Despite my constant attempts to do so, I cannot keep a journal or a diary. It starts the same way. A new, flawless journal with a beautiful blue flower on the cover and a silver-foiled edge. Each day dated and lined. Two weeks of consistent writing. Then the steep drop-off. Days go by without anything noteworthy. I think I can’t use the pages for different days because it’s not the correct date. The diary goes unused. I pull it apart and use the pages for notes.
Blogs are the same way for me. I just don’t think that my life is particularly interesting. This is the longest I’ve been able to do anything blog or writing wise semi-consistently, and, even then, it hasn’t been that consistent.
Mallory Pike says there’s a difference between a journal and a diary. A diary is a daily log of events. A journal is a random log of random thoughts. This definition of a journal is instantly more appealing to me, but then what would I do with my stacks and stacks of pretty note paper? A journal would be a large notepad for me, filled with the exact words I’m going to say to the lady on the phone when I order refills on my prescriptions and possible responses to questions.
Mallory Pike’s mother wants to welcome the McGills back to Stoneybrook, so she sends her oldest over with a casserole, a staple of these books and everyone’s childhood except mine. Stacey and her mother are more than happy to receive the casserole, as all they have been eating is take-out. They have been living my daily existence.
Claudia has been helping Stacey unpack and today is no different. At the request of Ms. McGill, they take some extra moving boxes into the attic. There, they find a bunch of crap left behind, including a trunk. Stacey gives Mallory the trunk and Mallory pays the triplets to lug the thing to her room.
It’s a beautiful antique trunk and while Mallory wants to get it open, she would prefer to do it without the demolition team from Property Brothers. Unfortunately, Mallory does not possess the skills necessary, so it’ll be a while before we can get to the mystery diary.
Meanwhile, Buddy Barrett is having trouble reading. He should be tested for dyslexia. He’s eight-years-old and he can’t read Green Eggs and Ham. Instead, Buddy’s mother hires Mallory, who is not a qualified specialist. She is a sixth-grader who is currently prying open a trunk out of frustration.
After all that talk about not wanting to destroy the trunk, Mallory relents and allows the triplets to smash the lock with a hammer. They find clothes and, finally, the titular mystery diary.I sat on the edge of my bed and opened the diary. The first page read, “This is my book, by Sophie. And this is a year in my life – 1894.”
Well, the mystery diary belongs to Sophie! Sherlock Pike, your powers of deduction are impeccable!
Mallory reads Sophie’s diary until her first tutoring session with Buddy. He came home with flashcards from his teacher, whom he hates. Mallory goes over the flashcards with him and Buddy is annoyed and frustrated the whole time. She rewards him with five minutes to play with his generic, nondescript video game. Just enough time to get to the loading screen. On the way home, Mallory wonders if there’s a better way to teach reading.
Back home, Mallory dives deeper into the diary and we finally get a mystery. Basically, Sophie’s grandfather didn’t like his daughter’s no-good husband, Jared, who is also Sophie’s father. After Sophie’s mother dies in childbirth, Sophie’s grandfather disowned the family and blamed Jared for the theft of her mother’s portrait. Sophie is determined to clear her father’s name and find the portrait or else she’ll haunt Stacey’s house. The mystery is not so much about the diary, but the starter quest is in the diary itself.
Meanwhile, Kristy baby-sits for her siblings, including Emily Michelle, her adopted sister from Vietnam. The baby doesn’t do much, but I mention her only because Kristy claims that orphanages in Vietnam neglect the children, which is a rotten thing to conjecture. It already bothers me that they changed Emily Michelle’s name and this unfounded dig at Vietnam is gross and unacceptable. Anyway, not much happens, but the Thomas/Brewer clan ventures upstairs to look for treasures, only to find clothes as outdated as their beliefs.
At the BSC meeting, Mallory goes over everyone’s clothes. Kristy, Mary Anne, Jessi, and Stacey aren’t wearing anything particularly egregious, but Mallory is concerned about patterns potentially clashing.
This episode of “What’s Claudia Wearing?” is uneventful.Claud herself was wearing jeans, a plain white blouse, a pink sweater, white socks, and loafers. She said she’s gone back to the fifties for the day.
However, this is Mallory’s outfit:I was wearing boring old jeans, but a top that I liked a lot – a big white long-sleeved T-shirt that said I ❤️ KIDS across the front.
Mallory, honey, I don’t care if they gave you a free shirt, don’t hang out at CPAC.
Finally, Dawn is wearing pants and a sweatshirt. That’s it. That’s all.
Oh, did I forget to mention the “small straw hat?”
I insist that all Dawn cosplay must include this $1.50 hat from Party City.
They never talk about the outfits or the little hat for the rest of the book, but they do continue their conversation about the mystery in the diary. Dawn posits that Sophie’s grandfather is Old Man Hickory, the curmudgeon from The Baby-Sitters Club #17: Mary Anne’s Bad-Luck Mystery, but that would imply that everyone in Stoneybrook is connected to this old guy who didn’t want to leave his house. Jessi suggests that Sophie stole the painting, which would mean that Sophie is lying in her own diary. The BSC ends the meeting pretty damn stoked about this missing painting.
Mallory arrives at the Barretts for Buddy’s tutoring session. This time, she gives him some comic books, much to Buddy’s excitement.Maybe Mrs. Barrett didn’t let her kids read comics. Some parents didn’t, and I can understand why. In our house we’re allowed to read comics, but only as long as we read books, too. Mom and Dad said that was fair since they read some pretty junky magazines as well as good books. But not all parents feel that way.
What’s wrong with comic books? I can think of at least five comic books off the top of my head that I would consider literary masterpieces, as well as five actual books that have no literary merit. Oh yeah, we can’t have people reading comic books like Maus by Art Spiegelman because to them, it’s schlock. Reagan’s America, everyone, where kids can’t wear palm tree earrings and green hair, and God forbid someone catches them reading Calvin & Hobbes.
Anyway, Buddy and Mallory read Archie together. Archie? Like, Riverdale? And Jughead?
Then they make comics and Mallory helps him with his spelling. Buddy has a good time and Mallory is proud of herself.
The BSC wants to solve the mystery of the diary, so they are going to do the next logical step – hold a seance. Kristy insists on being the “channeler” and she shows up at Stacey’s house dressed as if she were one of the Romani people. Martin doesn’t use the word “Romani,” but a slur. You know which one.
The girls do their little seance and Kristy pretends to be Sophie so she can tell the girls that a seance is a bad idea. They all laugh and laugh. This scene could have been cut out and nothing would change. They used a culture as a costume for nothing.
Stacey sits for Charlotte, who tells her some convoluted story about a girl who finds puppies in the forest and it’s Christmas. It’s all for her to say that things may not be what they seem. It doesn’t really help solve the mystery, but I guess there’s always a scene where the detective looks furtive and says, “There’s something we’re missing. Some piece of the puzzle that has yet to be found. We must look at this from a different angle.” And then he ponders at a tree, or flips over a card, or puts a pipe in his mouth, depending on when the movie was made and if it takes place in Monte Carlo.
During Mallory’s next session with Buddy, she shows him the diary. He reads for a while and then rummages through the rest of the trunk. Buried at the bottom, is another piece of paper – the key to the mystery.
Well, not really a key. It’s a confession from Sophie’s grandfather and it just says what happened. Basically, Dawn was correct. Old Man Hickory was Sophie’s grandfather. After his daughter died, he got big sads from looking at her portrait, so he commissioned some traveling painter to paint over it. Then when people asked about the painting, he framed his no-good son-in-law, regardless of the consequences for his grandchild.
Stacey finds another painting in the attic and Stacey’s mom, who’s got it going on (a reference that’s good in perpetuity), takes it to Stamford to restore the original painting. Stacey’s mom is able to just buy a huge house in suburban Connecticut without a job and they still have leftover money for painting restoration. White people in the ‘80s had it made.
In the end, Buddy performs a magic trick for Mallory and his family because Mallory cured his dyslexia, I guess.
Buddy and Mallory claim that Buddy solved the mystery, but finding a confession at the bottom of the trunk isn’t really solving a mystery. It would be like a video game quest giver asking you to find some herbs and they’re on the table next to them. No one pieced together clues, no one noticed something interesting, no one lent their expertise to the situation. Mallory should have just dumped out the rest of the contents of the trunk at the beginning and we could have gone home early for the day.
Also, Buddy definitely has a reading disability of some kind. Either Martin didn’t intend for his journey to revolve around his obvious disability because Boomers deny the existence of neurodivergent people, or she just unloaded the responsibility of a professional onto an 11-year-old with a horse obsession. I’ll give Martin the benefit of the doubt. While Mallory gives Buddy an avenue to the wonderful world of reading, hopefully he’ll go to a professional for real assistance.
Rereading My Childhood is written by me – Amy A. Cowan. For a list of every Baby-Sitters Club, Goosebumps, and Fear Street book review I have written and to subscribe to my Substack or YouTube, go toRereadingMyChildhood.com. To listen to the official podcast, visit the website or search for “Rereading My Childhood” in your favorite podcast app. For more information about me, visitAmyACowan.com.
If you could regress to a previous age but still retain all your knowledge, what would you do? Buy up Apple stock before it skyrocketed with the return of Steve Jobs? Save Britney Spears from her exploitative conservatorship? Warn everyone about the pandemic?
You can have as many grand ideas as vast and deep as a certain canyon, but the truth is that unless you’re literally Bill Clinton, you wouldn’t do anything earth shattering. Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. I was eleven. How the hell is an eleven-year-old going to buy stock? And there was no way I could convince my stock-less family to buy a stock that, according to every source at the time, was circling the drain. And about Britney Spears, what was I going to do? Britney Spears doesn’t know me. And as for the pandemic, disease experts were warning us about a pandemic for years and the Orange Menace still gutted the organization responsible for pandemic management right when we needed it the most.
Truthfully, you would try to change something personal. You wouldn’t date that boy with a motorcycle and a tongue piercing. You would make that life-changing move to Sydney instead of putting it off until you couldn’t afford it anymore. You would major in English instead.
In this week’s book, our protagonist has an opportunity to rectify mistakes in his past, but it may be too late to actually fix anything as an existential threat looms over this book. Get ready to contemplate your existence.
Michael hates his little sister, Tara. She’s always playing pranks and getting him into trouble. The Stine Prank-o-Meter starts at “howling outside windows” and ends at “murder.” We’ll see where she falls, but I will tell you right now that one of her “pranks” is definitely a felony of some kind.
Anyways, their father bought a Cuckoo/Grandfather clock. The contraption requires a small fleet of workers to move it, and every hour a yellow bird pops out and squawks out the time. After years of seeing the clock in the window of an antique store, and years of bargaining, Michael’s father finally got it for a song. There’s a flaw in the clock, but even after the kids search the cabinet for scratches and dents, they can’t find it. And the clock accurately relays the time, so the flaw must be incredibly minor. But you know how collectors are. One scratch or missing TY tag and suddenly your understuffed toy is worthless. Yes, that’s the only possible reason.
Besides telling the time, the clock also displays the year, but it only goes to 2000. It either needs a patch like every operating system in 1999, or the clock couldn’t live in a without Beanie Babies. (The owner of Beanie Babies said that he would stop making them in 2000. People were going to retire on that Princess Diana Bear, dammit. However, it was all a publicity stunt and now I can find Beanie Babies at 7-11 between the Monster Energy Drinks and the taquitos of questionable origin.)
Before the day is over, Tara tricks Michael into stepping on gum, smashes his foot, and starts a fight over the family encyclopedia set. However, none of these things are as bad as Tara’s previous exploits.
Michael’s parents threw him a party for his twelfth birthday. They even got him a brand new bike. Before Michael can ride it, Tara climbs on it, tumbles to the floor, and scratches the bike. The parents don’t admonish Tara for tying to mount something that she had no business climbing on. They admonish Michael for being more concerned about the giant gash on his new bike than his sister falling a foot due to her own recklessness. That’s not all. During the birthday party, Tara trips Michael as he’s carrying the cake, ruining his cake and destroying the last thread of dignity he had in front of his crush, Mona. Granted, his dignity was already in dire straits.
A week before, Michael was in a play with Mona. She was on her way over to Michael’s house so they could rehearse. Tara is engaged in some light animal abuse with the family dog while Michael is trying to get his frog costume on. He is in his underwear as he’s trying to get the frog costume zipped. Mona arrives and Tara leads her straight to Michael’s door. She flings open the door and reveals Michael in a vulnerable position. Tara probably committed a felony, but, once again, the parents don’t do anything.
And finally, before that, after basketball practice, one of the other players, a boy with an enlarged pituitary gland, is missing his favorite hat. The boy finds the hat in Michael’s bag. Guess who put it there? The boy pounds Michael so much that his “clothes don’t fit too well.” When Michael doesn’t want to talk to his sister because she is the reason he looks like his just solved The Lament Configuration, he slams the door in her face. His parents punish him for slamming a door.
