Book #3: The Truth about Stacey
Synopsis: Stacey’s parents want her to try a new doctor in New York and, along the way, she is forced to confront her former BFF, Laine. Meanwhile, some 8th graders start a rival babysitting business and give the gals a run for their money.
Thoughts: Although I remember the plots of most books based off of the titles, this one didn’t immediately ring any bells. After all, we already uncovered Stacey’s Big Secret at the end of the first book. Or did we? It turns out that Stacey’s secret is only partially uncovered – the BSC knows and a few other folks do, too, but a lot of people don’t know about it and Stacey is continuing to navigate life with secret diabetes. The secret is getting harder to keep, though, because people are always trying to feed her candy, plus her parents have found yet another new doctor for her and she’ll have to go to NYC for several days in order to get some tests done and meet the new doctor. Stacey likes her current doctors, though, and so she asks Dr. Johanssen for help. They end up getting Stacey an appointment with a different doctor who basically tells the McGills that Stacey is healthy and should stick with her regular doctors. While in NYC seeing the doctors, Stacey has to stay with her former BFF, Laine Cummings, who finally knows that Stacey has diabetes. After some initial awkwardness and a little bit of a fight, they make up and are back to being BFFs.
Meanwhile, some 8th graders from Stoneybrook Middle School have decided to start a rival business, The Baby-Sitters Agency, which is basically the MLM version of the BSC: the two girls running the agency find sitters for you and then take a chunk of the sitters’ profits. Prediction: if you looked up those girls in 2017, they were probably messaging all their high school friends about great business opportunities to do while working from home. The agency has great advertising, though, including balloons, which leads the BSC to great lengths (a.k.a. wearing sandwich boards) to advertise. Luckily, this also inspires some ideas that are better than wearing sandwich boards to school, including the Kid Kit, a box filled with toys, games, and art supplies to take to sitting jobs. Who among us didn’t make our own Kid Kit to take to baby-sitting jobs. Or was that just me?
The BSC is worried that they’re going to lose clients, though. The 8th graders can stay out later, offer better rates, and have more sitters available. But you know what they also have? Terrible work ethics. They’d rather talk on the phone to their sig oths or leave cigarette burns on the Newtons’ furniture than actually spend time with the kids they’re watching. The sitting charges keep complaining about the new sitters and it all comes to a head one day when the girls find Jamie Newton wandering by the side of the road by himself. One of the older babysitters let him play outside by himself. The parents are informed, the older sitters are fired, and everything goes back to normal. The Baby-Sitters Agency folds and the girls jump straight to the next business venture: makeovers!
Everything works out in the end (surprise, surprise), including the minor story line in which a precocious and lonely Charlotte Johanssen gets to skip a grade and jump right into 3rd grade.
Unbelievable: The book opens with the BSC members coming up with a plan for what to do when Mrs. Newton goes into labor (that is, what to do with Jamie when his mom goes to the hospital), as if an adult would let 7th graders plan such an important thing. As if, I say.
Mrs. Newton also mentions wanting an older sitter for the new baby, hence her interest in the 8th grade sitters. Seriously, though: what person is trusting their newborn with an 8th grader?
Lingering Questions: This is definitely less of a question, but as a five-year resident of south central Connecticut, the exact geography of Stoneybrook vis-à-vis Stamford and NYC is a little bewildering to me. We learn in BSC Super Special #4 that Stoneybrook is a coastal town. We also know that its closest city is Stamford. A coastal Connecticut town whose closest city is Stamford would be only an hour from lower Manhattan (anything further away would be closer to Bridgeport). Basically, the books make it seem like it’s a world away when, in fact, it’s totally a reasonable commuting distance. A lot of things in the books, especially Stacey’s storylines are predicated on this being a much further distance.
Up Next: Mary Anne Saves the Day
Say Hello to Your Friends 