It's time for another trip into the Super Specials. What, already? Yes. Because now there's two a year as opposed to one. And like the previous two Super Specials, these are multi-narrated vacation stories. Only this time it's in winter. Is this a good book or would we much prefer having fun in the sun? Let's find out with Baby-Sitters' Winter Vacation.
Our two covers are pretty good. Of the two I prefer the original. It's more dynamic and fun in my eyes as the club is engaged in this big snowball battle. Their poses make the moment a lot more energetic in my eyes. The reprint is fine, but doesn't land for me as much when it comes to the concept of a big snowball fight. I think the posing feeling more stiff doesn't quite land for me as I think the illustrator was no doubt hoping. The reprints have been winning me over lately, but when it comes to the super specials, they haven't quite hit that sweet spot. And given this is likely the last reprint for the super specials I'll be covering given the progress I've been making, it's unfortunate to not go out on a bang.
Our previous book was structured as a book written by Stacey. This time it's Mary Anne, who is writing a book for Logan about her Winter vacation. Mainly because Logan's family are vacationing in Aruba. But Mary Anne's not bothered as she's ready for fun in the snow at Leicester Lodge in Hooksett Crossing, Vermont. Stoneybrook Middle School goes there every year for the big Winter Carnival, which was actually part of the original title for the book but for some reason was changed to the more generic Winter Vacation. Look at me with the facts. It's a whole bunch of events, but the biggest event of all is the Winter War, a series of challenges between the red team and the blue team. Sculpture contest, ice skating contest, downhill skiing, cross-country skiing and, as the cover artworks would suggest, a snowball fight. Kristy is on the blue team, while Claudia and Mary Anne are on the red, so I'm sure this won't cause conflict. Most of the girls also have other roles. Kristy will cover the entire war while Jessi runs the talent show, Mary Anne is historian and Claudia will judge the snow sculpture contest, which she also wants to do but is already worried about bias.
As the bus heads for the lodge, the weather starts getting rough. The bus almost hits a deer, but swerves into a snowbank. Nobody's hurt and they've conveniently made it to the lodge anyway, so that was a thrill. Dawn narrates next as the kids make it to the lodge, to which she references The Shining as if the target demo would, you know, be watching The Shining? Eh, it's the 80s and I mean I saw shit I shouldn't have watched as a kid, so yeah. Leicester Lodge is massive, big enough to hold not just Stoneybrook's students, but ones from New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont. The girls are separated by grades, so Mallory and Jessi are separated from the others, while the other girls (and Ashley Wyeth which is a nice callback) have their own room. They then show Mallory and Jessi around the lodge to help them not get so lost.
But as the girls talk about each floor and what specific candy machines are on each floor, a man and a woman burst into the lodge, the woman with a fractured arm and the man frozen, but you know, not having a fractured limb. They're from Conway Cove Elementary whose bus crashed and overturned. They had to walk two miles to the lodge to get help. Mr. and Mrs. George, the ones running the lodge, have the pair be tended to by the hotel doctors while they set up a bus to help with the kids. Kristy offers for the BSC to help, given they're good with elementary school kids and I mean how many other chances are they going to get to be involved in a bus rescue? They arrive as cops and paramedics are on the scene. The bus driver's got a broken leg, but the kids all appear to be okay, save for a girl named Pinky who injured her foot. Kristy and the girls talk with two kids, Bryce and Ginnie, to help them stay calm and to survey the situation. As everyone is situated, Mary Anne suggests that the girls write notes for Logan as well to really sell the entire harrowing situation from not just her own POV.
So, why were a group of elementary school kids from Maine headed to Leicester Lodge? Well, they won a readathon and this was their prize. Granted, not so much the prize of near-death, but still. Oh and also, the title of this series is the BABY-SITTERS CLUB, and we need an excuse for the girls to volunteer baby-sitting. Might be the most bonkers way the series has shoehorned it in so far, but I guess the title isn't allowed to lie. So the girls volunteer to watch the kids for the week. They get the kids situated for bed and eventually sleep, ending night one of this wild week. The next day, Mary Anne isn't too jazzed yet, despite the snow outside. She also isn't too thrilled that the Seventh Grade gym teacher Ms. Halliday is helping with the kids because she has a bit of a rocky relationship with Ms. Halliday given Mary Anne is a bit shit at gym, but Halliday likes star athlete Kristy. So Halliday along with the two Cove Elementary teachers will be helping so that this isn't just a super special about watching kids. Imagine selling the reader on this Winter Carnival and not delivering.