Back in the present, the cuckoo clock is a tempting tool for revenge.
The yellow bird popped out. I grabbed it in mid-cuckoo. It made short, strangling noises.
I twisted its head around, so it faced backwards. It looked really funny that way.
It finished out its twelve cuckoos, facing the wrong way.I laughed to myself. When Dad saw it, he’d to ballistic!
The cuckoo slid back into its little window, still facing backwards.
This is going to drive Dad insane! I thought wickedly.He’ll be furious at Tara. He’ll explode like a volcano.
Michael’s father does not go Captain Magma on the kids. Instead, Michael wakes up and it’s his birthday!
That’s right – like Marty McFly before him, Michael went back in time. Does he make out with his hot mother? Or at least change his birthday so it goes smoother? He does neither of these things because he’s still confused and his birthday does not change.
The next morning, he still doesn’t figure out what’s going on, but he knows it has something to do with the cuckoo clock. Downstairs in the den, the previous location of the clock, he finds a big pile of nothing. Michael’s father hasn’t purchased the clock yet. In fact, it’s not a week before his birthday – it’s the day Tara put herself on some kind of a watch list.
Michael attempts to prevent the embarrassing situation, but it’s no use. Then he travels to the day Tara implicated him in the theft. Resigned to his fate, he takes his beating. The next morning he goes to school, but he doesn’t recognize anyone in his class. He’s regressed a full grade, which means that in just a few days, he will cease to exist.
The existential threat of unbirth paralyzes me almost every night, but it prompts a seven-year-old Michael to get on a bus and venture to the antique store. Unfortunately, the store is closed for the holiday. Michael doesn’t know how old he’s going to be tomorrow, or if he’ll even exist, so he has to take action now. He picks up a brick, raises it over his head, and someone cock blocks his impending vandalism.
It’s his father, and he takes Michael home.
Now Michael is four-years-old and doesn’t have the same mobility that can get him to the antique store. He does have the mental capacity to recognize his preschool cohort’s annoying behavior. Then he breaks his arm.
He’s suddenly a baby. It’s his last chance. He needs to get to the cuckoo clock. His parents take him for a walk and they happen to pass by the antique store. With his limited power, he gets his parents to enter. While they are engaged in some light banter with the owner, Michael crawls away, finds the cuckoo clock, and waits for it to chime. Just as his parents realize he’s wandered away, the clock begins to chime and the cuckoo clock, with its backwards head, shoots out. He turns the head around and moves the year dial to the year he turned twelve.
A flash of light and he’s standing in the garage in front of a new bike. He asks were Tara is, but his parents have no idea who’s he’s talking about. Her bedroom is just a regular room, not one for a little girl who’s fate is to be on a list of female serial killers.
Michael’s birthday happens without any sibling interference. The cuckoo clock arrives, and, like before, Michael’s father got a great deal on it because of a flaw. Michael scans through the dates. 1988 is missing. The flaw. And 1988 is the year that Tara was born.
This book takes the popular wish of doing your life over and cranks up the crime and dread. Frankly, it’s a bit too much for me. I have enough fear about my existence without Stine coming in to compound that fear with a yellow, mechanical bird and felonies.
That being said, the book itself is pretty good. Tara is an onerous character whose sole existence is to annoy the main character. Normally, that would be problematic. Who wants a villain who is nothing but evil? But it works here, especially with the twist ending. If she had an ounce of likable behavior, the ending would be cruel. Since she’s okay with thievery, assault, and exploitation, maybe the world is better off without her chaos.
For right now, I’m going to be thankful for my existence and the existence of my loved ones. And I’m going to tell my sister that I’m happy that while we had our squabbles, she never destroyed my college prospects. I did that on my own. Now I’m off to find those Beanie Babies that we got from McDonald’s. Move over old Pokemon cards. Our parents said that Pokemon was just a fad. Beanie Babies are going to pay off in a big way.
Rereading My Childhood is written by me – Amy A. Cowan. For a list of every Baby-Sitters Club, Goosebumps, and Fear Street book review I have written and to subscribe to my Substack or YouTube, go to RereadingMyChildhood.com. To listen to the official podcast, visit the website or search for “Rereading My Childhood” in your favorite podcast app. For more information about me, visit AmyACowan.com.
My whole life my father complained that Reno is getting “too big.” My father would lament as he stared toward Mount Rose, “You used to be able to see the hills and now you just see houses.” He wasn’t wrong. I remember the sagebrush covered land that cradled our city gradually turning into housing developments with curved, inefficient roads.
Unlike my father, I welcomed the change. As far as I was concerned, the bigger Reno got, the better. Better bands came through – bands I cared about. Not just the Boomer nostalgia bands who performed on the casino circuit. Stores weren’t relegated to the universal suburban style of Mervyns – I might be able to get some alternative clothing (if it came in my size, which was rare, but that’s for another time). Reno was growing, and so were my expectations of what a city should have and provide.
To this day, I have no desire to move to a city with a population smaller than the Reno metropolitan-ish area. I will only move up, not down. I don’t care if the cost of living is exorbitant – it’s exorbitant everywhere. A smaller town would have to be pretty damn special or cheap to get me to move there.
Stacey has to make a big decision in the next BSC book – whether to continue her existence in New York City, with its culture and Starlight Express shows, or move back to Stoneybrook, with its friends, child pageants, and theaters that only show one movie at a time.
Even though she moved away from the BSC, Stacey is still baby-sitting. You can take the baby-sitter out of the BSC, but you can’t take the BSC out of the baby-sitter! I’m surprised Martin didn’t use this. Anyway, Stacey is baby-sitting for two of her favorite charges while she thinks about her parents’ constant fighting, which is never a good sign. When she returns home, she finds her parents fighting again. It seems that Mrs. McGill gets bored throughout the day because Mr. McGill is never home and so Mrs. McGill goes shopping.
And it’s not regular shopping. Mrs. McGill spent $1568 at Tiffany’s, which is $3555 today. I cannot fathom spending that much at one store. My partner and I took a week-long vacation for about a thousand dollars and we thought that was extravagant. Either the McGills are rich or drowning in credit card debt.
And what is Mr. McGill’s issue? What is his fatal flaw to rival a shopping addiction? He works too much. So what? Everyone I know works over forty hours a week and has at least two side hustles. Geez, the ‘80s were different. You could live in one of the most expensive cities in the world, have only one working parent, and a $1568 shopping trip wouldn’t cripple you for years.
Part of me thinks that Mr. McGill should be having an affair, because working too much vs. spending budget-shattering amounts of money isn’t equal. I wouldn’t leave someone for working too much, but I would leave someone for spending a nice vacation’s worth of money at a store with blood diamonds.
Instead of coming home, Stacey goes to her best-friend’s house. Laine Cummings provides a shoulder to cry on while Stacey worries if her parents still love each other. Stacey also calls the BSC during one of their meetings. Each member gets to chat with her. Everyone tries to reassure her, but it’s no use. When Stacey finally goes home, her parents sit her down and deliver the bad news.
They are getting a divorce. They’ve been to a marriage counselor and there’s no salvaging the relationship. Mr. McGill says that they have too many differences. Stacey goes to her room and listens to her “loudest tape.” I imagine GWAR, but I don’t know if Martin is a big fan of thrash metal.
The next day, instead of speaking to her parents, Stacey becomes a dude with a podcast.
What was wrong with parents these days? Why couldn’t they get married and stay married like parents did in olden times? Whatever happened to commitment? What happened to “forever”? To “till death do us part”? Really, someone ought to rewrite the wedding vows so that the bride and groom say, “Till divorce do us part.”
People in “olden times” stayed together because a woman wasn’t allowed to have a credit card without her husband to co-sign, Stacey. Is that what you want? You want your whole identity to be tied to a man, regardless of his worthiness? I know you’re going through something, Stacey, but don’t entertain the idea that if a fifteen-year-old is forced into a marriage, they should just tough it out for the rest of their lives.
During school, Stacey avoids her friends. After school, she talks to the local homeless lady until Stacey goes home. When she reaches her door, there’s a sign that says, “DO NOT ENTER. GO BACK TO THE LIVING ROOM AND TALK TO YOUR PARENTS.” Stacey actually listens to the sign instead of taking the sign down and going into her room anyway. It’s a piece of paper. Not a lock. Ignore it.
She does not ignore it and speaks with her parents. They tell her that they’re both going to be finding new places to live. That means that Stacey has to decide which parent she wants to live with and how to divide her time. Her dad is going to stay in New York City while her mother moves back to Stoneybrook.
Stacey calls Laine, who tells her to stay because it’ll be easier. Then she calls Claudia, who tells her to move back to Stoneybrook. Finally, she calls Dawn, whose parents recently divorced.
“The thing about divorce,” she told me, “is waiting. You have to wait for an awful lot – for decisions, lawyers, even movers.” (I giggled.) “The best way to look at the situation is to realize that the worst part is over. You know your parents are splitting up. Now it’s just a matter of dealing with each new step that comes along.”
Dawn’s intelligence is underrated. However, despite the nice, practical advice that boils down to, “Work on what you have control over,” Stacey doesn’t really listen to it. She springs into action – she’s going to rekindle her parents’ relationship. She tells us that her favorite babysitting charges don’t just stare at the TV all day – like it’s a bad thing to watch TV. Then she takes her ques from the very device she derided while trying to get her parents back together, including half-assed shenanigans that would feel appropriate for any of the Brady Bunch.
She attempts to prepare a romantic dinner at home, but Mr. McGill doesn’t come home so Stacey and her mother eat the food. She tries the dinner thing again but at a restaurant this time. That doesn’t work either – both of her parents have seen The Parent Trap, a movie from the ‘60s that keeps popping up in these books.
One Saturday morning, Mrs. McGill invites Stacey to go house hunting in Stoneybrook. Also, Claudia tags along, because who wouldn’t want to look at vacant houses? A psychopath, that’s who. If I could get away with it, I’d go to open houses all over the tri-city area every weekend. However, in order to buy a house now, you have to be a Boomer looking for a home for their designer pony, a trust fund kid whose parents are willing to put the down payment on a house, or an internet company that buys “ugly houses.” There’s no way I’d pass for any of those, so the realtors would never let me within fifty feet of any house with a For Sale sign in the yard.
I’m also clearly a sucker because Stacey and her mother see several houses they can afford, but they find problems in each one. To which I’d say, hey, I don’t care what the problem is, if you can afford a house, and you don’t already have another one, take it. You can fix problems. In the end, the only house that is really appealing to Stacey and her mother is a house right behind the Pike residence.
That night, Claudia hosts a slumber party with the rest of the BSC and Stacey. The slumber party goes well, and Stacey says that conversations with the BSC are natural – something she is missing in New York.
“What did Jackie do tonight?” I couldn’t resist asking.
“Squirted his hot dog across the kitchen the second he bit into it-” Kristy began, grinning.
“He bit into the kitchen?” said Dawn.
“No, the hot dog!”
“The hot dog bit into the kitchen?”
We all started laughing.
“Natural” is a word that could describe that interaction, but does it?
The girls paint each other’s nails, then they make fun of an annoying kid, and then coo over pictures of Emily Michelle. The sleepover ends with Claudia pleading with Stacey to stay in Stoneybrook.
Back in New York, Mr. McGill has found an apartment on the East Side, just steps away from Bloomingdale’s. He refers to it as his “new pad.” He’s definitely a divorced dad. He just needs a haircut he spent too much on, a ridiculous vehicle, and an aura of desperation and the transformation will be complete.
Stacey makes a pros and cons list to determine where she will live. In the end, the BSC makes all the difference, and she decides that she is going to live with her mother in Stoneybrook. Her mother buys the house behind the Pikes.
There’s some packing and Stacey has to tell Laine about her decision. Laine is disappointed, but she understands Stacey’s position. Laine goes on to treat the McGills to a breakfast that, according to Stacey, only exists in New York – bagels, lox, cream cheese and orange juice. Because you can’t find those things anywhere else. Nope. You can’t find bagels and salmon on the west coast, apparently. It’s not like I get that exact order at a local bagel place I like.
Stacey’s regular baby-sitting charges (the ones who don’t watch TV) come over and give her gifts in the form of drawings. Didn’t Stacey already get a drawing from her baby-sitting charges when she left Stoneybrook? One in the form of a giant map? What happened to it? (Link that story) Finally, it’s time to start the drive back to Stoneybrook.
The BSC is waiting for her on the lawn, as well as the usual kids. There’s a banner that reads, “WE KNEW YOU’D BE BACK, STACEY!” It gives off “you’ll never escape us” vibes, but Stacey thinks it’s great. There is hugging. We also get a Claudia outfit.
Her hair was flowing down her back, pulled away from her face by a headband with a huge pink rose attached to it. She was wearing a long, oversized black-and-white sweater, skin-tight black leggings, pink-and-black socks, and black ballet slippers. Her jewelry was new, and I could tell she’d made it herself. You know those things about a best friend. Her necklace was a string of glazed beads that she’d probably made in her jewelry class. And from her ears dangled an alarming number of plastic charms attached to gold hoops.
