Club-Read: The Baby-Sitters Club #16: Jessi's Secret Language

Jessi Ramsey made her debut in the fourteenth book in the series, Hello, Mallory. New best friend to Mallory, loves reading, ballet and telling jokes. Also Jessi and her family are a black family in the predominantly white town of Stoneybrook, Connecticut and her first appearance makes it abundantly clear that Stoneybrook kind of sucks and is filled with a lot of racists. So clearly her books have to focus on several aspects. Her role as a member of the club, her family fitting in and being more accepted by Stoneybrook, and her own motivations and dreams. So that's a lot of weight. Does that weight carry into Jessi being a strong book lead? Especially when her first book is focused on how to deal with a kid with a disability? Let's see if Jessi can start off strong with Jessi's Secret Language.

I'm putting all three covers together this time since all three essentially are the same concept, which is Jessi using sign language with Matt Braddock, the newest kid in Stoneybrook. And I like all three rather equally. On a design standpoint, my preference is the 2021 reprint's design as I like the art style overall, and the graphic novel's design is also quite good, but the classic does a good job in its own right.

We open with getting back up to speed about Jessi, her family moving to Stoneybrook from Oakley, how things are still slow in terms of really being accepted by the community, but things are getting better. Jessi tells her family that she has ballet tryouts for Coppélia later, and hopes she'll get in. Her sister Becca also has a spelling bee to do, so having to try out in front of a lot of judging people. The Ramseys are busy. Later, she heads to Claudia's for the Baby-sitters Club meeting which is our normal preamble of here's the characters. Which, I know we still need this for new readers and all, but 16 books in... anyway, the girls get a call from a new client, Mrs. Braddock. However, there's a hitch. Her seven year old son Matt is deaf, and uses Ameslan to communicate. This is a bit of a problem as none of the girls know how to handle a deaf kid, but Jessi takes up the job. 

Jessi goes to ballet practice, and she's already made enemies of the other girls there, namely for being the youngest in the group at eleven. Two of the girls in her group, Hillary and Katie Beth, seem less intent on helping her out. It's no better when Jessi gets the starring role of Swanilda in the Coppélia performance. So Hillary and Katie Beth think she's a teacher's pet and that once another girl joins the group, the teacher, Madame Noelle, will move on from Jessi, which does make Jessi think that she's getting some preferential treatment. But her mother tells her to not get caught up in all that, and there's no preferential treatment, just petty spite. Jessi meets Mrs. Braddock and her nine year old daughter Haley, who give them the info she needs about Matt. He is profoundly deaf, so he can't read lips and hearing aids won't do anything for him. So sign language is his only main way of communication. They give Jessi the sign language dictionary to read and to practice with, saying that she only needs to work on the ones that Matt mainly uses. 

Matt arrives and Jessi experiences first hand how Matt communicates with sign language. She takes the dictionary home and reads some stuff and thinks of what she should ask Mrs. Braddock about to help in learning. We get our first Baby-sitting story from Mary Anne who is dealing with a bratty Jenny Prezzioso, who hasn't become any more appreciative of Mary Anne after being saved. They go for a walk where they run into Jessi, Matt and Haley. Jenny yells at Matt, confused about him being deaf and untalkative, and considers him weird. So yeah, I may rag on Karen, but Jenny's somehow worse. Haley then says that having a brother like Matt stinks because everyone treats them so oddly, which given Jessi's situation is easy for her to relate to. Jessi's first baby-sitting day with Matt goes well. She takes Haley and Matt to the Pike residence where the Barrett kids are also present. And, unlike Jenny, they're actually more accepting of Matt, even without him being able to communicate. So, you know, some people in Stoneybrook don't fully suck. She takes Matt home, but Haley stays around, and teaches the kids how to sign the word "Stupid".

Dawn and Mallory watch the Pikes next as the kids are already making up their own secret sign language, to which they realize the kids might need to actually learn the real language to communicate with Matt. At rehearsal, Jessi sees that Katie Beth has a deaf sister named Adele. And Katie Beth seems to not know how to sign, since she really doesn't live with Adele, who mainly lives in Massachusetts. So Jessi realizes that Matt's got it well with a family who are trying with him, while Adele gets the short end of the stick with a more terrible upbringing. But Jessi offers to help Katie Beth sign and communicate more, so she at least managed to get rid of some of that petty spite from one of the girls. So hey, progress. Claudia's up next and she's watching the Thomas/Brewer lot, which means yep, Agent of Chaos. Karen is having a ghost party on the third floor with ghost pate. This bothers Andrew, but to try and get Karen off the ghost stuff for a bit, she calls Jessi to teach them word for ghost, witch, and other things that Karen can accuse people of being. 

