Rereading My Childhood: The Baby-Sitters Club

#2: Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls

At one time, I was just collecting and reading The Baby-Sitters Club. I was going to Goodwill every two weeks, buying whichever books in the series I was missing. Then I'd go home and read one every once in a while. Sometime during Claudia and Mean Janine, I got the idea to review these as writing practice and maybe help me build a portfolio. That's why the first one is Boy Crazy Stacey.

After I wrote a few of those I went back to the beginning – for continuity's sake. I can't review two hundred BSC books and skip over the first seven for no discernable reason. I went back through Kristy's Great Idea and wrote what became one of my favorite reviews. Then I came to this book and put it off. When it showed up again in the rotation, I did a different book.

Eventually, I had to take a deep breath and jump back into Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls, much to my chagrin. I hate this book. There. Plain and simple. It has a terrible message, and terrible people get rewarded for doing terrible things. It's a terrible ball of terrible, but I read it. For continuity. So welcome, to the nightmare that is Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls.

SPOILERS AFTER THE COVER!!!

It starts out like all the other books that center around Claudia – she is struggling with school and comparing herself to her genius sister.

The thing about homework is that it is just so boring I can barely concentrate on it. And it's useless. Who cares whether > means greater than or less than, or what X equals?

I don't know, Claudia, anyone who wants to solve almost any practical problem ever? If one of your dumb baby-sitting charges is supposed to have twelve blocks in his toy chest, but he only has five, how many blocks has he eaten? That's what X equals.

If Claudia didn't spend so much time thinking about how schoolwork is boring, she could probably just learn the material and move on. Or she has a learning disability, and then it's the school that is failing her. However, I haven't read anything that indicates a learning disability, just laziness on Claude's part.

But this isn't Rereading My Childhood While I Complain About Claudia Kishi, Don't @ Me, Mary Anne is the Best and Everyone Should Know That. I have to move on.

Then, like every book, Ann M. Martin feels the need to tell me that Claudia is Japanese and her grandmother, Mimi, has an accent, but her parents don't. Does the accent come up later? No, but it seems to be Mimi's only defining trait. Claudia starts to paint her and asks the very open-ended question, "Tell me about when you were a little girl in Japan." Just, like, anything, Claudia? Is Mimi like Mary Lou Henner? "When I was eight, on December 3rd, I ate miso soup and a biscuit for breakfast. Then I bathed for 24 minutes."

Then she goes into her clothes for the day, and they are, as usual, interesting.

I like bright colors and big patterns and funny touches, such as earring made from feathers. Maybe this is because I'm an artist. I don't know. Today, for instance, I'm wearing purple pants that stop just below my knees and are held up with suspenders, white tights with clocks on them, a purple-plaid shirt with a matching hat, my high-top sneakers, and lobster earrings. Clothes like these are my trademark.

My sister is an artist but she wouldn't wear capris with garish tights underneath. You are just silly. Also, I don't think a "funny touch" is a feather. That sounds more like cultural appropriation to me.

Later, Stacey calls Claudia and our resident artist talks about her crush on Trevor Sandbourne – a boy who writes poetry for the school's literary magazine The Literary Voice. Did you know that Robert Pinsky first published "Impossible to Tell" in Stoneybrook Middle School's The Literary Voice? Poet Trevor's peers are an august retinue.