The jewelry is questionable but the rest of the outfit is cute. 9/10 completely wearable.
The BSC helps Stacey unpack. There is more hugging. Claudia stays behind and they talk about the divorce. There is continued hugging.
One week later, Stacey is doing fine and Charlotte, who makes a sudden appearance in the story, is talking more and is less clingy, which means she is growing up. Take note introverts: you’ll never grow up.
Also, Stacey is back in the BSC, and Dawn relinquishes the Treasurer role to Stacey.
I can’t understand moving to a smaller town, but I can understand moving to be closer to the ones you love. Whether those loved ones are actual family or members of a club, a connection to the people around you can make a home. And with her parents’ divorce, Stacey probably needs the BSC more than before and maybe the quieter life in the suburbs would be more conducive for her trauma.
That still doesn’t mean we should go back to a time when people couldn’t divorce. You’re starting off on thin ice, Stace. I’ve got my eyes on you. Just do your baby-sitting and leave the marital relations to those of us who think women should have their own bank accounts. Without us you wouldn’t be able to do your math problems and you’d be burned as a witch the second you used the Quadratic Formula.
For a list of every Baby-Sitters Club, Goosebumps, and Fear Street book review I have written, go to RereadingMyChildhood.com. If you’d like me to read these to you before the written version is published, listen to the podcast. Just visit the website or search for “Rereading My Childhood” in your favorite podcatcher. For more information about me, Amy A. Cowan, visit my website AmyACowan.com.
One cannot discuss the horror canon without mentioning The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. The story features a new nanny who arrives at an estate that is as ominous as its inhabitants. The novel uses many classic elements of gothic horror fiction – a secluded house, the potential for ghosts, the slow unraveling of the protagonist’s mind, and a devastating third-act culmination.
Like James, R. L. Stine deserves a place in the horror canon. His stories provide an entry point for younger readers, influencing generations to confront what scares them. He might be the best gateway into the genre. Age-appropriate horror. Kids read his books under the covers in the dark of night and at sleepovers with their friends. A cozy introduction to a genre intended to make you uncomfortable.
I would describe this episode’s book as “Baby’s First The Turn of the Screw.” And I mean that without an ounce of sarcasm or condescension. This is a fantastic introduction to gothic horror literature, and I can’t think of a compliment more appropriate than comparing this book to one of the greatest ghost stories in literature.
Just like The Turn of the Screw, The Hidden Evil is written in a frame narrative. Timothy Fier is having a good time with his friends when the subject of ghosts comes up. Timothy is apprehensive about sharing his ghost story because it’s just so damn scary and they won’t have any fingernails by the end of the story. My dire fingernail situation is due to undiagnosed stimming turning into a lifelong habit. But that’s just me, your scary mileage may vary. Either way, Timothy tells us that the story started ten years ago.
Sisters Maggie and Henrietta are watching their father die. Constables show up at the door and arrest Maggie for murder. Their father was poisoned and Maggie is the prime suspect. Henrietta vows to help her sister as Maggie professes her innocence all the way to jail.
Four months later, Maggie is still in jail. She has been tired and found guilty. Her sister, Henrietta, arrives to say her last goodbyes. Unsurprisingly, she has a confession of her own.
Henrietta turned and glanced down the cell-lined hall to make sure no prisoners or guards were in earshot. “I killed Father!”
Maggie tried to speak, but no sound came out. She swallowed hard. “You?”
“Of course. You had young men begging to take you on outings. But I am not as pretty as you. What chance did I have to snare a handsome young man without Father’s inheritance? And dear old Father showed no signs of giving up the ghost.”
“Oh, Henrietta, no,” Maggie cried. “Don’t you know Father would have given you whatever you wanted? I’m sure he planned a sizeable dowry for you.”
“No, Maggie. Father would have given you whatever you wanted. He only cared about you,” Henrietta insisted. “So I sneaked into the house. You and Father were yelling at each other, so of course you did not hear me. I stirred the poison into his wine goblet and planted the rest in your room. Simple.”
The entire family fortune is in Henrietta’s hands, and Maggie will be hanged.
The executioner arrives to collect Maggie. He brings her to a narrow staircase, pulls off his hood, gives her a black dress, and orders her to escape in a carriage. The boy and his mother save Maggie from the gallows, give her money, and tell her to leave town. They saved her because they think Maggie is innocent and Maggie’s family was kind to them when their house burned down. They don’t reappear, so you don’t need to know their names. Mr. Plot Device and Mother We Gotta Keep This Moving.
Maggie starts a new life as Maggie Thompson and takes a job as a governess to two children in an isolated mansion – just like the nameless protagonist of TheTurn of the Screw. Also like the novel, the father is often away, leaving the governess with the staff.
Every good gothic estate needs a name and this one is called “Tanglewood.” And every good gothic estate needs staff, each one more suspicious than the last. The Cook is referred to simply as “Cook.” The maid is Mary. Both of these characters serve as the Mrs. Grose of this novel. Maggie confides in these characters so we understand her as a character and they provide Maggie, as well as the reader, with the necessary information in regard to the history of the estate.
To complete the creepy estate, we have creepy, regency children. Andrew is the first one to approach Maggie. His gregarious nature contrasts with his brother, Garret, who throws a vase at Maggie as she first enters the mansion. Then Garret runs into his room and throws more objects. Maggie tries to console the boy, saying that she’s not trying to replace his dear mother and he must miss her so much. Garret stops her and yells that he hates his mother.
Maggie investigates the previous governesses. Also like Miss Jessel of TheTurn of the Screw, the previous governess ran off suddenly. Meanwhile, Garret is continuing his strange child behavior through drawings and randomly yelling. He even leaves a life-sized drawing of birds pecking out Maggie’s eyes in her room.
While Garret is being creepy, Andrew is giving extensive estate tours and asking to go to the circus. The tour brings her to a hall of portraits, the stables, and the hedge maze. All this while Garret stares at them from the shadows.
Maggie wants to get help with Garret so she enters the library, the exclusive domain of Mr. Melbourne. She doesn’t find the man, but she does find a silver key. Garret finds her with the key and yells that his mother won’t like it, to which Maggie tells him that his mother is dead.
“Do not say that!” Garret screamed. “Never say that! Mother can hear you! She can hear everything!”
…
“You must know she is in the house!” Garret screamed. “Do you not hear her crying every night?”
That night, crying wakes Maggie and her investigation into the sound brings her to the tower. Instead of a ghost, she finds Andrew. He says that the locked door was his mother’s Sick Room, where she spent her last days.
Maggie returns to bed after tucking in Andrew. However, she does not go back to sleep. She finds the body of the cat that she spent six seconds with and a note that says that “curiosity killed the cat.” I guess it’s better than a horse’s head, but still traumatizing.
She buries the cat and as she passes by a window, she sees the ghost of Mrs. Melbourne. She flees from the window but runs right into the absent Mr. Melbourne. They spend some time near the fire and just as quickly as two pages, she has a crush. At the end of the conversation, Mr. Melbourne insists she stays away from the tower.
The next day, Mr. Melbourne is actually around and takes them for a horse ride. Then the horses escape and flames consume the stable. Thank you for the fun equine day, Mr. Melbourne.
If that wasn’t enough, Maggie falls into a well. She manages to get herself out. She suspects that Garret pushed her in after she found his ring near the well. She shows the ring to Andrew and he bursts out.
“That’s where he killed her. That’s where Garret killed our mother!” Andrew cried.
Andrew claims that Garret pushed their mother into the well. She got out, but she was very ill. She spent her remaining days in the tower room. Every night she cries because she wants revenge on Garret but she’s trapped in the tower.
Oh yeah, Mary is dead. Maggie finds Garret holding a knife over her dead body. Maggie runs to the tower room while Garret chases after her yelling, “Wait! You don’t understand!” She reaches the tower room and unlocks the door with the key she found in the library. She pleads with the ghost to help her. Instead, the ghost says that Maggie can never have her husband and chokes her.
Suddenly, we’re back with Timothy in 1858. Mrs. Fier wanders in and sends the 19th-century teens into conniptions. She leaves and Timothy returns to his story while watching a figure who is sitting in the shadows.
Even though Maggie basically accused him of murder, Garret comes to her rescue, interrupting the ghostly choking. She runs away, breaks her leg, and enters the hedge maze. Someone pushes her into the dirt. It’s Andrew.
“Mother and I do not like people trying to take her place,” he said sweetly. “You made Mother and me very, very angry.”
It runs out that Andrew killed the other governesses for his ghost mother, including the maid, and he tricked Garret into picking up the knife. Then he slashes at Maggie.
As he gets ready to strike the killing blow, Garret shoots Andrew with a musket. Maggie confirms Andrew’s death because it’ll take Garret ten minutes to get off another shot. That’s not explicitly stated in the book, but I’m assuming since it’s 1847. With the death of her beloved Andrew, the ghost fades away. Maggie apologizes to Garret, Mr. Melbourne and Maggie marry, and the three of them rebuild their lives in Boston, not too far from the storyteller.
Oh, and remember Maggie’s sister from the beginning? The one who framed her for murder? Well, she killed her new husband and confessed to murdering her father. Maggie doesn’t have to hide anymore.
Fast forward to 1858, Timothy concludes his story, and his guests leave – except for the figure in the corner.
How much more frightened would they be if they knew that I changed the name of the family from Fier to Melbourne when I told the tale. If they knew I changed my own name to Garret. And gave my stepmother the name Maggie.
From the shadows, Andrew appears and lunges at Timothy!
While the ending of The Turn of the Screw is less sensational and more ambiguous, The Hidden Evil is a solid introduction to gothic horror. It features a governess, a mysterious master of the house, a beautiful yet bleak estate, creepy children, and, most importantly, the ghosts of the past.
But even if the story wasn’t reminiscent of The Turn of the Screw, I would still enjoy this book. It’s creepy, it keeps moving forward, and the mystery behind the ghost in the tower was interesting. The frame narrative was a little contrived, but I have a soft spot for this kind of storytelling, and, honestly, it’s contrived in The Turn of the Screw, also. And finally, there were no slave-owning protagonists, a criticism I can’t say for every book in the Fear Street Sagas series. This one gives me all the fun and costumes of the period without any questionable location choices.Rereading My Childhood is written by me – Amy A. Cowan. For a list of every _Baby-Sitters Club, Goosebumps,_ and _Fear Street_ book review I have written or subscribe to the Substack, go to http://RereadingMyChildhood.com. To listen to the official podcast, visit the website or search for “Rereading My Childhood” in your favorite podcast app. For more information about me, visithttp://AmyACowan.com.
It seems that many of my peers have failed to move past eighth grade. Like many people, I went through a true crime phase while acclimating to different classrooms for different subjects. I read about Jack the Ripper, the Black Dahlia, and even put the Cecil Hotel on my bucket list. I entertained the idea of joining the FBI to hunt down serial killers. But like many of my obsessions, only pieces have remained. I still love Silence of the Lambs and read the occasional true crime book. And my true crime reading has ventured outside of serial killers – just one-time murderers also.
Now there is a certain group of people who buy memorabilia with Pogo the Clown and Dahmer. Recent streaming series exacerbate this unhealthy obsession, and actors are awarded for their glorification of serial killers. Gacy and Dahmer existed, but, more importantly, their victims existed. Their families still exist, and they see the disgusting hero worship of sociopaths. These sociopaths destroyed their lives and Karen is over here calling for more gore in the Netflix Dahmer series.
Though to be fair, I do collect serial killer memorabilia, but Hannibal Lecter is actually Anthony Hopkins – Oscar Award Winning Actor. Jason Voorhees is fictional and so are his victims. What I’m proposing is that the hero worship for real murderers should be transferred to movie monsters whose victims don’t have families you can run into at Wal-Mart. The only reason anyone would be upset if you go to the murder site of Crispin Glover’s character in Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter is because it’s a sound stage in California and they have to film a segment of The Kelly Clarkson Show.
To the people who troll Etsy for a bracelet modeled after Ed Gein’s nipple belt, I’d like to introduce you to a fake child sociopath you can worship instead.
Todd Barstow likes worms in the same way a serial killer likes victims – he likes to keep them in a small habitat of his choosing and do macabre experiments with them. And like any murderer still on the loose, he’s hunting for more.
His best friend, Danny Fletcher, helps him get more worms. A school-wide science fair is coming up and Todd’s project is about worms. He built them a replica of a house with the side cut out so you can see worm families go from room to room. Again, I don’t understand these science fair projects. What is the question being answered? How little effort can I put into the project and still get a C?
Danny’s project is no better. It’s a model of the solar system. What’s the question? What does the solar system look like without any consideration for scale?
Todd’s sister, Regina, and her best friend, Beth, are also participating in the science fair. They’re making a papier-mâché robin. Are birds made out of pulp and glue? Only this project can answer the tough questions!
