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A review by finesilkflower
Kristy's Worst Idea by Ann M. Martin
4.0
The Baby-sitters Club is disbanded.
As the new school year starts, everyone is super busy with school and other commitments. Nobody wants to do Kristy’s “Fall into Fall Block Party” festival idea (especially when it involves increasingly insane demands like tying apples to trees for fake apple-picking). Against Kristy’s protestations, the club votes to change a meeting day to accommodate Jessi’s Friday dance class. Then Mallory gets a Wednesday writing class, and other conflicts pop up. Kristy worries it’s a slippery slope, especially when the others start suggesting club policy changes for flexibility--like making meeting attendance optional. On top of that, Jackie falls out of a tree and hurts his ankle under Kristy’s watch, and she worries that she is a bad baby-sitter. In a meeting which starts out as a fight but turns into an eerie calm reasoned discussion, the club--including Kristy--votes to disband.
Life after the BSC is like retirement for Kristy. She starts gardening with Watson. She misses the club and the activity, but insists the pangs are fading. Claudia is constantly answering to irate clients and referring them to other club members. Abby never gets to sit, because the clients know the other girls so much better that they don’t think of her. Mallory and Jessi never wanted the club to disband in the first place (they were the only nay votes). Stacey and Claudia are heartbroken when they run into Jamie Newton and learn he believes the club is mad at him. Then Jackie has another accident, this time not while being baby-sat, and the entire club shows up at his hospital room. Kristy realizes that she misses the BSC and the kids, and that she hadn't want to admit it to herself, but her role in Jackie's original accident had spooked her more than she realized.
Kristy calls everyone together to discuss a possible future for the club. After some discussion (the junior members are right on board, but some of the senior members still have reservations), they decide to restart the club for a one-month trial period.
It’s about time the club members burned out! I bet this book is sort of meta about how all the writers were feeling, too, and it’s not surprising that this is relatively close to the end of the run (the main series, anyway). This book had enough emotional beats for a "to be continued...", but given that the club’s break-up and return together has to be in the same book, this is quite well-done.
The snowballing conflicts and the clash between Kristy’s rigidity and other club members urging flexibility feels organic. Kristy does have a point that behaving as if the club is not a priority has symbolic weight and will lead to the club’s gradual downfall anyway. Claudia has a point that if the club can’t bend, it’ll break. The moment when Kristy says, “I, Kristy Thomas, hereby declare that the Baby-sitters Club no longer exists,” and Claudia records a quiet message on her machine, is an awesome slap in the face of the heart of the reader.
The problems caused by the end of the club also feel realistic, and the club is apart just long enough--and Kristy takes the permanence of the breakup seriously enough--to make your heart leap along with Kristy’s at the slightest suggestions that she should re-form it.
Ghostwriter: Peter Lerangis, recognizable from Lerangian tropes like having someone read a prepared statement that is overly formal to point of gibberish and having someone respond, "Can you repeat that very slowly, as if I am learning English for the first time?"
Lingering Questions: At one point, Mrs. Prezzioso is irate because she spent all morning on the phone to different ex-members looking for a sitter for that night. "This whole process was much easier when you were the Baby-sitters Club," she complains. Does she not remember that the club never met on Saturdays anyway?
Business Model Review: Now seems like a good time to re-review the BSC’s business model, particularly the changes that the girls suggest. Claudia now has an answering machine, so that’s a step in the right direction (and she even notes that the club doesn’t need meetings at all if they just let the machine pick up--she’s been reading my blog!) And while Kristy doesn’t want to change meeting times because they are “burned into our clients’ brains,” Stacey has a point that because Friday is a big night for jobs and for clients to be out with their families, Thursday is probably a more convenient night for them to call for sitters (of course, the club is back to Friday at the end when Jessi’s dance class gets moved).
