The Baby-Sitters Club Readers Request: Logan Bruno, Boy Babysitter

I'll admit it, I had no clue I even had this book. I apparently bought it at a thrift store around the same time my roommate boxed up all the books I had in my living room. I just found it the other day with a handful of other books!

So, Logan isn't too happy. He was in a track meet and tripped over his feet at the finish line, which lost him the win. King and some of the other guys make fun of him for it, and King starts teasing him about sitting again too. This all leads to a scene where this guy T-Jam goes off on King. T-Jam just borrowed Logan's English homework and decided he was cool, so he makes a bunch of comments until King runs off with his tail between his legs.

The only problem is that T-Jam is part of a group of guys calling themselves the Badd Boyz. They're like the SMS version of a gang. They wear black leather jackets, smoke, and hang out with a group of high school kids who do even worse. T-Jam and his boys ask Logan to eat with them outside. He gets all self-conscious about eating his sandwich, and then a guy shows up with pizza for them. Mary Anne gives him a lecture, but he thinks the guys are pretty cool.

Cut to that weekend. Logan's dad is friends with this guy Bob who owns the music store. He, T-Jam, and one of the other BB go into the store so he can get Mary Anne a copy of the new Nicky Cash CD who is apparently the new Cam Geary. Bob lets it slip when a new shipment of discs will come in and T-Jam seems to pay way too much attention. Logan sees the guys acting weird and thinks they shoplifted but doesn't have any proof. T-Jam then steals a pair of sunglasses from an unlocked car, but when Logan gives him guff, he puts them back.

The BB want to go back to the strip mall with the music store the next weekend. T-Jam swears he just wants to watch the shipment arrive. The older guys take off, and the younger guys end up with Bob. There's some commotion, Logan runs off, and when he comes back, T-Jam is missing. He says he chased the guy but couldn't find him. On the way home, Logan sees a box of the discs in the car. They just laugh it off and warn him to stay quiet.

Logan freaks out because he wants to tell Bob what happened. T-Jam basically says that if he tells, they'll say he helped him. When he decides to talk, he gets a drawing in his locked of Mary Anne as a rat that says there is more than one way to skin a rat. They then give him a leather jacket and tickets to the Nicky Cash show.

Though he plans on giving the tickets back, Mary Anne finds them and goes crazy, so they make plans to go to the concert and have a romantic dinner together first. While all this is going on, people keep breaking into lockers and stealing stuff. Logan even catches one of the Badd Boyz stealing, but T-Jam says the guy is crazy and who knows what he might do if caught.

We finally get to the dinner, and Mary Anne starts talking about how some seventh grade girl had tickets to the concert but someone stole them. Logan breaks down and tells her that T-Jam gave him the tickets. Mary Anne rushes off to call the girl who shows up just in time to grab the tickets and get to the show.

After telling her the whole story, they go to his parents and tell them. They then go to the police station and repeat the story. The cops agree to have someone waiting when Bob gets his next shipment. They end up catching most of the guys. The SMS guys all get suspended except for one. He gives Logan nasty looks a few times but eventually winds up finding a new group of friends.

King apologizes to Logan and tells him that he once fell for the guys too. They shoplifted some stuff and blamed it on him, which led to him dropping the group. The Badd Boyz then threatened his little brother if he told anyone. To apologize for Mary Anne and thank her for helping him, Logan manages to get tickets to Nicky Cash's next show in New York.

The other story is about how the kids in Stoneybrook are petrified of a new bully named EJ. The Arnold twins tell Claudia that EJ stole their lunches, and the Pike kids reveal that EJ beats the crap out of them if they cross an imaginary line on the sidewalk. No one knows what to do so they do nothing, but Mallory does yell at the triplets for not helping their siblings. The triplets start to say something, but the other kids run them off.

They finally decide that they will all just work together and always travel in a pack. Logan reveals during a BSC meeting at the end of the book that EJ was actually a girl. When they all stopped listening to her, she broke down and cried. Kerry felt so bad for her that she went out and brought EJ into her house, talked to her, and helped her make friends with the kids she bullied.

*Logan says 'tsup a lot in this book. It made me cringe every single time.

*T-Jam is the worst bully. He offers Logan a cigarette, and when he turns it down, T-Jam is all like, "oh hey buddy, I get it. You need your lungs for track."

*Charlie makes fun of them for planning a romantic candlelight dinner. I feel the same way. Eighth grade kids do NOT need to go to fancy restaurants and dine by candlelight.

*Wait a minute, wait a minute! Richard Spier is letting his teenage daughter go to New York City for a rock concert with her boyfriend? WTF?

*It's a big plot point that Cash sold out concerts all over and especially how his concert in Stanford was sold out. It's nice to know that Logan could get tickets in a major city like NYC then.

*Logan explains Mary Anne as wearing an outfit covered in sequins that's like a shirt attached to pants. I'm assuming it's a jumpsuit? He also describes it as being sexy, which is icky.

*Mary Anne says that someone in the club thinks they should kick him out for being a bad influence, and he assumes it's Kristy. That's rich given what happens later with the softball team.