Anyway, while Todd and Danny dig up more victims, the ground begins to shake! It’s a quake!
Todd and Danny run into the lunchroom, proving that they don’t live near the San Andreas Fault. No one felt the earthquake – it was localized entirely at Todd’s worm-hunting spot. Everyone laughs at them, and then Regina tells Todd to go eat worms, giving us a book title. Todd does not eat worms but instead puts a worm in Regina’s soup.
Later, Todd and Danny see another student, Patrick MacKay, digging up worms in Todd’s special spot. They confront him and it turns out Patrick is also doing a science fair project on worms that isn’t actually a science fair project. It’s pretty much the exact same project, only with a larger habitat.
Then there’s another earthquake that only they can feel. Once again, no one believes them.
Todd can’t believe that Patrick did the same project and he wants to sabotage it, instead of, you know, just working hard on his project so it’s better. This is the first in Todd’s psychotic behavior. Regina tells him where Patrick lives and, once again, Todd enlists Danny in his extreme actions. They literally break into Patrick’s huge house – not even a dog attack can deter them. Then they rummage through the kitchen and find a ghoul sitting by the window.
The duo bolt from the house and return home. Todd overhears Regina speaking with Beth. Regina gave him the wrong address on purpose!
“I sent them to the old Fosgate mansion,” Regina told Beth. She laughed. “Yeah. Right. That old deserted mansion where those kids had that Halloween party. Yeah. You know. They left that dummy with the weird mask in the window.”
Instead of letting it go and getting into vintage cartoons, Todd vows revenge on his sister. And he has the perfect opportunity at the science fair.
Patrick’s project is a huge worm skyscraper. The teachers put the two next to each other, beckoning comparison. The judges barely speak to Todd about his worm house. However, they ask Patrick a bunch of questions about the worm skyscraper, including, “How many worms are there in total?” and “Can worms survive in a real skyscraper?” Bitch, what do you think? Do you think it’s a real skyscraper? Where’d the school get these judges? The Facebook Marketplace? Where psychological professionals can hire bikini girls to trick stupid lifeguards?
Meanwhile, with Danny’s planet project, Pluto has been popped and the rings of Saturn have fallen off.
When the judges get to Regina’s project, they open the mouth of the sculpture and worms pour out to Todd’s sociopathic delight. Who cares how his sister feels? The only thing that matters is his happiness. Todd doesn’t feel any remorse – not even for a second. He is happy he ruined the project his sister worked hard on.
In the end, after the Facebook judges deliberate, the grand-prize winner is Danny and his Balloon Solar System. He successfully proved that Pluto can deflate, which is why it isn’t a planet anymore. Todd can’t be happy for anyone, so when his friend flashes a thumbs-up, Todd turns his back to him. Then Regina tackles Todd into the worm skyscraper and they tumble into another display.
“No!” a girl screamed. “That’s Liquids and Gases! Look out – it’s Liquids and Gases!”
Just a random girl expressing disdain for the most hated heel duo in ‘90s wrestling. They’re fighting The Road Warriors at Wrestlemania.
Luckily, no one is hurt when Liquids and Gases combine. The only casualties are a few worms. Todd doesn’t seem to care – he thinks it’s kind of funny.
A few days later, Todd wants to make amends with Regina and Beth, but even his attempts at human decency are a horror show. He invites them to his room and cuts a worm in half.
All three of them stared at the tabletop as the two worm halves wriggled off in different directions.
“See?” Todd cried, laughing. “Now there are two of them!”
“Sick. Really sick,” his sister muttered.
“That’s really gross, Todd,” Beth agreed, shaking her head.
“But wouldn’t it be cool if people could do that?” Todd exclaimed. “You know. Your bottom half goes to school, and your top half stays home and watches TV!”
“Hey! Look at that!” Regina cried suddenly. She pointed to the glass worm tank.
“Huh? What?” Todd demanded, lowering his eyes to the worms.
“Those worms – they were watching you!” Regina exclaimed. “See? They’re sort of staring at you.”
I’m sure they don’t enjoy watching arthropod Saw.
The next morning, Mrs. Barstow wakes up Todd personally because they can’t afford a second clock radio and they need to save up money for Todd’s impending legal tribulations. Then she worries if he’s “a grunge” because he wears a hat. Yes. Kurt Cobain was famous for wearing baseball caps. Eddie Vedder can’t leave without his bowler.
Anyway, Todd puts on his cap and it’s filled with worms, and they fall all over him. He accuses Regina of the least effective shower, but she insists she didn’t do it. Todd also finds a worm in his milk. Again, he accuses Regina, and, again, she insists she didn’t do it.
At school, Todd laughs at a kid who falls out of their chair and hits their head. Then he almost eats a worm that is in his sandwich. Todd thinks that maybe Patrick is perpetrating these worm attacks, but it turns out Patrick is just creating his own comic strip called “THE ADVENTURES OF TODD THE WORM.” Finally, Todd’s school notebook is inundated with worms. Despite all these events, Todd continues to dig for worms in his special spot.
Lastly, Todd’s bed contains worms. Once again, he blames Regina, but his mother informs him that Regina is at a sleepover. Todd makes a plea to the worms.
“Listen, guys, I’m really sorry,” Todd said, speaking softly. He didn’t want his voice to carry upstairs. If his mom or dad heard him talking to the worms, they’d know he was totally Looney Tunes.
“I’m really sorry about what happened,” he told them. “I mean, about cutting that one in half. It will never happen again. I promise.”
He takes a bath and worms pour out of the faucets! Not really. He imagined them, but he still thinks he needs to get to the bottom of the worm mystery – and he has a plan. Don’t get too excited. The plan is to watch the worms all night.
We are not subjected to pages of worm activities because his father finds him obsessing over the worms immediately. His father orders Todd to give up the worms and return them to the garden. Honestly, it’s probably best for everyone – including the worms.
After all that, Todd overhears Regina talking to Beth. It turns out that Regina put the worms in Todd’s food, notebook, and bed. Once again, instead of letting it go and getting into model cars, Todd vows the ultimate revenge.
Todd goes back to his spot to dig for more worms with Danny. Suddenly, there’s another earthquake and the ground opens up.
And as the ground shook and the rumbling rose to a roar, Todd and Danny both realized that they were gaping in horror at a giant worm.
A worm as thick as a tree trunk.
The worm attacks Todd. Instead of letting Todd go with the worm and befriending Patrick, Danny saves Todd with an assist from Regina and Beth’s science project bird. They scare the mother worm back into the ground with the fake bird. The next day, Todd dumps all his worms in the garden and gets a new hobby.
What’s his new hobby, you may ask? Model trains? Power Rangers? K-pop photocards? It’s none of those. He gets into butterflies.
Oh, that’s nice. Well, not really. Todd is still a walking red flag. He traps butterflies, kills them with chloroform, and then pins them to a board. It’s not a hobby for Todd unless something dies.
Then, one night, Todd gazed up from his work table – and uttered a horrified cry as he saw the big creature fluttering toward him.
An enormous butterfly.
As big as a bedsheet!
Carrying an enormous silver pin.
“What are you going to do?” Todd cried.
Get ‘em, Mothra!
We all knew the kid who enjoyed cutting worms in half and burning ants with a magnifying glass, and we stayed the fuck away from him. Todd’s behavior is horrific even for a kid. And it’s not just his behavior with animals. Patrick is perfectly nice to him and he still holds a ludicrous amount of animosity toward him. Regina is his family and he has little to no regard for her feelings. Not even his friends are free from his ire. Instead of being happy for his friend for winning the science fair, he chooses to literally turn his back on his friend. Todd is a villain.
But he isn’t real. He’s a character in a Goosebumps book. There’s no issue if someone wants a duo of bracelets with worms and TODD BARSTOW emblazoned on them. So please, true crime girlies whose tattoos pay homage to society’s greatest monsters, switch to this fictional character. Just think – this kid is bound for a permanent address at a federal correctional facility by the time he’s 35. You can pretend to be his one and only pen pal, instead of one of many.
And stop going to crime sites. Go to a fucked up museum instead. Rereading My Childhood is written by me, Amy A. Cowan. For a list of every Baby-Sitters Club, Goosebumps, and Fear Street book review I have written and to subscribe to my Substack, go toRereadingMyChildhood.com. To listen to the official podcast, visit the website or search for “Rereading My Childhood” in your favorite podcast app. For more information about me, visitAmyACowan.com.
I was a studious kid. I showed up on time, I did the assignments, I turned in homework, and I was always prepared. Teachers loved me. I was not “a bad girl” in any sense.
On the other hand, I didn’t do any extracurriculars. I had no “school spirit.” I ditched assemblies. I didn’t listen to school administrators and when they threatened to take away things like “Senior Sunrise” from me, I replied, “So I can keep ignoring you?” Another time, an administrator threatened to keep me from being in the senior class photo because I was loitering outside a classroom waiting for my friend. Oh no, now I won’t be photographed during the phase of my life in which the mere mention of a camera sent me running away. Don’t threaten me with a good time. To every teacher, I was the perfect student – ready to learn and attentive. To every administrator, I was an unpunishable slacker who tore school spirit signs and thought the leadership class was a waste of everyone’s time.
But I never cheated on my non-existent boyfriend, which seems to be the only prerequisite for being a “bad girl” in Shadyside. Also murder.
Our high school protagonists and delinquents are Dawn and Jan. Dawn narrates the book and is cheating on her boring boyfriend. Jan has a car and likes to annoy animals. They both have an Evian addiction.
Evian count: 1
While the girls gossip, their classmate, the teacher’s pet Cindy, chides them for using the lab to ditch study hall, a class that doesn’t exist. So they dump some chemicals like formaldehyde and sulfuric acid, which are just sitting around in this unattended science lab, in Cindy’s science project. It explodes, leaving behind a black formula with tiny golden crystals. Dawn and Jan swipe the formula as the science teacher, Ms. Philbin, bursts in and asks about the smoke. Ms. Philbin reprimands the girls. In turn, the girls blame Cindy for their admonishment.
Evian count: 2
Later while the class is preparing for frog dissection, Dawn’s boring boyfriend Clint asks her if they’re still going out and he cuts her with a scalpel. It was an accident, but Clint should probably have his very sharp blade taken away if he can’t control his dumb arms. However, Ms. Philbin is unfazed, tells them to stop screwing around, and that they should get to slicing and dicing their froggy victims. Somebody just knifed another student and Ms. Philbin is treating them as if they were drinking from the emergency eye wash station (which I regularly did in middle school; I think everyone has done this at least once).
Evian count: 3
Back to cutting open a frog, the girls name it Spot because of its distinctive markings.
Evian count: 4
Then they drop a bit of the formula they made in the science lab into the frog’s mouth. When they look away, the frog is gone! So they get another one and cut that one open instead.
Evian count: 5
Dawn’s bag moves on its own! It’s Spot! Alive and well. Ms. Philbin orders the girls to put the frog back into the frog terrarium and stop messing around. Wait a second. Ms. Philbin has a frog terrarium in a classroom where students dissect frogs. That’s sadistic and Ms. Philbin is fucked up.
After class, Dawn is at her locker and her secret paramour, Will, comes up and asks when he can see her again. They flirt for a little and then he leaves, pretending to throw an invisible football. You’ll have to excuse Will – he is a frequent user of the now-defunct Yahoo Answers service.
Even though she’s supposed to be a bad girl, Dawn has a job at the animal shelter after school. Her boss is leaving early, so she’s responsible enough to be left alone. Her behavior fails to live up to the title. She’s not perfect, but I would classify her as your average teenager who hasn’t outgrown their middle school obnoxiousness.
The only questionable thing she does is open the door for Jan, but who hasn’t wanted to have their best friend keep them company at their job?
Anyway, the girls bring a dead dog back to life with the formula. See, it’s not a no-kill animal shelter, and there’s a fresh kill. The dog comes back to life and now they have this zombie dog. They load him into Jan’s car to take home until they figure out what to do with it, but there’s a car tailing them.
It’s a girl from school and that’s her dog in the car. She thought the dog was dead. She took it to the shelter to be put down because the dog was sick, but here he is, completely healthy. She assumes the shelter didn’t kill her dog. Instead, they cured him with special secret drugs, didn’t tell the owners, and then sent him home with the teenager whose friend has a car. Logistics aside, the girl is ecstatic and I’m sure there will be no repercussions whatsoever.
Jan drops off Dawn and as Dawn walks up to her porch, Clint materializes from amongst the bushes. He asks her if she went out with Will Dunmore, and she lies. I do not understand her reluctance to break up with him. She doesn’t seem to like him. He wants monogamy but she clearly doesn’t. Their values don’t align. Also, it’s a stupid high school romance. It’s not like they share an IRA. The biggest thing they share is their locker, and that can be easily rectified.