Although Kristy is perhaps right that any step away from rigid mandatory attendance would lead to under-attended clubs, I think the idea of having optional attendance is actually pretty good. People who want to sit more--who have more time and need more money--can attend more meetings and take more jobs. The rest would be available to call upon if none of the attendees could take the jobs. This would eliminate the distinction between associate and non-associate members and make everything more spectrumy and fluid and allow more specific tailoring of the amount a particular baby-sitter wanted to work, thus allowing all the members to take on other activities and prevent burn-out like we saw here. It could also open the club up to accept more members, such as Erica Blumberg (who finally gets a chance to sit after the "Baby-sitters Club monopoly" ends), because being in the BSC’s network wouldn’t necessarily mean the commitment of meetings, and the number of people in the club wouldn’t be limited by the number Claudia’s room could hold (although, to be fair, Erica could already have joined as an associate if the club members liked her or respected her as a sitter.)
Dues would be an issue, but if they switched to a percentage of earnings system or just made each meeting "pay to play" (essentially you pay dues of $1 to attend a meeting and get a shot at jobs worth much more than that), I think it would work out. Alternately, they could disband the dues system and just have everyone buy their own Kid-Kit supplies, although this might end up with Kid-Kit Quality Disparity.
Continuity Errors: Kristy gives Mallory clip-on earrings from Hawaii. She has pierced ears, as we all know from the drama surrounding that. Of course, maybe Kristy didn’t know or care about that plotline.
Slash Watch: Kristy describes herself as "loud and proud."
Wait, What? Forget all this club disbanding nonsense: the point when my world is really rocked is when Claudia misspells Mary Anne’s last name as "Speer." Wait, I’ve been pronouncing it like Spy-er this whole time! What do I do now? Where do I go?
Timing: September again.
Revised Timeline: September of senior year of college. Onset of senioritis feels like as good a time as any to get burned out, although I'd have expected it to happen a long time ago--high school senior year, maybe. And with everyone suddenly being busy and differently-scheduled, first year of college would have worked too. In this alternate timeline, there is something bittersweet about the club re-forming by the end of September senior year, because they are (presumably) all going to be scattered to the winds in eight short months anyway.
As the new school year starts, everyone is super busy with school and other commitments. Nobody wants to do Kristy’s “Fall into Fall Block Party” festival idea (especially when it involves increasingly insane demands like tying apples to trees for fake apple-picking). Against Kristy’s protestations, the club votes to change a meeting day to accommodate Jessi’s Friday dance class. Then Mallory gets a Wednesday writing class, and other conflicts pop up. Kristy worries it’s a slippery slope, especially when the others start suggesting club policy changes for flexibility--like making meeting attendance optional. On top of that, Jackie falls out of a tree and hurts his ankle under Kristy’s watch, and she worries that she is a bad baby-sitter. In a meeting which starts out as a fight but turns into an eerie calm reasoned discussion, the club--including Kristy--votes to disband.
Life after the BSC is like retirement for Kristy. She starts gardening with Watson. She misses the club and the activity, but insists the pangs are fading. Claudia is constantly answering to irate clients and referring them to other club members. Abby never gets to sit, because the clients know the other girls so much better that they don’t think of her. Mallory and Jessi never wanted the club to disband in the first place (they were the only nay votes). Stacey and Claudia are heartbroken when they run into Jamie Newton and learn he believes the club is mad at him. Then Jackie has another accident, this time not while being baby-sat, and the entire club shows up at his hospital room. Kristy realizes that she misses the BSC and the kids, and that she hadn't want to admit it to herself, but her role in Jackie's original accident had spooked her more than she realized.
Kristy calls everyone together to discuss a possible future for the club. After some discussion (the junior members are right on board, but some of the senior members still have reservations), they decide to restart the club for a one-month trial period.
It’s about time the club members burned out! I bet this book is sort of meta about how all the writers were feeling, too, and it’s not surprising that this is relatively close to the end of the run (the main series, anyway). This book had enough emotional beats for a "to be continued...", but given that the club’s break-up and return together has to be in the same book, this is quite well-done.