Jessi baby-sits Matt more regularly and the other kids in Stoneybrook becoming more accepting of him. That's good, but Haley is still resentful of him and even wishes he wasn't even born. Mainly because she feels that her having to be there for him constantly ostracizes her in the process. She doesn't hate Matt, but she's also conflicted about him. I'll get to why I love this whole thing in the conclusion. Jessi says that she knows the feeling of wanting to be an only child, but she wouldn't have Becca or Squirt, so that would be awful. They talk about how even deaf, Matt is lucky that he can still do so much of what other kids can do, with Haley noting he's never gone and seen a performance in a theater like, say, a ballet. That gives Jessi an idea as to how to tie these two plots together in a nice little package. Jessi goes to the next meeting and says the girls should learn to sign. We get a call from Logan, which it's been a few books since we introduced him, good to see he's still around. We get an update that Jeff's still enjoying California, while Kristy talks about her mom wanting another baby which means yep. Put another pin on the board, we'll be covering that down the line. She also invites the girls to her Coppélia  performance. She also heads to Matt's school for the deaf and invites his class as well.

Kristy's baby-sitting job is for the Ramseys. Becca enjoys Kristy's company, namely in that she's been one of the few people in Stoneybrook who isn't either straight up racist, or putting on a pretend face around her family. Kristy notes that Matt had a hard time, and that even she had a hard time when she moved to Watsons and had to deal with the snobs there. Charlotte comes over and we get a reminder of the last book with how she ran off in tears during her performance, but she seems to have gotten over it well. The kids also know a secret about something that Kristy has yet to be made privy too. She has Haley sign while the ballet goes on. Katie Beth says that Adele is there as well and that while her parents won't learn, she is going to learn sign language to help Katie Beth. The performance goes off without a hitch and Matt really enjoyed it, and we're solving the Katie Beth issue quite well, also her cousin Keisha showed up and gets to meet Mallory, so I'd say we're as close to a mega happy ending as we've gotten in a main book in a while. 

This book is great. Jessi makes for a really solid lead for the series. But what I like is that this book isn't just dwelling on how Jessi and her family are handling Stoneybrook. It's a part of the book, it's prevalent, and it's clearly bothering both Jessi and especially Becca. But the book makes it important that it isn't the motivating factor of Jessi's character. That she has other things in her life, like ballet and baby-sitting. And I like the addition of the Braddock family. And that we're given a character in Matt who the book is making it abundantly clear isn't to be pitied or looked down upon. That despite his disability, he's a normal kid who loves normal things and lives as normal a life as he can live. This book exists in an era where we still weren't getting solid representation of disabled people, but it was definitely turning around. And I know it's not like we should be surprised that this book would handle something like deafness, given how the series has handled things like diabetes and strokes. It just makes for a very impressive read.

But there's one thing that makes this book feel great to me. And it's what I said I'd get into here. Haley's feelings. How she loves her brother but at the same time feels embarrassed to be around him and wishes he wasn't there. It would be fine enough if the book focused solely on Matt, but what the book does is make it clear how others feel about Matt, especially Haley. Because I can fully believe this to be how some siblings feel around a disabled family member. Be it jealousy, wishing they had a more normal life to live, or feeling embarrassed by them. That it would take a toll on their own mental health. But the book makes it clear that Haley doesn't hate Matt, and that's important. And the book juxtaposes this with Katie Beth and Adele, showing the differences in a family that tries to help their kid's disability to another that would rather send her off, feeling her more a burden than a person. But I like that Katie Beth gets a quick arc in the story to try to break that cycle and form a bond with her sister. 

Jessi is a great lead. She's outgoing, willing to help in any way possible and willing to learn about how to talk to Matt. And not only Matt, but Haley as well. It makes her a character who is very kind and willing to accept anyone for their differences. I joked a bit on how awkward it is that Ann M. Martin is essentially a white woman writing the experience of a black girl, but I can tell that she at least wanted to make sure that she was doing this right and never makes Jessi or her family feel like a stereotype. That she is a person with her own goals, dreams and friendships. Stoneybrook still mostly sucks, and the book makes it clear that a lot of that hasn't gone away. But I do like that she is forming friendships, is liked by members of the community and that we're slowly but surely managing to get the Ramsey family more accepted in Stoneybrook. 

Overall, this was a great Baby-sitters club book. It's given a solid lead in Jessi, focuses on a disability without ever feeling like it's insulting or feeling like a "very special episode" and Flows quite well, with everything given the right amount of time to build. After a few clunky books lately, it's good to be back in some good Baby-sitters Club again. Easy recommend. Next up is Mary Anne and we have a book about a chain letter. Methinks the clunk will be right back, but I'd love to be wrong. Jessi's Secret Language gets an A. 

Coppélia

Candy Land

Chutes & Ladders

Squirrel Nutkin

The Secret Language

Ursula Nordstrom

New England Patriots

Super Bowl

On Top of Old Smokey

On Top of Spaghetti

Go Eat Worms

Lego

Tinker Toys

The Cat in the Hat

The Witch Next Door

Ho-Hos

Yodels

Ring Dings

Double-Stuf Oreo

The Christmas Day Kitten

Pinky Pye

Millions of Cats

Copernicus