The next day at school, Jan and Dawn discover that Spot, the frog they brought back to life and then deposited into the frog terrarium, is now twice his size and he seems to have eaten the other frogs.
Also, Ms. Philbrin reminds the class of their field trip to Fear Lake next Saturday. It will be an ordinary field trip and nothing strange will happen. Except maybe someone might be late for the bus! Wouldn’t that be a wild occurrence? Can you imagine?
Clint asks Dawn out to the movies to see Scream III. I mention the movie only because this book came out before Scream 3. So is R. L. Stine psychic? Or did he just guess there would be a sequel in a popular franchise? It does bother me that Stine’s Scream uses Roman numerals as if they would switch from Arabic numbers.
Dawn blows off Clint in favor of going to some random other character’s party. Even Cindy the teacher’s pet makes an appearance at the party, wearing some unflattering clothes that Dawn thinks are hilarious. However, sinister machinations set off a series of deadly events.
“I have to tell you a little secret,” Carl continued. “Not only am I thrilled to be seen with a hot babe . . . I’m twenty-five dollars richer, too!”
He burst out laughing. His cousin slapped money into his hand.
The whole room whooped.
“What?” Cindy gasped. Her face grew even redder. “Someone paid you to . . . to . . .”
“What do you think?” Carl howled. “That I invited you here to impress my friends? Yeah, right.”
I watched Cindy’s face fall. Her shoulders trembled and her lips quivered as the other kids hooted and whistled. I had to look away. I felt so embarrassed for her.
Carl turned and poured himself a Coke.
Cindy stared at him, blinking back her tears. Then, with a cry, she ran to the front door. The door slammed hard behind her.
“What a loser!” Eric laughed. “Wow. I didn’t think Carl would have the nerve to actually do it.”
Poor Cindy, I thought. How could these guys be so cruel?
Oh, now you have empathy.
Also, what, exactly, was the bet? “I bet you wouldn’t invite this one girl to a party that already has a lot of people.” “Yeah, bro, that would be a crazy thing to do.”
Jan and Dawn leave the party under the ruse of getting more ice and chips. Unfortunately, it’s raining and visibility is low. The girls hit someone. I’ll give you one guess who it is.
Cindy is dead.
And the girls get the brilliant idea to bring her back to life with their formula. When Cindy wakes up, they tell her that they had found her on the side of the road unconscious and that they have nothing to do with it and are completely innocent. Cindy appears to believe them and they drive her home, but there’s a lingering doubt. After all, when Cindy woke up, she did try to strangle Dawn.
After they drop her off, Dawn and Jan return to the party. They don’t want to raise any suspicions. Dawn goes outside with a boy we never see again. As they flirt outside, Clint appears from the bushes. They get into a fight because of, you know, the cheating. First the murder and now this. Gee, Dawn is having a humdinger of a weekend!
The next school day, Clint is flirting with a new blonde girl. Wait! That’s not a new girl! That’s Cindy! She went to a hairdresser and then bought new clothes. Clothes that fit her. Dawn’s bad weekend is now a bad week.
Evian count: 6
The school’s dance theme is moon and stars, and for a pair of bad girls, they’re very involved in school activities. They even help with decorations. While the girls are on a high ladder, someone turns off the lights and then knocks the ladder from under them. The girls hang onto the catwalk as a teacher helps them down. The bad luck continues at Jan’s place, where they find her room thrashed. Just bad luck all around, I guess.
The girls speculate that Cindy, the girl they ran over and brought back to life, hates them and is threatening them. They confront Cindy at school. Cindy gets mad and bends a metal bar in a U-shape like she’s the Incredible Hulk. Later, Cindy is sitting with Dawn’s bush-born ex-boyfriend. Also, the zombie cannibal frog in the terrarium explodes.
Evian count: 7
Things are getting out of hand, so the girls tell Ms. Philbin what’s been happening – except the murder part.
“This is serious. Very serious,” Ms. Philbin said in a low voice. She bit her lip. “I’m afraid I’ll have to turn you in. This really is a matter for the FBI.”
This looks like a job for the rarely-used Zombie Crimes Division of the FBI. Right next to the X-Files. Ms. Philbin is kidding of course. She thinks the girls made up the story to get out of doing their science project.
Instead of doing their science project (or just making Cindy, the frog, and the dog their science project), the girls traipse around the mall. Cindy tries to run them over in the parking lot. And then Dawn gets a phone call from Cindy telling them that she won’t forget what they’ve done and that she knows where they live – including where Clint lives. Dawn and Jan rush to Clint’s house.
Like every house in Shadyside, the door is wide open so protagonists can find bodies, and this situation is no exception. Clint is dead. Back to his ancestral shrubbery, he goes. The bad luck just keeps getting worse!
Evian count: 8
Golly gee, it’s a tough time for Dawn. Murder is treated like a zit before the senior sunrise that I didn’t want to go to. My cavalier attitude is appropriate.
Evian count: 9
Cindy, on the other hand, is looking more beautiful and confident. Jan and Dawn try to get Cindy to admit that she killed Clint, but Cindy laughs at them. Then she threatens to tell the police how they ran her over and tried to kill her.
After the freakout, Dawn says,
“We killed Cindy once. Now we have to kill her again.”
That’s definitely the line in the trailer just before the title and the end of the old ‘70s song done in a minor key.
During the field trip to Fear Lake, Dawn and Jan follow Cindy to a secluded area, konk her on the noggin, and push her into the lake. Now that that’s done, the girls can go on, living their lives, knowing that they murdered someone.
Evian count: 10
But no, they can’t. Ms. Philbin asks where Cindy is while the kids are getting on the bus. Then Cindy just shows up as if nothing happened. She’s soaking wet, but she’s on the bus and ready to leave.
Then the girls see Cindy walking down the street, so they run her over. Tears of joy are cried by all.
Evian count: 11
But no, Cindy shows up to science class the next day. This girl is harder to kill than Rasputin.
Anyway, remember the dog that they brought back to life? Well, the owner tells Dawn and Jan that the dog just exploded after the owner’s father teased it. Dawn and Jan think they have the key to finally killing the girl they’ve killed three times.
The girls invite Cindy over and they ask her about Clint. Cindy killed him because he was only using her to make Dawn jealous. I don’t know what she expected, but fine. Then the girls lay into Cindy. They call her a loser and no one will want to have anything to do with Cindy when they find out she’s “the walking dead.” Cindy lunges at Dawn, strangling her until finally, Cindy suffers the same fate as the frog and the dog.
Her face changed right in front of me. A twisted mask of rage. Her skin purple. Her eyes bulging from the sockets. Her lips peeled back from her teeth, exposing a black and bloated tongue.
I screamed.
And Cindy’s neck snapped.
Her head flopped down to one side. Her whole body twitched. And twitched.
Then she collapsed.
On top of me.
It’s finally over.
Although, not really. Cindy asks for mercy. She asks for more of the formula. She promises to leave the girls alone if they give her more formula. They offer her some water instead.
Evian count: 12
Dawn and Jan take pity on Cindy. They attempt to find the formula in Jan’s room, but it’s missing! Where is it?
Evian count: 13
They return to Cindy, but she’s dead.
Final Evian count: 14
While the girls were too late, they still haven’t heard the last of Cindy. She left them a hastily written note.
Dear Jan and Dawn,
I stole the formula when I trashed Jan’s room. But I don’t want to live anymore. Not like this. The formula turned me into a monster.
YOU turned me into a monster.
Don’t worry. The formula is safe. I hid it while you were upstairs. I hid it in the best place I could think of.
I poured it into your bottle of Evian.
See you soon!
Love, Cindy
I guess it’s time to switch to Dasani.
So who is the titular “Bad Girl” in this book? Is it Dawn, who goes on tame dates with simple boys instead of her half-shrub boyfriend? Is it Jan, whose personality traits are “annoys frogs” and “drives a car?” Could it be Cindy? A source of derision amongst her peers who is humiliated multiple times. Could her treatment lead her to murder and psychotic behavior?
No. The “Bad Girl” is none of these characters. The true bad girl is Evian. In the worst instance of product placement, the bottle of water is everywhere. She’s present for every instance of bad behavior, from innocuous teasing, to frog cannibalism, and, finally, to premeditated murder. In the end, she’s the source of Dawn and Jan’s eventual doom. If the girls ditched the disposable plastic for tap water and one of those tumblers I see people make on TikTok, maybe they wouldn’t be in this mess.
Or the title really does just refer to Cindy, who dyes her hair and flirts with boys and that makes her a bad girl. Sure, Cindy murdered someone, but who hasn’t in Shadyside? Seriously. Instead of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, everyone plays the Six Degrees of Attempted Murder. Either way, dying your hair and flirting does not a bad girl make. The murder, though, yeah, that would be a big no-no.Rereading My Childhood is written by me, Amy A. Cowan. For a list of every Baby-Sitters Club, Goosebumps, and Fear Street book review I have written and to subscribe to my Substack, go toRereadingMyChildhood.com. To listen to the official podcast, visit the website or search for “Rereading My Childhood” in your favorite podcast app. For more information about me, visitAmyACowan.com.
I never realized it growing up, but the schools I attended were poor. I had a grounded view of television because my father drilled into me that most things on television are fake. When I saw these elaborate vacation episodes on television, where an entire cast of schoolmates go to Disneyland or some other sponsored locale, I knew that didn’t happen in real life. In real life, field trips were to the local library. Sometimes you piled into a school bus and visited the geology department at the University of Nevada, Reno, but that was only if the class was really good that month. Once in eighth grade, I went on a special field trip for a select few kids from each middle school in the area and we visited a ski resort for one day. The idea was to learn how a ski resort operates. At the end of the day, we left the ski resort. I won’t say which ski resort it was, but it recently changed its name because it had a racial slur in it. It was called that racial slur when I visited, so I had a bumper sticker with the original name proudly displayed in my locker. The early aughts were wild.
All this is to say that I never thought any school had overnight trips. That was a plot device in the TGIF lineup. A few years ago, a friend of mine told me her son was going on a field trip to Disneyland, where they were going to see how the theme park operates. I said something about having to drive that much in one day to get the kids back. She said they were staying in a hotel. I realized I had been lied to. Overnight field trips do exist! Just not for the schools I attended.
The BSC is going on an overnight field trip to a ski lodge that does not contain a racial slur in it. I was jealous! How come these kids get to hang out overnight in a beautiful lodge just because they were born in a more affluent zip code? Then I remembered who I was in the seventh grade and how my classmates acted both toward me and everyone around them. It seems I lucked out.
So far, the Super Specials have shared two things: each chapter has a BSC member it focuses on and they all have a central conceit to facilitate the compiling of the stories. In Baby-sitters’ on Board, Kristy is collecting the stories for a scrapbook. In Baby-sitters’ Summer Vacation, Stacey wants to take some memories back with her to New York. This one is no different. This time, Mary Anne’s boyfriend Logan is not on the school trip. Instead, he is in Aruba with his family. Mary Anne wants to collect stories so he knows what happened on the trip. It’s a lot of work for such a disappointing boyfriend.
Anyway, this is an annual field trip for Stoneybrook Middle School and is mandatory unless you have a good excuse like your family wants to go to Aruba. For me, mandatory attendance usually meant that the school couldn’t get kids to show up otherwise. You’d think kids would want to get away from their parents and have a fun trip to a ski lodge, so I wonder what happened in the past. Or Stoneybrook Middle School uses this trip as a way to price gouge the rich parents and exploit the poor parents. Or Stoneybrook’s Stepfordian visage is breaking away and the seedy underground is showing again with money laundering.
While the school counts its money, the annual ski trip to Leicester Lodge in Hooksett Crossing, Vermont (that’s a pretty great town name) comes with several activities for the kids. The most important is a contest wherein the kids are divided into two groups – Red and Blue. The school clearly didn’t spend any money on name creation. Also, the kids can’t just have a week at a resort to learn how it works or to expose them to winter sports or the history of Vermont. No. We need the kids to compete against each other. We need to train them so they can get used to arbitrary competition so they’ll buy sports merchandise and have a strange attachment to a location (America) and think that other countries are shitholes (other places).
Mary Anne
Oh no! The trip might be canceled before it’s even begun! There’s a big storm coming in! Oh, wait. Don’t worry about it. A paragraph later, the vice-principal confirms that the trip is still on.
As the students of Stoneybrook Middle School pile onto several school buses, Kristy and Claudia, who are on the Blue and Red teams respectively, bicker about who is going to win the competition. They received their color assignments two minutes ago and they’re already strangely attached to their color. Kristy is the team leader for Blue, so I kind of understand why she’s so attached. Claudia’s attachment, however, is a mystery.
Mary Anne bids farewell to Connecticut and hello to Vermont as the buses pull away.
Stacey
Unlike Camp Problematic Name, Leicester Lodge is aware of dietary needs, so Stacey is already at ease. Without any special extra credit jobs, Stacey is looking forward to a fun week as she sets up some of the major conflicts in this book.