The snowballing conflicts and the clash between Kristy’s rigidity and other club members urging flexibility feels organic. Kristy does have a point that behaving as if the club is not a priority has symbolic weight and will lead to the club’s gradual downfall anyway. Claudia has a point that if the club can’t bend, it’ll break. The moment when Kristy says, “I, Kristy Thomas, hereby declare that the Baby-sitters Club no longer exists,” and Claudia records a quiet message on her machine, is an awesome slap in the face of the heart of the reader.
The problems caused by the end of the club also feel realistic, and the club is apart just long enough--and Kristy takes the permanence of the breakup seriously enough--to make your heart leap along with Kristy’s at the slightest suggestions that she should re-form it.
Ghostwriter: Peter Lerangis, recognizable from Lerangian tropes like having someone read a prepared statement that is overly formal to point of gibberish and having someone respond, "Can you repeat that very slowly, as if I am learning English for the first time?"
Lingering Questions: At one point, Mrs. Prezzioso is irate because she spent all morning on the phone to different ex-members looking for a sitter for that night. "This whole process was much easier when you were the Baby-sitters Club," she complains. Does she not remember that the club never met on Saturdays anyway?
Business Model Review: Now seems like a good time to re-review the BSC’s business model, particularly the changes that the girls suggest. Claudia now has an answering machine, so that’s a step in the right direction (and she even notes that the club doesn’t need meetings at all if they just let the machine pick up--she’s been reading my blog!) And while Kristy doesn’t want to change meeting times because they are “burned into our clients’ brains,” Stacey has a point that because Friday is a big night for jobs and for clients to be out with their families, Thursday is probably a more convenient night for them to call for sitters (of course, the club is back to Friday at the end when Jessi’s dance class gets moved).
Although Kristy is perhaps right that any step away from rigid mandatory attendance would lead to under-attended clubs, I think the idea of having optional attendance is actually pretty good. People who want to sit more--who have more time and need more money--can attend more meetings and take more jobs. The rest would be available to call upon if none of the attendees could take the jobs. This would eliminate the distinction between associate and non-associate members and make everything more spectrumy and fluid and allow more specific tailoring of the amount a particular baby-sitter wanted to work, thus allowing all the members to take on other activities and prevent burn-out like we saw here. It could also open the club up to accept more members, such as Erica Blumberg (who finally gets a chance to sit after the "Baby-sitters Club monopoly" ends), because being in the BSC’s network wouldn’t necessarily mean the commitment of meetings, and the number of people in the club wouldn’t be limited by the number Claudia’s room could hold (although, to be fair, Erica could already have joined as an associate if the club members liked her or respected her as a sitter.)
Dues would be an issue, but if they switched to a percentage of earnings system or just made each meeting "pay to play" (essentially you pay dues of $1 to attend a meeting and get a shot at jobs worth much more than that), I think it would work out. Alternately, they could disband the dues system and just have everyone buy their own Kid-Kit supplies, although this might end up with Kid-Kit Quality Disparity.
Continuity Errors: Kristy gives Mallory clip-on earrings from Hawaii. She has pierced ears, as we all know from the drama surrounding that. Of course, maybe Kristy didn’t know or care about that plotline.
Slash Watch: Kristy describes herself as "loud and proud."
Wait, What? Forget all this club disbanding nonsense: the point when my world is really rocked is when Claudia misspells Mary Anne’s last name as "Speer." Wait, I’ve been pronouncing it like Spy-er this whole time! What do I do now? Where do I go?
Timing: September again.
Revised Timeline: September of senior year of college. Onset of senioritis feels like as good a time as any to get burned out, although I'd have expected it to happen a long time ago--high school senior year, maybe. And with everyone suddenly being busy and differently-scheduled, first year of college would have worked too. In this alternate timeline, there is something bittersweet about the club re-forming by the end of September senior year, because they are (presumably) all going to be scattered to the winds in eight short months anyway.