiently in line, having settled on three dinosaurs to buy. “I waited on that line. I did not wait patiently. I tapped my feet.” She finally pays, runs out (Karen, your running around is probably one of the deciding factors in the whole no-gift-shops thing), and finds that her class is gone. We all knew that was going to happen.
Chapter 19: Karen runs around thinking she’s in the wrong hallway. She considers leaving the museum by herself, too. She tries to follow several rules at once by standing in one place and looking around the AMNH for a police officer, but she can’t find one, even after five minutes. Karen worries that she’ll be left behind and thinks she might have to sell one of the dinosaurs back to the gift shop so she can afford to make phone calls. The math seems all wrong, but this is already a long snark and I just don’t care. She cries a little (unlike in the Arthur episode ‘Lost’ this kid’s plight elicits none of my sympathy; she brought it all on herself) and waits five more minutes, during which she looks for someone who works at the museum but can’t find anyone, even the gift shop cashier. She thinks Maxie won’t let the bus leave without her, but knows the museum is a big place and doubts she’ll be found. She cries a bit more.
She decides that Maxie may not know which gift shop to mention, but that she’ll remember their dinosaur. Karen knows her teachers can find ornitholestes, and wonders if she can. So, breaking the ‘stay where you are’ rule and stupidly leaving her place by the elevators where she’ll be easily spotted, she runs around and finds her dinosaur, where she waits (and waits and waits). Maxie and Mrs. Hoffman eventually find her there and hug her, and the picture is filled with touchy-feely nonsense; the teacher appears to have one hand on each of Karen’s shoulders, and Maxie, too, is holding Karen’s arm. That won’t keep her nearby, guys; you need a leash.
Maxie tells Karen in a whisper that she lied about how Karen got lost. Karen says she knows she was supposed to stay in one place (not mentioning the other rules she broke) and even though she broke several trip rules, her stupid Colman-esque teacher tells her she did the right thing (by wandering around by herself, looking for her dinosaur). Screw the sitting around nonsense; if my kid wanted to go on a field trip with incompetent losers like these, I’d go on the trip, too, to make sure my kid’s not running around unsupervised because apparently you can’t trust Stoneybrook’s adults to do a damn thing.
Chapter 20: It’s dark as they’re leaving the city. Karen sleeps all the way home. She tells her family about her trip, but stops herself in case it upsets David Michael. “I did not mention that I had sort of gotten lost.” Because you know that would be a lie, you little brat; you ‘sort of’ ran off, broke the rules, and have lied about all of it.
Karen gives David Michael all three dinosaurs after dinner. He’s supposed to be doing homework but is reading comic books. That’s the end of the David Michael school storyline. He and Karen apologize, cheered by the thought that maybe they’ll get to go back to the museum someday, and he gives one of the dinosaurs back to her as a souvenir from her trip.
And that’s that. Sorry for the rage; I’d like to have a kid someday, and the incapable adults in these books really bother me. Plus, Karen. :p