Mary Anne heads to the library to do her historian work, when she finds a book mentioning a ghost... at Dawn's Hou-no, I'm kidding, a ghost in Leicester Lodge. She asks around, but none of the lodge staff give her a concrete answer. She also begins to worry that Logan is having too much fun in Aruba and already found a better girl than her. Look after Logan kind of sucked a few books ago, I can see why she'd be a bit worried. Jessi narrates next and at first decides to join Kristy, Claudia, Dawn and some of the kids on the ski trail, only to realize a broken leg isn't exactly good for ballet. She decides to talk to Pinky, whose real name is Priscilla and she's a bit of a little shit. Talking very snottily to Jessi for asking questions. Jessi thinks about a shitty neighbor she has back in Stoneybrook who is super racist and concerned about property value. I can visualize the red cap right now. But it makes Jessi worry that maybe Pinky too could be prejudiced. Well as long as she ain't spouting slurs like the last super special this could be a step up. She tries to play board games with her, but Pinky remains awful, so she pretty much throws a copy of Matilda at Pinky and moves on for now.
Stacey narrates next and talks about how she never saw too many blizzards in New York which, I dunno much about 80s weather but that don't seem right. She goes down the beginner trail and runs into a boy there, or more technically the boy runs into her. He introduces himself as Pierre D'Amboise from Dixville Falls. He's practically Canadian. You can tell because he speaks French like all of us Canadians supposedly do. But Stacey is now convinced that this is her first actual crush. At least, you know, the one that isn't on a legal adult. Mallory is up next and her big problem for the book is that there's a dance coming up on Friday, because there just seems to always be a dance in these things. But she can't dance and really has no interest in the matter. But with the others involved in the first of the Winter War events and Jessi working on the talent show, she's all alone. So, much like on the cruise ship, she's going to snoop around seeing what's going on. Noting Mary Anne being all broken up over Logan, the chef maybe cooking poison, and Ms. Halliday crying, likely over unrequited love? So in other words, not much for Mal this book, I gotcha.
Dawn is up next and competes in the ice skating contest, which is essentially events like speed skating, figure eights and the like. She sucks at it, especially in the relay contest where she falls twice. She also gets easily bested by school annoyance Alan Gray in snowball fight practice. So to say Dawn's doing well, or to the least extent serviceable would be overselling things. She returns to Mary Anne and despite her trauma dump to Mary Anne, she's more focused on Logan concerns. So the two fight with one another and are now enemies. So in other words, perfect stepsisters. Mary Anne decides to stop with the Logan panics to continue asking staff about the ghost. Ultimately Mr. George tells her that the story came from when a man died at the lodge in the late 30s. Dead in the bathtub. But his relatives were actually thrilled that he's dead since apparently he was quite evil. Like deal with the devil evil. So he had no proper funeral and his body was pretty much buried in the woods. Since then there were strange occurrences in the lodge. But Mr. and Mrs. George haven't had anything strange happen in the 20 years they've been running the lodge. Miss Halliday shows up later and she and Mary Anne get over this whole "the teacher might have it out for me" concerns from earlier.
Kristy's up next. She's focused on the Winter War, with her team already losing once, which gives her some time to shit on Dawn as well. I mean, she really hasn't had any interesting plots in these super specials, but I wasn't expecting "we all think you kinda suck" to be one of them. The snow sculpture contest is up next, first for the younger kids with a girl named Kara wins for her Snowwoman. They all get photos of their creations done, which is a fair prize. Next up is for the students, and again, Kristy's team loses, mainly because Claudia decided the win for the red team. So now she's mad at Claudia for, I dunno, bias? Also Ashley is mad at Claudia but I chalk that up more to "art school student mad that she isn't the big winner for once". So yeah, Kristy's not fond of losing, and promises to defeat Claudia and the red team in the ski contest on Friday. Claudia is next up and she takes ski instructions from another guy with an accent. And I guess guy is an accurate term as his name is Guy. She argues with Kristy some more and has a crush on Guy, who is older than her. Oh this is another Boy-Crazy Stacey situation isn't it?
Jessi is up next. She judges the talent show auditions. When it comes to the kids, she decides they should all do a skit, much to the concerns of Pinky. Dawn's up next, and it's still more of her fighting with Mary Anne. Also she plays Monopoly and sucks at that, so yeah, this isn't really letting up. She runs into Pinky who admits that much of her bad attitude is because she's been babied so much since coming up to the lodge due to her injury, since she's great at a lot of things back in Conway Cove. And I guess that's enough for Dawn to get out of her funk and apologize to Mary Anne. So that gets settled. Mary Anne then writes up a sketch for the Conway Cove kids to do for the talent show that's about a girl breaking up with her boyfriend for a more sophisticated boy, but Jessi thinks the kids doing a skit about their teachers would be more apropos. She then gets a call from Logan, still in Aruba. They both miss each other, Logan isn't cheating on her, so all of that anxiety is wrapped up in a neat little package. Still got a bit of book left to go though.
