"Can you imagine, all those little kids in pajamas?" #44 Dawn and the Big Sleepover

I remember this book pretty well, the cover also. This being the only cover that shows Dawn with the much-talked-about waist-length hair. And a polterwang. Well, let's face it, lots of the BSC covers have polterwang. This one I must unnecessarily point out. And is that brunette in the jersey-nightshirt supposed to be Mary Anne? I couldn't tell when I was twelve, and I can't tell now at my current age (knocking on thirty's back door).

Well, let's get this party started. Dawn is babysitting at the Pikes' one Tuesday afternoon, and the kids are a little to eager to read the letters they got from their pen pals (Remember pen pals? I had one at around this age who I just picked at random and started writing to. She actually replied and we kept it up for about two years, until she discovered dating. Goodbye, pen pal!) at their "sister school" in Zuni, New Mexico. The Pikes are excited to hear about a culture that's much different than their own upper-middle-class suburban existence. Like, do they have running water, MTV, or video games? The little Pikes decide to send a bunch of Stoneybrook souvenirs to their pen pals (pennants, decals, bumper stickers) and Dawn goes home, tra la la la.

Friday meeting rolls around, and Mal's late. She wanders in, looking strange upset. Everyone is looking at her, and she says that the Zuni kids' school in New Mexico burned down. The rest of the gang is all, "huh?", and Mal explains that Vanessa got a letter from her pen pal, Rachel Redriver, saying there was a gas station close to the school that exploded, and the fire spread before it could be contained. The school and some houses burned. The gang talks about it between job scheduling and Stacey laments, "I wish there was something we could do." To which Dawn replies, "Maybe there is."

To make a long story short, Dawn organizes a food and clothing drive, a fund raiser, and as a special reward to the kids who participate, a sleepover at the elementary school! (Sorry for the run-on sentence.) Hey Dawn? We used to call those lock-ins. She gets the local pizza place to donate pies for the cause, and talks the toy store into donating stuff for prizes at the sleepover. Although she probably didn't have to do much begging--all their donations are tax-deductible.

Everything goes as planned, except the last minute confusion that always happens. Someone couldn't get the CD player they promised, so they had to settle with a tape deck; Pizza Express didn't get their shipment of flour in, so they might not be able to make 30 pizzas; Dawn starts to freak out. Heh, Dawn is almost crying on the phone to the pizza man when he tells her about the flour. She asks him if he has the number for the pizza place in Mercer. He hems and haws and says he'll call the grocery store and clear out their flour inventory if Dawn doesn't mind whole-wheat pizza crust. Are you kidding? I figured that's what she ordered in the first place.

The sleepover is great (only one kid out of a hundred has an "accident" in a sleeping bag; there was a barfer--probably allergic the whole-wheat pizza crust), and the next day, they pack up all the stuff that'd been collected, get a check for the raised funds, and ship it all off, with no advance notice whatsoever. A week later, they get this letter in the mail:

To the children of Stoneybrook:
I have been an educator for twenty-seven years. As an English teacher and an administrator, I have guided my children to speak clearly with well-chosen words. But for the first time in my life, I find that words are inadequate to express my feelings --our feelings.
Many of us were rendered speechless by your generosity and unselfish donation of time. The gifts of clothing and food were distributed where needed, and are already being enjoyed. The money has helped enable us to obtain financing for the construction of a new school.
But the rewards of your work go beyond the gifts themselves. Our children have been inspired by you to do some fund-raising of their own. They are planning various activities right now, and the community seems to be throwing its support behind them.
The government, perhaps partly as a reaction to the positive efforts we are displaying, agreed today to grant us substantial disaster funding.
With luck, our school will be built and stocked with supplies by the beginning the next school year.
We hope to be left with a reserve fund for an exchange trip with our brothers and sisters in Stoneybrook, Connecticut,
Once again, thank you all.
Fondly,
Joseph Woodward

So, how much funds did they raise? There is no total, except Dawn says it's "phenomenal." She made Stacey count it four times.

Subplot: I read this book twice in a week, (the second time specifically looking for issues) and I couldn't really find a subplot. It's all about the Zunis and what the wonderful people of Stoneybrook do for them.

WTF Moments
*Dawn gets all worked up about the schools being "sister" schools. She wants to call them "sibling" schools. STFU, Dawn!

*Claudia's outfit:

For instance, she walked into school today wearing a bright yellow, oversize man's jacket with rolled-up sleeves, a wide paisley tie right out of the nineteen-sixties, orange stirrup pants, ankle boots, and huge hoop earrings--and you know what? [No, what?] On her, it totally cool.

No shirt? Okey dokey.

*The principal announces over the PA system that the BSC members are to be excused at 9:55 to go the elementary school. Um, do they have to be so...I don't know...obvious about it? In my high school days, if we needed to be excused in the middle of class, it wasn't announced to the WHOLE SCHOOL! Also, a classmate of Dawn's asks her if he joins the BSC, would he be let out early too? She says to him, "Eat your heart out, Ray." WTF?? I don't think she used that phrase correctly. I don't think I've ever used that phrase correctly.

*This is in like almost all the books, but I just [really] noticed how all the girls call Watson Brewer by just his first name, and not any other parent. The only other adult they're on a first-name basis with was Mimi. Even with the other girls' books' Chapter 2s, they don't really even call Mary Anne and Dawn's folks Richard and Sharon, they're Mr. This and Mrs. That. I think a Sharon slips out every so often, but never a Richard. But every refers to Watson as "Watson." (And this is before SS #8, where Dawn asks permission to call him Watson.)

Continuity Issues
*This isn't really continuity, but it bothers me that the Pike Parents are almost totally rule-less, but then they never want to let Mallory to get "cool" clothes or contact lenses. I think maturity-wise, Mal can handle contacts. As for the clothes, who gives a rip? She's at the age where she'll outgrow them in a year anyway!

*The Barrett Parents: It says that the Barretts were the last parents to pick up their kid from the sleepover. Did Ham Sr. and Her Hotness arrive together to pick up Buddy? Or did the ghostwriter (Peter Lerangis) have a brain fart and forget they were divorced? What happened? The sentence is pretty vague.

Other notables:
*Claudia's Pebbles outfit! A few weeks ago, I was trying to remember which book it was in. This one!

*Mary Anne is reading Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume. She borrowed it from Dawn, who tries to ruin the ending when Mary Anne isn't paying enough attention to her.

*One of the fund raising ideas the Pikes have is a carnival. The triplets set up a free throw contest, with shots for a quarter. Dawn questions why they're charging money when it's supposed to be a "free" throw. The boys did exactly as I did: massive eye rolling.


There's other details I wanted to put in, but I'm not going to. I don't really feel like trying to find a place to put the details. Also, just to clarify, the title quote above is punctuated just like that in the book, with a comma in the middle of the sentence. It makes more sense in context.

One more thing: I started Kristy at Bat this afternoon, and I'm not hating it as much as I thought. BUT, she hasn't gotten to baseball camp yet, so there's still hope.