"Janine had spoiled my whole afternoon." #7 Claudia and Mean Janine

I somehow have both copies so I thought I put them in. I scanned the old one crookedly.

I chose this book for a few different reasons. One, I wanted to do a Claudia book, and I was all set to do Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls, but someone else just did it. So, I went along the shelf and grabbed the next Claudia book, which is this. It also takes place during July, and this is when Mimi has her stroke.

I kind of have some issues with the stroke plot. My dad had a stroke almost 6 years ago. His was minor, said the doctors. He was the picture of health; the stroke came from out of nowhere. (It turned out it was plaque-related, but that's beside the point right now.) He was in intensive care for a little over a week, then a regular room for about another week, and then, he was in a nursing home for about six months, until my sibs and I couldn't take his nagging about going home anymore. His recovery was very slow, but steady. The parallels between his stroke and Mimi's were kind of uncanny, until they both got to the recovery and treatment stage. I understand that Mimi is a character in a book and my dad is not, but Mimi's recovering health could have been done a bit differently. I tell you what, when I got that phone call from my brother that day, the first thing I thought of was what I knew about strokes. Up until then, all of that knowledge came from this book. Obviously, I thought my dad was going to wake up and start talking to me in Japanese.

The other plot of the book is the summer play group the gang puts on. Looking at the description of what Kristy wants to do, it sounds like it's just organized baby-sitting. In Stacey's backyard, no less. Her schedule for the day morning: hour and a half of whatever, twenty minutes of music, snack of saltines and canned juice, stories, group thing like hide-and-seek, and if there's any time leftover, they "can just play on their own again." Way to ruin their lunches with dry old crackers and over-sugared juice, Kristy.

This is also when Kristy and Co. move to 1210 McLelland Road. (And the Perkins fam moves into Kristy's old house.) According to this book, it's three miles from Watson's to Claudia's. The gang also strikes up their deal with Charlie to drive Kristy back to the old 'hood for a buck a meeting. I'm surprised he didn't laugh at them. Nowadays, he'd probably charge them $5 a trip. But I've also heard that the going rate for baby-sitting is like $10/hour.

Lucy Newton gets christened in this book. When I was younger, I didn't know what "christening" was. Eventually I figured out it's just like being baptized. Claudia also helps Jamie Newton deal with some sibling rivalry, and in turn, Claud realizes she is jealous of Janine. She tries to be more friendly with Janine, but obviously it doesn't work, because by #123 Claud's Big Blowout, she and Janine are still not very close.

Continuity Issues:
Again, since this is an older book, and still written by Ann Martin herself, I didn't see any issues to speak of.

WTF Moments:
While describing Stacey, Claudia says, "Stacey's from New York, where it's okay to be wild. I don't think anyone from New York could be blah." There's plenty of blah people in NYC. They're just hidden behind all the permed blonde hair and dinosaur-pinned berets.

Claudia considers cutting her hair, and Stacey asks how long it took to grow it. "Years," [Claudia] admitted. Like how many? In two years, my hair grew from chin-length to halfway down my back. When Dawn comes in, Claudia narrates, "When we stand next to each other, we look kind of like a photograph and its negative." So is Claud's hair as long as Dawn's?


At the end of this book (last page), the gang gets The Phone Call from Mrs. Pike about Sea City. Stacey and Mary Anne end up as being the only ones available to go, so it looks like some fun in the sun is in the works for those two crazy kids!

So that's about it for this book. I did read a Sweet Valley Twins book over the weekend, but I'm not sure I want to blog it. It was seriously lame. Well, now that I think about it, maybe I will, it was so bad. I don't know what my fascination was with these spin-off series. I have two of the SVT Christmas specials, BIG For Christmas, and Magic Christmas, which I really like. The regular series was complete rediculosity.