Welcome back to Nostalgic Reads! Today, we head back to Stoneybrook and the continuing adventures of Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia, Stacey and Dawn – the Baby-Sitters Club!
About the Book
Title: Kristy and the Snobs
Author: Ann M. Martin
Series: The Baby-Sitters Club #11
Pages: 153
First Published: March 1, 1988
Blurb: Kristy’s mom got married again last summer and now Kristy and her family in a new neighborhood. The kids aren’t very friendly. In fact, they’re… well, snobs. They criticize Kristy’s clothes. They make fun of the Baby-sitters Club. And worst of all, they laugh at Louie, Kristy’s pet collie, who’s going blind. Nobody does that and gets away with it!
Kristy’s fighting mad– and she’s not going to put up with it much longer. If anybody can beat a Snob Attack, it’s the Baby-sitters Club. And that’s just what they’re going to do.
Review
First of all, it’s so nice to get back to the Baby-sitters Club! After all the drama and craziness of Sweet Valley, Stoneybrook seems so nice and wholesome. I do wish that I had gotten a more light hearted welcome back to the series though – this one is tough.
At first, it seems pretty straightforward. Kristy is the main here, obviously, and at first it just sounds like a story about trying to fit in. The Thomases have moved in with Kristy’s mom’s fiance, Watson, and Watson is rich. He lives in a mansion. It is never explained what Watson does for a living, as far as I know, or how he has so much money, but he does. And he’s not obnoxiously rich. He has a big house in the richest neighborhood, but he doesn’t have tennis courts or a pool or anything, not like some of the houses do.
Side note: is it just me, or were tennis courts the big go-to thing for rich characters to have in the 80s. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone who actually had one at their house.
Anyway, Kristy meets some of the other girls her age in the neighborhood and, as expected, they are pretty snobby. They all go to private school. They all wear fancy expensive clothes. Kristy doesn’t fit in at all, but she doesn’t really want to. She writes them off pretty early in the book. One way that Kristy gets to know her neighbors is by baby-sitting for a few of them. One of the families is super nice, but the other family – the Delaneys – are snobby to the extreme. The kids are bossy and rude, always talking about their purebred Persian cat (which cost $400) and the fountain in the entryway (which cost $2000). I would hate these kids, but Stacey actually has some good ideas and teaches them to be a bit nicer about things.
That leaves Shannon. She plays some really mean pranks on Kristy while she’s baby-sitting in the neighborhood (like calling to tell Kristy that there is smoke coming out the upstairs window, making Kristy think there’s a fire). After a while, they come to more of an understanding. Turns out that Shannon used to baby-sit in the neighborhood all the time and is jealous of Kristy taking what used to be her jobs. The other baby-sitters offer to make Shannon an associate member of the club, and everyone is happy.
Well . . . not exactly. Let’s move into the real part of the story. That title is way misleading, because while dealing with the snobs is a big part of the book, the heart of the book is that Louie, the Thomas’s faithful collie, is getting old. He has arthritis really bad and is losing his eyesight. They try to treat his illness, but he keeps getting worse and worse. By the end of the book, they have to make the decision to put Louie to sleep.
I remember WEEPING at this book as a kid and even reading it now, I still got a bit misty-eyed. I like how this book deals with this issue, since it is one that a lot of kids face growing up. Dealing with grief is really hard and didn’t used to be talked about as much as it is now. Another thing that’s really sweet is that Shannon, originally our mean girl, has a dog (purebred, of course) that has puppies and she offers one to Kristy and her family. It’s super sweet.
Categories: nostalgic reads
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