Dawn, Mal, and I were the only club members without extra-credit roles in the Winter Carnival. Mary Anne was going to be the historian, Kristy was going to run the war, Claud was going to judge the snow sculptures, and Jessi was in charge of Talent Night. That meant organizing a whole talent show, helping the kids with their acts, arranging for rehearsals, and more. This year was the first time the role had been given to a sixth-grader, but we all knew Jessi could handle it.
With that out of the way, Stacey can focus on the ride. The boys are annoying everyone by singing “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt,” which is almost quaint. When I was in the seventh grade, the boys would annoy us by telling us they could smell our vaginas and then ask if our boobs hit our faces when we ran. I would have preferred the singing, honestly.
Then the driver almost hits a deer and everyone screams.
Dawn
They arrive at the lodge and find a whole fleet of buses outside. Stoneybrook Middle isn’t the only school at the lodge.
“Three other groups of kids will be here this week,” she told us. “One is the eighth-graders from a junior high in northern Vermont, another is the seven- and eighth-graders from a middle school in New Hampshire, and we’re still expecting a group of elementary school children from Maine.”
The students’ bunk arrangements are separated by grade, leaving Mallory and Jessi by themselves. Now they’ll have to cultivate their own personalities outside of the other five members of the BSC. Just kidding again. They figure out a way to stay with the rest of the BSC. We’ll get to that.
There’s a bunch of bunk bed talk. Who is sleeping with whom? Who is on the top? Who is on the bottom? Kristy has to bunk with Ashley Wyeth, a girl who keeps popping up even though I thought we were done with her onerous behavior. But soon, none of it will matter. Again, we’ll get to that.
Just as the students gather in the huge common room, two adults stumble into the lodge and they’re DEAD!
Not really, but one does have a fractured arm and the other’s leg is broken.
Kristy
The two adults are teachers from Conway Cove Elementary School and they were in an accident. They braved the storm to reach the cabin and get help for the students who were left behind on the bus.
While they wait for an ambulance, the school administrators and the hotel proprietors, the Georges, spring into mild action. There are children who need help! Of course, Kristy volunteers the expert services of the BSC. The teachers thank Kristy for her willingness to help, but since it’s an emergency situation, the adults should take the burden to allow the students to relax in a scary situation.
Yeah, no. They accept Kristy’s help, and soon the Georges, a few teachers, and the BSC are piling into an old school bus to rescue some kids. Surprisingly, all sixteen kids are waiting in the school bus. One of the kids insists that the driver is dead. The driver is not dead.
Each of the BSC members each watch over a few kids as they all drive back to the lodge.
Claudia
The kids arrive at the lodge and they all perk up. Since the nearest hospital is thirty miles away, the lodge doctor will examine each child and any who are seriously injured will be sent to the hospital with the teachers who have broken appendages.
After dinner, the fates of the children who are not seriously injured are in limbo. Mrs. George expresses that she doesn’t want to deprive the children of their ski trip. The school held a readathon to raise money for the trip and those kids were the winners. How a readathon raises money, I have no idea, but it is completely unfair for the kids if they have to go home just because their bus driver was on bath salts while driving. There is no indication that the bus driver was on bath salts, but there’s no explanation for the accident, so I’m going to assume bath salts.
Once again, Kristy volunteers the BSC to watch over the kids. The teachers don’t want to take any responsibility, so they accept. The BSC moves into a dorm with the kids, rendering the scenes where Jessi and Mallory are separated from the rest of the BSC, as well as the bunk arrangement talk, utterly meaningless.
Mary Anne
It’s the first morning since arriving at the lodge. The BSC members help the kids get dressed and then they clamor for breakfast. The Stoneybrook P.E. teacher, Ms. Halliday, makes some announcements that don’t really affect the plot, but she does stuff later so I have to introduce her. Despite the club’s general togetherness, after breakfast, it’s a different story.
By ten o’clock in the morning, I found myself pretty much on my own. Kristy, Claud, Dawn, and Stacey had hit the slopes, Mallory was off doing something with her secret journal project, and Jessi had volunteered to entertain Pinky for the day, since Pinky was under doctor’s orders to stay inside with her foot up.
Mary Anne visits the lodge’s library. Her assignment: research the history of the lodge. If the school has been doing this tradition for years, you’d think a previous student would have already done this assignment, but here’s Mary Anne, reading about the ghost of Leicester Lodge. The cook saw a hat fly once.
She also writes a letter to Logan even though he’s in Aruba. I love the post office, but they cannot get a letter from Vermont, which, if you remember, is covered in a storm, to Aruba, a country in the Caribbean, all in one week. She starts it with “My dearest Logan,” and continues with, “My thoughts are with you and only you every second of every day.” Someone took a documentary about the Bronte sisters a little too seriously. Then she worries that he’s hanging out on a beach with a pretty girl. She doesn’t do any more work on her extra credit project.
Jessi
Jessi doesn’t want to ski, slip on some ice, and then break her arms and legs, rendering her unable to dance. This seems to bother her, but I think it’s a completely fair worry. Instead, she volunteers to entertain Pinky, a girl with a ridiculous name who sprained her ankle in the bus accident.
Pinky is a jerk. She’s terse and treats Jessi like a personal servant, the optics of which are not great. When Jessi wins a game of Memory against Pinky, the girl accuses Jessi of cheating. That seems to be a common tactic for terrible people when they lose. The winner is cheating, or committing fraud, or switching votes even though to do so would require the magic of Doctor Strange.
Stacey
Stacey assists Ms. Halliday with the elementary school kids on the ski slopes. After a few lessons, Stacey is free to ski on her own and she goes down the bunny hills. Alan Gray, a boy who harassed the girls but it’s portrayed as comedy, is slamming into the other boys.
Eventually, even Stacey is a victim of someone slamming into her. This time, however, it’s a cute boy named Frenchie d’Croissant, er, excuse me. His name is Pierre D’Amboise. Of course, Stacey is instantly smitten and she refers to this as her “first meaningful crush,” and “any past crushes suddenly [don’t] count.” Yeah, fuck clear off, Toby.
Mallory
And what is the oldest of the Pike children doing with a journal this time? Is she spying on people again, like in Super Special #1? Of course, she is. But that’s not all she’s doing. She is also dealing with a fear of going to a dance. I’m not sure if the dance is mandatory, but it really shouldn’t be. When I was in middle school, no dances were mandatory. They also took place during school hours and if you didn’t go to the dance, you had to go to the library or the cafeteria. The school held a dance just after lunch and afterward, you still had to go to the seventh period. Cool dance.
Anyway, Mallory has another reason for her journal-based project besides spying on her friends and teachers.
I planned to work hard on my writing, since I want to become an author one day.
See? If a publishing house sacrifices privacy at the altar of capitalism, then it’s completely acceptable behavior. The Supreme Court says that we don’t have privacy for the sake of capitalism and keeping a supply of babies for entitled couples, so the students of Stoneybrook Middle School have no reasonable right to expect privacy. (Too soon? Should I leak this and then jack off for two months and release it anyway?)
Mallory discovers Mary Anne missing Logan, Ms. Halliday crying, the other kids not liking Pinky, and Stacey making out with some boy. She says that the contents are too mature for her siblings. There’s a kids’ movie where a bee fucks a grown-ass woman, so I wouldn’t be worried about the triplets reading about consensual kissing between teenagers.
Dawn
Dawn is having some trouble. She screws up during the ice skating relay. Dawn drops the baton. Her team loses and since everyone has such an attachment to whatever team color they’re on (I don’t remember who’s on which side), the whole team is angry at Dawn and they bully her. They pummel her with snowballs. Because that will help the team win the next competition, I think? I’m not sure what they’re going for.
Dawn finds Mary Anne and tries to confide in her, but all Mary Anne can think about is her dopey boyfriend. Dawn fires her as her bunkmate, but Dawn can’t fire Mary Anne because Mary Anne quits!
Mary Anne
Mary Anne speaks with an old lady who has never heard of the Leicester Lodge ghost. Then she talks to the cook who saw the flying pan. Then she talks to another old person who doesn’t know anything about the ghost.
Finally, she talks to Mr. George. In the late 1930s, a visitor was found dead in his bathtub and after that, some guests reported some strange occurrences. And that’s the end of the ghost talk because it’s time for Mary Anne to mope about Logan again. This time, with her teacher Ms. Halliday, who is missing her fiance.
Kristy
Kristy and Claudia set up an impromptu snowman contest for the elementary kids.
But what could we give the Conway Cove winner?
“I know!” Claudia cried suddenly. “But I can’t tell you what it is. It’ll be a surprise.”
“What if we don’t like it?” asked Amber.
Yeah, I thought.
But all Claud would say was, “Trust me. It’s good.”
She has no idea what to give the winner. A “surprise” is code for “gimme some time to scrap something together.”
Claudia snaps a Polaroid of each kid with their snowman creation. The prize is a ribbon under their Poloroid. The kids seem happy. I would have opted for the cash instead, but that’s just me.
Later, it’s finally time for the official snowman-building contest between the Red and Blue Teams. Because it would be a conflict of interest, Claudia sits out- just kidding. Like a Supreme Court Justice, Claudia disregards her obvious conflict of interest and judges the contest in her own team’s favor.
Kristy is upset. Is it because of the obvious issue of having a member of one team judge both teams in a subjective contest? No. It’s because Claudia is a good skier.
Claudia
Despite Claudia’s skiing prowess, she still takes some lessons from a professional. The professional turns out to be a cute guy named Guy. For the third Super Special in a row, Claudia has a crush. Remind me, who is supposed to be the boy-crazy one?
After a skiing montage, Guy, who looks about twenty-five, calls her a “champion” in an exaggerated accent. Claudia knows that Guy loves her, which would be a felony.
Jessi
Jessi goes over the logistics for the talent show. The teachers want to cannibalize the time, so there are only about thirty-eight minutes for the students in this student talent show. Anyway, it’s time for tryouts.
Some girl sings a song called “Stop Pickin’ on the President.” I have never heard of this song, but it sounds terrible. Regardless of who the president is, everyone should pick on the president. And it’s Biden right now if there’s any doubt, which there shouldn’t be. We should always pick on politicians in power. And the dead ones, too.
Alan Gray does some Vaudeville sketch. Some girls lip-sync to some apple song. Another girl tap dances. Another set of girls puts on a skit about a ghost that was both “funny and scary.” Finally, one kid does “Doe, a Deer” with his armpit. Stop the contest, just send that kid up there for thirty-eight minutes.
Even the elementary school kids audition. Most of them sing old fifties songs. It’s weird. The only fifties song I remember at a school talent show was when my friend danced to the song “Polka Dot Bikini” in an outfit appropriate for the song title, but not for a first-grader. Most of the songs at the school talent shows that I attended in elementary school were contemporary. The first talent show after “Macarena” featured fifty kids doing the dance onstage at the same time. However, the abundance of fifties nostalgia is not the least realistic thing about the talent show. Stay tuned for that!
The rest of the elementary school kids who aren’t talented enough to sing fifties songs need to do something, so Jessi suggests they put on a skit about their school and teachers. Pinky says that it might be a bad idea because the teachers might get mad. Jessi suspects that Pinky voted for Tru-, ahem, excuse me. Jessi suspects that Pinky is racist.
Dawn
Dawn’s feelings of inadequacy are taking over so Dawn declines to participate in the snowball fight, which is actually just Capture the Flag. Instead, she goes to the library and plays Monopoly with two randos who don’t matter. What matters is that Dawn loses so quickly that the randos are astonished, so I guess that means the game only took seven hours instead of the usual seven days and a phone call.
Then Dawn sees Pinky crying. Pinky says she’s been unpleasant because she’s homesick. That’s supposed to excuse her behavior toward Jessi. I don’t buy it. She was unpleasant to everyone, but the only person she treated like a servant was Jessi. I don’t care what Dawn says, I still think Pinky is racist.
Dawn rewards Pinky’s behavior with hot chocolate.
Mary Anne
And just like that, Dawn and Mary Anne make up.
Then Mary Anne is back to writing letters to Logan that sound like she’s a Victorian ghost whose husband hasn’t come back from his whaling trip.
My dearest, darling Logan,
How I miss you. How I pine for you. How I yearn and long for you.
After that, she writes a terrible sketch that implies she’s not a feminist, which would be massively disappointing. When she gives the sketch to Jessi, Jessi tells her that they already have a sketch, but thanks for trying.
Then Mary Anne gets a call. It’s from Saturday Night Live! They want to do her terrible sketch instead. Not really. It’s just Logan. They say they miss each other and have a boring conversation and say they love each other.
Mallory
During her spying, the youngest BSC member mistakes parmesan cheese for poison. Then she blames Pinky’s racism on Jessi. Sort of.
She decided that Pinky’s nasty behavior was a result of being prejudiced. But if Jessi had opened her eyes and looked beyond her own problems, she’d have seen that Pinky was having some trouble being away from home.
