The Baby-Sitters Club Super Special #2: Baby-Sitters’ Summer Vacation

Oh man, I have no idea why I haven’t recapped this one yet. I think I read this book 27 times when I was younger. Anyway, this takes place when Stacey is living in NYC. The BSC apparently watched The Parent Trap a few too many times and decided to go to camp for the summer. They wanted Stacey to go and she kept turning them down before deciding to go. Oh, and a whole bunch of their charges go too. The older girls are all Counselors In Training aka CITs.

Stacey decides to make everyone keep a journal of their experiences so she can put it together as a book at the end of the summer. On the first night at camp, she rolls around in some leaves, which turns out to be poison ivy. She gets it all over her body, catches pink eye, develops a cold, gets bit all over by mosquitoes, and gets impetigo. She spends part of the book in the infirmary.

Claudia meets a cute guy when some CITs from the other side of the lake come over to tell the girls about a dance. Her charges find out his name (Will) and they finally meet at movie night. They fall in luv and spend the entire dance together. Will is Asian-American and had his grandmother living with his family too. They say goodbye but agree to write each other.

Dawn worries about this girl Heather in her cabin because she’s quiet, reads all the time, and keeps to herself. Her cabin goes on an overnight trip and they get lost in the woods. Heather steps up to the plate, figures out what to do, and even gets them back. Heather suddenly becomes more popular with the other girls and Dawn acts like she had something to do with it.

Jessi and Mallory are too young to be CITs, but the owners agree to let them be Junior CITs. The girls in their cabin act really stuck up and wind up being racist, calling them “oreos.” They work with a group of younger girls, including Becca and Charlotte to do a dance routine for the end of the trip. It goes really well and two of the mean girls apologize, while the other one just ignores them.

Mary Anne winds up in a cabin with girls who act a lot older than her. When she tells them she has a boyfriend, they don’t believe her. One of the girls has a little sister, Tara, in their cabin who is super mean to Margo Pike. Mary Anne writes a gushy fake letter to Logan, and the girls convince her to sneak out and walk around the lake to give it to him. She does, but gets caught because Tara told on her. She ended up making it father around the lake than anyone else before so they treat her with respect.

Logan only has two chapters (or one?). He gets her letter and all the guys make fun of him because it’s so gushy. He starts a food fight and gets in trouble, but his counselor confesses that he did the same thing when he was a camper. The guys meet Mary Anne at the dance and decide that she’s cute so they stop picking on him.

Kristy is in the same situation as Mary Anne (kind of). Her cabin mates tease her for looking too young, not dressing up, and not having a boyfriend. They give her a little makeover just in time for the dance. She loves the way she looks, gets excited when guys hit on her, and seems happy with the changes, but she goes back to her old self at the end.

*This camp is insane. Some of the campers stay all summer and some leave after two weeks. Everyone from Stoneybrook is leaving after two weeks and given that they take up nearly half of everyone there, how does this place stay in business?

*Apparently they have a list of replacement counselors from former campers/counselors. Dawn’s counselor has to go home when her mom gets sick, and they find a new one in less than 24 hours. Are there really people just sitting around waiting to get a call?

*Mary Anne’s cabin mates want to pierce her ears with a needle and she goes along with it. The other girl chickens out, but it’s still completely out of character.

*Kristy mentions in the book that she got blue Pony shoes with Velcro right before leaving for camp, but the cover shows her wearing lace up shoes.

*Kristy has a rare moment here where she admits that she feels younger than all of the girls in the club because she isn’t interested in boys, makeup, or clothes.

*Charlotte loses it because she doesn’t like being away from home. Kristy thinks she should go home and a lot of other girls do too, but it’s annoying because they never actually tell her that or mention it to her mom.

*Dawn is kind of snotty in this book because she acts like Heather either shouldn’t be at camp or should make more of an effort to get along with the other girls.

*BTW, Dawn eats a hot dog while on the overnight, but can’t fathom the idea of eating a marshmallow. I love in the early books that she will sometimes eat meat, but in later books she says she never ate meat.

*According to Kristy, her name isn’t in name meaning books. I have to call BS on that one.

*I always remember this book because it was the first time I heard the term oreo. I think it got mentioned on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air once and I was shocked.

*Dawn says that you could walk for miles from the camp without seeing people. Is it really such a good idea then to let a bunch of kids lose in the woods?

*I’m curious how Mary Anne even manages to sneak out given that the counselor only has a curtain around her bed to separate her from the group.

*Everyone is super excited about going back to camp again, which is funny given that in the FF series, everyone backs out.