The Babysitters Club #45: Kristy and the Baby Parade

Kristy gets bored sitting for David Michael and Emily one day, so she lets them make collages. When flipping through the paper, she sees an ad for the upcoming baby parade and decides to enter Emily. She wants to tell the other members about the parade, but Mrs. Preziosso calls first, needing a long-term sitter for Jenny and Andrea. Before anyone takes the job though, she wants them to attend a baby care class. Kristy gets the job and all the other girls agree to go too.

Naturally they all love the class and do great. The teachers host a graduation event and a bunch of their family members go to it. The teacher announces that only two people passed with perfect scores. One is a new father and the other is Kristy. She acts all shocked, but can’t stop beaming. They pick up a bunch of new clients, including Mrs. Salem and her two twins.

Kristy is nervous about sitting for Andrea, but puts on her big girl pants. She tries planning a bunch of activities for Jenny, but discovers that sitting for a baby takes a lot of extra attention. Mrs. Preziosso asks her to help make Andrea’s entry for the parade. Later the girls all decide that they should make a float and enter it with a bunch of kids they sit.

Of course things go bad from the first moment. Claudia makes a shoe/boot from chicken wire, but it looks wonky. Stacey mixes an orange-red color for the boot, while Mallory picks pink for the costumes. Jessi, Dawn and Kristy all notice the problems, but decide not to comment on it. The girls even fight over what idea to use for the float. Before deciding on the old woman in the shoe, they want a ball park (Kristy), Surfing USA (Dawn), Misty (Mallory), Three Little Kittens (Mary Anne), New York skyline (Stacey) and an alien invasion (Claudia).

Kristy works on Andrea’s entry, which involves her dressed as a queen and riding in a coach. Jenny keeps pouting because she wants to enter the parade, even though she’s too old. She sings, dances and does gymnastics, before Kristy snaps. Kristy tells her to help make the coach and then she can share the prize, even though she knows she shouldn’t make promises.

By the time the girls get the float ready, no one likes it. They have a huge fight and Dawn decides that Eleanor Marshall should wear a completely different outfit. Mallory freaks out because she didn’t make costumes for the BSC and they get pissed. They all go home annoyed at each other.

They meet the next day with Charlie planning on pulling the float. He puts on a hat and sunglasses so no one will recognize him. They ride in the parade with no one talking to each other. Kristy sees all the other floats and feels bad that they didn’t spend more working on their costumes and float. They don’t even place in the parade, but Andrea wins first in her division.

Later that night Kristy starts feeling bad and calls Mary Anne to apologize. The girls all meet at the next BSC meeting and make up over their fight. Oh and Charlie drives the float to the junk yard and dumps it.

*What kind of 13 (or 11) year old girls get so excited about taking a class on caring for babies. The teacher doesn’t even act surprised that they’re there, even though the rest of the class are new parents or expectant parents.

*Dawn tells the other girls about her new strategy for dealing with temper tantrums, which involves tucking a kid in bed and talking to them in a soothing tone. Um yeah, that would so never work. I want to see her pick up a screaming kid and put them in bed!

*Claudia dresses like a giant watermelon at one point, with watermelon earrings, black pants with green streaks, black boots and a red shirt with green buttons.

*I know I have said it before, but how has Claudia made it this far in school? On the signs, she misspells “shoe” “there” and even “woman.”

*Mrs. Preziosso is a pretty terrible mom. She gets so excited about the baby parade that she barely spends any time with Jenny. Then she lets Jenny destroy the float with a bunch of stickers.

*Kristy somehow manages to cover the wheels on Andrea’s stroller with gold painted cardboard wheels, makes a silver canopy and creates a horse that looks like it’s pulling the stroller…just with stuff from Mrs. Preziosso’s sewing room.

*According to Kristy, the baby parade only happens every two years. It must be a big deal because I think several months pass in this book from the time she sees the announcement to the time it happens.

*Other floats include a Wizard of Oz, Merry Go Round and Star Wars themes. The Star Wars one has a kid dressed as Chewbacca, which seems mean.