The Baby-Sitters Club #79: Mary Anne Breaks the Rules

Mary Anne has a sitting job at the Kuhn house, which isn’t doing so well. Jake is really upset over his parents’ divorce because his dad moved to Texas and never gets a chance to visit. He comes home in tears because Buddy invited him to his mom’s wedding. He’s also upset because Buddy now has two dads and he has none. Mary Anne decides that the best thing is to get Logan. She asks him to come over and hang out with Jake every now and then, giving him a male presence in his life.

Logan starts coming over a lot and spending all of his free time with Jake. They play soccer, do guy stuff and just hang out. Mary Anne decides not to tell Mrs. Kuhn because she doesn’t want to upset her. Cut to Mrs. Kuhn coming home one day and finding Logan in the kitchen. She immediately thinks he is there as Mary Anne’s boyfriend and he runs out without contradicting her.

Mrs. Kuhn calls the club and lodges a complaint. All of the girls act shocked that Mary Anne would invite a guy over. She tries explaining and they tell her to call Mrs. Kuhn and explain the situation. The girls won’t let her take any other sitting jobs and think Mrs. Kuhn called other parents because they stop getting jobs. Mary Anne cries constantly and worries about what to do.

Then Mrs. Kuhn shows up with Jake. He spent the whole weekend pouting because Logan promised to come to his soccer game and never showed up. He told his mom that Logan came over for him and hardly spent any time with Mary Anne. Mary Anne explains that she wanted to help Jake out and Mrs. Kuhn cries because he needed a male presence. She calls Logan and invites him to spend some time with Jake that day and calls the BSC, explaining what actually happened.

There is also a story about a bunch of kids, including the Pikes, Jake, Buddy and the Braddocks wanting to build a haunted house for Halloween. The kids fight because half want a funny house and half want a scary house. They eventually decide to split up and make two houses. Logan and Mary Anne help with the funny house and visit the scary house, where they see Alan Gray helping. Apparently Vanessa asked Mallory for help and she sarcastically told her to call him because he knew all about gross stuff.

*What is up with the divorced people in this town? Both of Dawn’s parents remarry within a year of their divorce, as does Mrs. Barrett. Plus I always got the feeling that Watson was barely divorced when he hooked up with Kristy’s mom.

*Check out Logan on the cover of this book. I always thought he looked pretty dorky, but here he looks like he’s about 36 years old.

*I also have to ask what is up with the way kids dress in these books? Stacey and Robert run into Mary Anne and Logan on a date. They went to Chez Maurice and she’s wearing a white pantsuit with a silk shirt.

*According to Stacey, Jamie went as Peter Pan for last Halloween (never mentioned before) and cried because everyone thought he was Robin Hood. Okay.

*The Arnold twins go as Tweedledum and Tweedledee for Halloween and Shannon acts as a fill-in sitter for Halloween when their mom loses her contact lens.

*Mary Anne is such a brat in this book! She keeps thinking that she should tell Mrs. Kuhn about Logan and keeps putting it off, but then she feels shocked when she catches them.

*Ann’s notes say that she loves Halloween, which is why it’s a recurring theme in the BSC books. If by recurring you mean every five books when not a single year passes, then I completely understand.