Oh, how silly of Jessi, a person who experiences racism every day, think that a girl, who treats Jessi like a servant, may be prejudiced. Yes, the problem is on Jessi, not the girl who acts racist when she’s sad.
First Mary Anne is making fun of feminism and now Mallory is making excuses for the racist kid. This is not a great look.
Later that night, the students gather in the main room and tell ghost stories. They are mostly of the urban legend variety, including the woman whose dog bit off a would-be burglar’s finger (which I think was on an episode of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction?), and the escaped maniac/boyfriend scratching at the roof of a car.
The stories spook the kids. When I was thirteen, I knew all those urban legends better than I knew the stories in The Baby-Sitters Club. It probably helped that there was a movie all about those stories called Urban Legend that we all watched and loved. (Looking back, I can’t recommend the movie. The best thing about it is that Jared Leto, who portrayed the main lead, doesn’t think he’s in the movie.)
Jessi
It’s finally Talent Night. The teachers need their fifteen minutes of fame because they didn’t get it when they were young and hot. We have come to the least realistic thing about this story, grinding the book to a halt, reminding us that an adult woman wrote these:
One teacher stepped forward and said, “Welcome to the Do-wop Stop.” Then he stepped back in line. For the next seven or so minutes those teachers sang a medley of fifties hits. That in itself was pretty good because it turned out that these, like, math and social studies teachers could actually harmonize. But the fun part was that they’d changed the words of the songs, so they were singing about things like kids cutting classes, the noise in the cafeteria, the bus ride to Leicester Lodge, and even the Winter War. When they were done, they somehow seemed like real people to me, instead of just teachers. I guess they sounded like that to the rest of the kids, too, because they got a huge round of applause.
What? Absolutely not. I went to talent shows. I went to mandatory pep rallies. I went to school presentations. At all those events, teachers sometimes did things like lip sync, put on little sketches, sing songs, or dress up in what they thought was “hip” clothing. I watched all these attempts to connect with the kids. I saw it all, and I never thought it was fun, interesting, relatable, or whatever it was supposed to instill in me. What it did instill in me was embarrassment. For me, for the teachers, and for everyone involved. I wanted to curl into the tiniest iota of a ball and fly away to a place where I didn’t have to watch whatever the teachers were doing.
Sometimes we didn’t know the old song they were singing and then they tried to get us to sing along. You can’t sing along to a song you don’t know, Mrs. Parker!
Not knowing the old song was better than when they tried to be contemporary. That was worse. That was a nightmare. It was not fun when they changed the lyrics. Hey, that’s not the song I know! Just sing the stupid song like it sounds on the radio. But that wasn’t what made it a nightmare. Sometimes the teachers would dress up. They’d put on puffy pants, backward hats, and those sunglasses that were slit, and then they’d rap. And they’d rap and dance. They’d gesticulate in a way that, for them, meant hip-hop, but to us, it meant they had never listened to anything harder than Vanilla Ice. Only clean rap for them. Looking back, their performance was probably quite racist – like Baby’s First Minstrel Show.
And after it was over, there was no wild applause. There was no admiration. There was polite, if not lackluster, applause and relief that it was over. And then there was the reflection. How do they not know that’s not how you dress or dance? Do they know the actual song? Do they know how “California Love” actually goes?
Finally, the dread set in. “Are we going to be like that?”
Jessi may have had a good experience, but she was written by an adult white woman who forgot about the abject embarrassment intrinsic to teacher performances.
The rest of the talent show features fifties music and a boy redoes a skit from I Love Lucy. Finally, Pinky apologizes to Jessi.
Now the Do-Wop Show should apologize for digging up memories I thought I had banished into the farthest depths of my mind.
Claudia
While fantasizing about her ski instructor as if he were a predator, somehow, Kristy’s team (blue) beats Claudia’s team (red) in the ski race. At lunch, Claudia talks about how Guy likes her. Mary Anne says he is too old, and she would be correct. Claudia remarks that age doesn’t matter. Claudia, age matters a lot. The only dudes who would agree with you are dudes you shouldn’t be talking to. They’re also the ones who know the age of consent in every state.
Then Guy introduces Claudia to his family – a wife and kid and everything. Guy is not a predator, but Claudia is still devastated. I, the reader, am relieved.
Kristy
The first thing Kristy does that morning is scour the cafeteria for cross-country skiers. She finds two victims, both of whom have little to no experience with cross-country skiing. One ends up falling and the other kid breaks his ankle. Kristy’s team loses both the event and the entire war.
Kristy finally realizes she’s been a jerk and she runs to Mary Anne. She says that the point of the game was to have fun. No, Kristy, the point of the game is to get you accustomed to pointless competition so the only way you can feel successful is through the suffering and loss of another person or group of people.
Mary Anne soothes her.
Mallory
Mallory doesn’t want to go to the dance because she can’t dance. I think it’s a valid reason, but the other members of the BSC don’t think so. Plus the elementary school kids are going to the dance also, so it’s more like a school-wide gathering with dimmed lighting.
Anyway, because people can’t just say no and everyone stops bothering them, Mallory goes to the dance. Some boy from her math class asks her to dance. Mallory wonders what she was worried about. I continue to think dances are stupid.
Stacey
Stacey puts in a fancy hair clip and dances with Pierre. They promise to write to each other. He kisses her hand and she vows to never wash her hand again. Stacey becomes a super spreader.
Mary Anne
They arrive back in Stoneybrook safely, there are some postcards, and Mary Anne refers to the BSC as the greatest friends in the world.
Once again, it’s time for my arbitrary ranking of the stories, starting from the worst and ending with the best.
Kristy – Who the hell cares about the Winter War?
Dawn – See Kristy.
Claudia – I’m glad Guy wasn’t a predator, but she needs a different storyline besides a crush.
Stacey – Pierre seems fine. There wasn’t much Winter War with her stuff, so that was welcome.
Mallory – Why is she spying on people again? Also, if she doesn’t want to go to a dance, don’t make her. Why are the characters so dedicated to making people do things they don’t want to do?
Jessi – I don’t care what her reasons are, Pinky is a miserable character to read about. I wholeheartedly disagree with Jessi about teachers performing, but I enjoyed the talent show auditions. It would be nice for Jessi to participate in something besides a talent show, though. She needs her own little romance instead of Claudia for the millionth time.
Mary Anne – The archaic prose in her letters made for the funniest moments in the book, but not for the right reasons. I liked the ghost stuff, but Mary Anne’s pining overshadowed what could have been a spooky tale about flying cutlery.
Overall, this book is a rehash of previous Super Specials. Claudia gets a crush, Mallory is spying, Jessi is dealing with a talent show, and Kristy is being a jerk. The only characters who get some variety are Stacey and Dawn. It’s not like they should stop doing these things altogether – I just want some variety. Add a little spice.
Additionally, the stories didn’t connect as much as I would like. Sure, characters had cameos in other characters’ stories, but none of these cameos really affected or changed a potential outcome for another character. Dawn sort of caused her team to lose the war, but when Kristy was scrounging for cross-country participants, I think the fate of the blue team was sealed.
But you know what? There are so many more Super Specials in the future and more opportunities to see the BSC in unusual circumstances. It wasn’t perfect, but I did have an enjoyable time reading it, even if it brought up some memories I would have preferred to keep buried.
So if you’re in a beautiful cabin like the BSC members, at a beach in Aruba, or at home, reading a book, I hope you’re safe and warm. Happy Holidays and I’ll see you next time!
For a list of every Baby-Sitters Club, Goosebumps, and Fear Street book review I have written, go toRereadingMyChildhood.com. To listen to the official podcast, just visit the website or search for “Rereading My Childhood” in your favorite podcast app. For more information about me, Amy A. Cowan, visit my websiteAmyACowan.com.
Men are a menace. To everyone – women, children, and other men. The worst ones are entitled men. Men who think they are owed something. They think they are owed something simply for being a man. Because a woman dates them, they are entitled to her body, her time, her expression, and everything about her. And then they wonder why women don’t want to talk to them. They wonder why other men won’t befriend them. Maybe they’ll get over themselves and learn to make real change. Or maybe they buy a gun and shoot people. (I’m not talking about a specific event because there are too many for me to reference as I live in a hellscape known as America.)
It seems that entitled men are the focus of this week’s review. Since this book’s publication, entitled men haven’t gone away. They’ve just gotten more access to like-minded idiots on the internet and firearms. So buckle up and meet one of the worst antagonists in Fear Street.
Like many Fear Street novels, we start with a first-person killer cam. Actually, get used to this killer cam – we’re going to get a lot of it. There is no mystery here. We know who the killer is and we know about his motivations by the third page.
His name is Scott Collins and he’s at his girlfriend’s funeral. He killed her because she started wearing make-up, saying that it was “No way to behave.” Remember this, because it’s his terrible mantra.
Then we switch to the third person. Crystal and her best friend Lynne are trying on lipsticks and talking about boys. I know this character type. I’m bored of them already.
They hear some commotion outside. There’s a new family moving in next door and they have a hot son – and he’s in the bedroom right next to Crystal’s! They peep at him changing his shirt and they think he saw them. In the same chapter, it switches back to Scott’s first-person perspective. He knows they were staring at him and he’s very angry they were doing it. Not because it’s a clear invasion of his privacy. No. That’s not the issue. The issue is that they were wearing lipstick and low-cut leotards. Yep. I’m very happy we get to spend time in this dingus’s head. I’m being sarcastic if you couldn’t tell.
The next day before school, Crystal is judging her sister, Melinda.
How could she expect to attract a guy’s attention in those awful brown sweaters and sloppy, wrinkled jeans? It’s as if she were terrified of looking good, Crystal thought.
Well, well, well, if it isn’t my old friend Insecurity. First of all, the notion that one must wear revealing clothes to attract boys must have come from boys themselves, because in my experience, any girl can get a boy without much effort. Boys are everywhere and they’re more desperate. And even if they weren’t, dumb boys are useless anyway, and the good ones don’t care what you wear as long as you’re happy. They don’t care if you wear ugly sweaters or short skirts. What matters to a good dude is your happiness.
Anyway, Melinda is another stereotype – the bookworm who only reads old books. Look, I like Pride & Prejudice also, but most of the books I read are contemporary. I believe this stems from both a male author’s lack of knowledge regarding current female authors and the publishing industry’s relegation of female authors to frivolity. Literary fiction written by women is often referred to as “women’s fiction,” a genre that fails to carry the same weight as “literary fiction.” Since modern fiction for women isn’t regarded as serious enough, the girls in these types of books have to read classic literature like Jane Eyre (another book Melinda mentions). See, Melinda is a serious girl who reads serious books, but nothing new because it’s not serious enough, even though there were authors like Joyce Carol Oates, Eve Ensler, and Toni Morrison in the ‘90s, and those are the ones off the top of my head.
Although, if Melinda was reading The Vagina Monologues, the Karens would clutch their grocery store plastic pearls in abject terror. A story about a girl’s first menstruation is not appropriate, but you know what is appropriate? The story of a man who keeps his ex-wife in the attic while he tries to pick up the tutor.
Anyway, at school, Scott has been spending his time staring at women with so much tension that his head is trying to compress his skull, or so I imagine. At lunch, Lynne drinks diet iced tea (Which doesn’t exist, just don’t add sugar, there, it’s diet.) and invites everyone over to her house. Scott plays with a knife and no one notices.
Later, Crystal wonders why Scott hasn’t called her, so she commits mail fraud. Not really. The postman just delivered Scott’s mail to her house. There is a brief explanation of how addresses work, a common theme for this essay series/podcast.
She flipped the magazine over. Studied the mailing label.
MR. MICHAEL COLLINS
3618 FEAR STREET
The mailman had made a mistake. Crystal lived at 3616 Fear Street. She was about to toss the magazine on the side table when-
She stopped cold. She checked the mailing label again. The address.
Yeah, it’s for next door. Why would you just toss it to a table if you didn’t know what it was? If there’s a single piece of strange mail, I inspect it like it’s the clue to solving a decades-old murder that will clear my family name.
Crystal uses this as an opportunity to venture over to Scott’s house. Meanwhile, Scott is murdering a dog. It’s unnecessary. We already know that Scott is a bad person. There’s no need to drag a dog into this.
Crystal makes her way next door and finds the door open. She just walks in and someone grabs her from behind! It’s Jake “The Snake” Roberts and HE POWERBOMBS HER THROUGH THE COUCH! Have you ever seen such brutality, Mean Gene?
Just kidding. It’s Jake Roberts, Scott’s new friend and he just engages in general obnoxiousness. After hanging out for a little bit and talking about the weird magazine, Lynne shows up as Rollerblade Barbie – minus the catching your hair on fire.
She wore hot-pink-and-black skating gear, with black tights. The shiny material clung to her skin, showing off her long legs. She strolled into the room as if she owned the place and dropped her Rollerblades on the floor.
She hates to skate! Crystal thought.