Mallory up next, and her spying job was terrible. So we focus on the talent show instead. The teachers tell ghost stories as the power conveniently flickers. But it comes back on, and with no storm in sight it means that Mallory still has a dance to worry about. The rest of the show goes well and Jessi and Pinky finally get along, so what do you know? Yet another issue all wrapped up. Back to Claudia who gets some more lessons from Guy before the big ski contest, which Kristy is still laser focused on winning. The red and blue team tie with one event left. In the midst of this, Claudia meets Guy's family. I.E. his wife and kids. So Claudia realizes that yeah, he's too old for her and that he wasn't actually interested in her. So at least she came to that conclusion quicker than Stacey did. You remember Stacey, right? This book sure doesn't seem to. Two Super Special books in a row where she feels lost in the shuffle.
Kristy's up next. The cross country skiing contest is next and she pressures some kids on her team to do good. A bit too good as one kid, Jay, breaks his ankle, causing them to lose, which Kristy is more preoccupied with. She talks with Mary Anne and realizes that while she isn't this overcompetitive with Kristy's Krushers, when she actually competes in something is when she gets too hyper focused on winning. So a lesson was learned in as sitcommy a fashion as expected. Mallory's up next and after all the dance concerns, she ends up dancing with a boy named Justin Price, and that goes well. Stacey is up next for the first time since Chapter 8. This is Chapter 22, the penultimate chapter. She dances with Pierre where we see some things being wrapped up. Kristy dances with an injured Jay, Guy dances with Claudia which I guess is fine since there's nothing nefarious about it, Pinky's happy, Mallory's happy. Just a big ol' happy festival. She and Pierre exchange addresses as she's far from ready for this to end. Everybody soon goes home, gets some mail from the people they met, and Mary Anne finishes Logan's book.
This one was a mixed bag honestly. There are some interesting things but it still has a lot of issues, and again a lot of it has to do with the structure. How it feels more so in this one than the others that the girls really don't all have interesting subplots. And due to the pacing and what subplots get priority over the others, it does feel very scattershot. Case in point how Stacey's plot takes the longest to really follow up on. Granted, it's yet another plot about a crush, and the one with the least juiciness to it, but it did feel like it took forever to actually do anything with. I do also feel like the only real plot for Jessi again boils down to "concerns about racism". I get it, and being a white fool I have no real say in it. And given she's the lone black girl in this whole lodge, it makes sense why she'd chalk Pinky down to her frustrations being prejudice. But I really hope this isn't all her character is, because we've had full books where she is given more to do and the racism concerns aren't a lingering factor to her. Granted, this is a step up from last book where we don't get a slur, but I hope for some better Jessi plots.
That being said I can't say any of the plots were great in this one. Kristy's could be interesting with her heavy focus on winning above all other things, but it gets resolved super quick. Stacey's relationship with Pierre is given so little focus, it's quick to forget. Claudia's obsession with Guy is creepy, but thankfully doesn't go anywhere concerning. And he isn't as creepy talking around her like Scott the lifeguard was with Stacey. Mary Anne's is frustrating as it's mostly concern over Logan. Hell, when she's given a really interesting plot about the ghost, it's rushed away super quick. I get that this series being grounded in reality plays a major part, but it does feel like it goes away before we could have had a fun mystery. Jessi's is a bit all over the place. It starts with her concern over Pinky, but Pinky becomes more the issue of other characters so it becomes less Jessi's issue, so her stuff is more boiled down to "runs talent show". Mallory really has a nothingburger of a plot this time. The book starts with the spy stuff, then drops it, and gives her nothing to do until the quick stuff with the dance. And then Dawn's whole shtick is she's really bad at sports and Monopoly. We're so deep into this series at this point, but I can really feel that Ann M. Martin hasn't really ever gotten Dawn.
Overall, three of them down, and this one is definitely the weakest of the three so far. It starts with one of the most harrowing scenes we've had in the series since the fake kidnapping, and has a few fun moments, but ultimately feels like the best example so far of the scattershot nature of the Super Specials to this point with the girls really not being given anything super interesting to do. Even down to the carnival itself which doesn't feel like it gets the big focus I had hoped for. But even if this felt like a mess, I can't say it ever bored me. I had fun with it. So even if I wasn't as wild over this one, I can still give it a recommend. Maybe others will like it more than I did. Next time will be a summer book. Maybe these flow better with summer for me, I don't know. But as it stands, Baby-sitters' Winter Vacation gets a B-.
And with that, we are officially out of the 1980s with the Baby-Sitters Club. We enter the nutty nineties with a wedding, what else?
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