Yeah, that’s the problem. Not the fact that neither of them knows anything about this random boy, and they’re already willing to change everything about themselves. It’s the fact that she’s wearing Rollerblading stuff and she doesn’t Rollerblade.
When they leave, Scott refers to Crystal as “a disease,” which is a very nice thing to say about a human being. A few days later, Lynne actually kisses Scott. He runs to his bathroom, scrubs his mouth, and vows to kill her.
Crystal and Lynne call him and speak to him playfully in a French accent. Scott’s mom is not happy that girls are calling him with accents. I’m not sure if it’s the girls calling him or the French accents. Either way, they have a terse dinner where they chant things like, “No way to behave,” at each other like they’re trying to summon the ghost of Strom Thurmond. Republicans are wild.
Later, after a conversation with her sister, Crystal hops over to Lynne’s house. She finds Lynne’s suicide note that reads, in part
“I only acted wild to cover up my true feelings.” … “I realize now that this is no way to behave-”
Crystal finds her friend slumped over in the garage with the car running. Lynne is dead.
The next few days are hard for Crystal. While grieving, she renews her relationship with Melinda, which is mostly Crystal attempting to turn Melinda into a replacement for Lynne.
Finally, Scott calls Crystal’s house, but he doesn’t call for Crystal. Instead, he asks for Melinda.
Crystal is surprisingly happy for Melinda. She gives Melinda some new outfits to wear so she can attract Scott as if Scott hadn’t already asked Melinda out. Of course, Scott hates the outfits because he’s a misogynist dumbass.
Eventually, Melinda admits to Scott that Crystal has been dressing Melinda. Scott determines that in order to keep Melinda docile and the perfect Republican wife, he must kill Crystal.
Strap in, because we’re finally at the climax. The girls work together and even pull an “I’m Melinda,” “No, I’m Melinda” to save themselves. Scott decides to kill both of them.
Do the girls work together like sisters to take down the man who murdered Crystal’s best friend?
Not really. He falls into a hole, giving the girls an opportunity to call the police, and Scott is hauled away to the mental asylum.
A few days later, a new family moves in and both Crystal and Melinda rush to the window to see if there’s a new boy.
What a disappointing book. There are already too many men in the world with Scott’s perspective. They think they have the right to tell people, especially women, what to do, how to act, and what to wear. They’re basically destroying the world right now. I spent the whole book waiting for his great comeuppance. I wanted the girls to work together to defeat the murderer. I wanted them to use his backward beliefs against him. Instead, he falls in a hole. The girls didn’t use their wits. They didn’t even use the hole. He stumbles into the hole like Justin Bieber at one of his concerts.
Maybe I could forgive this book if the female characters weren’t such stereotypes. Crystal and Lynne are obnoxious and boy-obsessed, so much so that they’re willing to abandon their interests and personalities for a boy they don’t even know. This is a common trope, but man, Stine, give them something. A fun quirk. A starring role as the only girl on the basketball team. Anything.
And the character who is supposed to be different, Melinda, is also a broad stereotype. She only reads books from the 19th century and only wears sweaters. Unlike her sister, she does change – into an obnoxious, boy-obsessed clone of her sister. From one stereotype to another. It’s really more of a lateral move.
I know these characters are supposed to be disposable tropes, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have something to latch onto. A couple of the disposable tropes in Halloween Partyare a deaf, interesting girlfriend and a thirty-year-old woman who thinks that it’s appropriate to party with teenagers. That book has some other problems, mostly that the other characters are a bunch of forgettable tropes, but it had two interesting characters who carried the book. That proves that these books can be done without relying on one lazy stereotype of a boy attacking some other lazy stereotypes of girls. Here’s to Reva, the sisters from Bad Dreams, and multiple petticoated women of the Sagas series, who keep us from boring tropes. May more of you enter the Fear Street series.
For a list of every Baby-Sitters Club, Goosebumps, and Fear Street book review I have written, go toRereadingMyChildhood.com. To listen to the official podcast, just visit the website or search for “Rereading My Childhood” in your favorite podcast app. For more information about me, Amy A. Cowan, visit my websiteAmyACowan.com or follow my Twitter:amyacowan.
The difference between a teenager’s Halloween party and a kid’s Halloween party is the Trick-or-Treat. Usually, a Halloween party for teenagers is an excuse to drink and attempt to engage in an awkward courtship ritual that will haunt them forever. The kid’s Halloween party is supervised and at some point, the kids go as a group and become reverse door-to-door salesmen. The night ends with a sleepover.
At least, that has been my experience.
Parties and trick-or-treating collide in this years’ Halloween special in R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps: Attack of the Jack-o’-Lanterns. Unlike my Halloweens though, I’m not scared for life – at least not in a physical sense. Some of my costume choices were questionable, though. Like the time I was a “bloodsucker” because I was lacking specific teeth. What is a “bloodsucker”? It is just a vampire without any benefits.
Drew Brockman growls at people. He also has millions of friends that we all meet in the first three pages. I’m kidding. His friends are Walker, Tabby, Lee, Shane, and Shana, and we get them in two pages. Walker is his best friend, Shane and Shana are twins, and Tabby and Lee are the patented Stine not-friends.
Two years prior, Tabby and Lee threw a Halloween party that would have resulted in a lawsuit if there was justice in this world. Basically, two people in ski masks crashed the party through the basement, ordered everyone to the floor, and then forced the party-goers to do push-ups. The result is PTSD for an entire fourth-grade class and a kid who literally growls at people vowing revenge.
The next year, Drew, Walker, Shane, and Shana have this master plan to scare Tabby and Lee with fake spiders and rubber snakes. However, Tabby and Lee decline their Halloween party invitation, so the kids have to wait another year to enact revenge.
But this year, they will finally even the score.
Drew, Walker, Tabby, and Lee go trick-or-treating. They go to a house and a kind woman invites them inside. Against their better judgment, the kids enter, only to find a disturbing scene.
The back room was enormous.
And jammed with kids in costumes.
“Whoa!” I cried out, startled. My eyes quickly swept the room.
Most of the kids had taken off their masks. Some of them were crying. Some were red-faced and angry. Several kids sat cross-legged on the floor, their expressions glum.
…
“Yeah. Let us out of here,” Lee insisted.
The old man smiled. The woman stepped up beside him. “You have to stay,” she said. “We like to look at your costumes.”
“You can’t go,” the man added, leaning heavily on his cane. “We have to look at your costumes.”
“Huh? What are you saying? How long are you going to keep us here?” Tabby cried.
“Forever,” the old couple replied in unison.
Now Walker and Drew have to work with Tabby and Lee to escape these wild people who collect trick-or-treaters, getting closer together and gaining a mutual understanding of one another-
No. It was a daydream. It was Drew’s daydream. He thought it up in between growls.
Anyway, the actual day is here, but there’s a slight kink in their plan – Mother Growl doesn’t think they should go trick-or-treating. Apparently, there are people missing in town.
I took the paper from Mom and stared at the photos of the four people who had disappeared. Three men and one woman.
“The police are warning people to be very careful,” Mom said softly.
Walker walked over and took the newspaper from my hands. He studied the photos for a moment. “Hey – these people are all fat!” he exclaimed.
Now we all clustered around the paper and stared at the gray photos. Walker was right. All four people were very overweight. The first one, a bald man in a bulging turtleneck swather, had at least six chins!
Well, then I guess they deserve to be kidnapped!
But enough of that grown-up stuff – the kids are ready to go trick-or-treating!
Drew and Walker leave. It’s not long before something bites Drew on the shoulder! It’s Todd, one of the boys that home invaded the party from three years before. This kid bites Drew and so Drew growls at him. The older kids run off to bite other trick-or-treaters. There’s a lot of animalistic behavior going on here.
Eventually, Tabby and Lee show up. The twins are late and Drew is worried about their plan, but Tabby and Lee want candy, so they start knocking on doors. One of the houses gives them apples and Lee yeets it because you shouldn’t take unwrapped gifts from people you don’t know. Or he doesn’t like fruit, I’m not sure.
As they’re hucking fruit, they see two figures emerge from a grey blur.
Over their heads…
They wore pumpkins!
Large, round pumpkins, perfectly balanced on their shoulders.
…
As they slowly turned to face us, their jack-’o-lantern faces came into view.
Eerie, jagged grins cut into their pumpkin heads.
Flashing triangle eyes.
Lit by flames!
Walker and Drew scream, but Tabby and Lee are unphased. In fact, they’re so unphased that after the pumpkin heads (not the movie) beckon the kids to follow them, Tabby and Lee trail behind without much of a second thought. Walker and Drew tag along and Drew has a bad feeling about the be-pumpkined individuals, but at least he isn’t growling.
They pass through a forest and it seems like they’ve been walking for hours. Walker fails to live up to his name and struggles with his shoes. Drew speculates that the missing people followed the pumpkins deep into the woods and he expresses his internal anxiety. Finally, they come out of the forest on the other side and they’re suddenly in a neighborhood. It’s a nice neighborhood and every house has great candy. Soon, the children have had their fill.
They attempt to go home, but the pumpkins are furious. They say that the kids can’t stop.
They both appeared to float up, to rise up over us. The fires raged in their triangle eyes. The heads floated up over the dark, caped bodies.
“You can’t quit! You can’t EVER quit!”
Whenever the kids try to run away, the pumpkins block their path. When the kids have run out of space in their bags, the pumpkins order them to eat. The kids are reaching their breaking point, especially Tabby and Lee. The two attempt to grab the pumpkin head off to reveal the person behind the mask. Tabby and Lee are successful until they realize that the pumpkins were their heads. The pumpkins just laugh and put their heads back on.
It’s almost midnight and the kids’ parents are going to be worried, but the pumpkins are still going house-to-house. The kids try to get help, but none of the adults will help them, calling them crazy. The pumpkins have been disappearing when the kids try to signal for help and then emerge when the kids try to run away. They go to another house and instead of finding a human – they find a pumpkin adult.
More pumpkin adults appear. They surround the children. They bring out four extra pumpkin heads. They slam one of the heads on top of Tabby. She runs away screaming. Lee tries to fight back, but the pumpkin people get him, too. Then they turn their sights on Walker and Drew.
And they all start laughing.
What is going on?
The two creatures set the empty pumpkin heads down on the ground. And then their own pumpkin heads started to change. The flames died out. The heads began to shrink. And change shape.
A few seconds later, Shane and Shana had their own heads back.
…
“It worked guys!” I exclaimed when we finally stopped celebrating. “It worked! It worked! We really scared Tabby and Lee this time!”
…
“That was so much fun!” Walker exclaimed. “And so easy!”
I stepped up to Shane and Shana and hugged them both. “Of course,” I exclaimed, “it helps to have two aliens from another planet as friends!”
“What the hell?” I exclaimed.
You’d think I’d be used to these kinds of endings by now, but I’m not. Especially when the narrator spends the book expressing to me, the reader, how scared he is through internal dialogue and how those pumpkin kids aren’t Shane and Shana.
It would be one thing if Drew were saying the pumpkins weren’t the twins to Tabby and Lee to keep up the lie but Drew told me, the reader, about his fear. He told me that the twins were missing. He said to me he needed to get home. In the words of Bob’s Burgers, “A lie is not a twist.”
However, maybe I’m looking at this book wrong. Maybe I’m only looking at it with an artificial lens. At the end of the book, as the kids are getting their sweet revenge, the village of aliens were all willing to help. It’s about a community coming together to aid one of its weaker members.
I suddenly had a serious thought. I stopped laughing. “You know, I’ve never seen you two eat,” I told the two aliens. “What do you eat?”
Shana reached out and pinched my arm. “You’re still really bony, Drew, “ she replied. “You’ll find out what Shane and I eat when you fill out a bit.”
“Yeah,” Shane chimed in. “People from our planet only like to eat very plump adults. So you don’t have to worry for now.”
Well, I guess they’ll deserve it when they get older.
The book is not about Halloween revenge. It’s about animals. At its core, human nature is animalistic. Teenagers bite multiple children. Our main character literally growls. They go from house to house hunting for sustenance. Getting revenge on Tabby and Lee plays into pack dynamics. Tabby and Lee are the alphas of the group, but a new leader wants to take over. It’s not a fight in the traditional physical sense, but a fight of courage.
And in the end, as all this happens, there’s a set of aliens who see humans as another animal to use for food. They are keeping the townspeople in their little neighborhoods, or pens, until it’s time for them to graduate from Bovine University.
Or Stine couldn’t think of an ending and he saw an episode of The X-Files and was all, “I’ll just make it aliens.”
For a list of every Baby-Sitters Club, Goosebumps, and Fear Street book review I have written, go toRereadingMyChildhood.com. To listen to the official podcast, just visit the website or search for “Rereading My Childhood” in your favorite podcast app. For more information about me, Amy A. Cowan, visit my websiteAmyACowan.com or follow my Twitter:amyacowan.
Mind Full of Marbles 