Young Adult Revisited

The Pikes are heading back to Sea City, but this time, Mrs. Barrett is going too. She somehow managed to rent a smaller house right next to theirs on the beach. The Pikes also ask Jessi to go in place of Stacey or Mary Anne to help them out. Stacey goes with Mrs. Barrett as her helper. Franklin plans to come up for a few days too, and he agrees to bring the rest of the gang with him for a few days. Jessi is the one who starts the special book for their vacation. She's super worried about what the Pikes think of her and how they'll hate her for not working as hard as the older girls do. She goes overboard making breakfast and taking care of the kids. Suzi, Margo, and Claire also want to enter some sand castle building competition with her help. It turns out that it's a big deal and people come from all over the world to compete. She tries to talk them out of it, but they want to compete. The competition ends up getting canceled due to a major hurricane. Karen ...

Claudia Walker wakes up on the beach and can't move her arms or legs. Laying there, she realizes that she's been buried alive in the sand and that no one is nearby. Despite her worries, she finally starts screaming in the hopes that someone will hear her and come help her. Claudia then flashes back to the day she got an invitation in the mail from her old summer camp friend Marla. She invited Claudia, Joy, and Sophie to spend a week with her in her family's summer home. Claudia recalls Marla picking them up from the train station and starts crying. A random guy suddenly shows up and helps her out of the sand. She notices that his skin feels a little cold, which he explains away as being from the ocean. He helps her back to the house and hesitates when she asks his name before telling her that it's Daniel. Daniel, for some reason, knows the code to enter the locked gate around the house and helps her inside. When she tries to introduce him to her friends, wh...

In case you missed the title of this book, Mary Anne misses Logan. Despite being the one who called things off, she can't really remember why they stopped talking. All she knows is that now she misses him and can't stop thinking about him. At the same time, SMS launches yet another new program. All the eighth graders will get assigned into groups of four. Each group has to create a project around a young adult writer they get assigned. Mary Anne instantly starts worrying about who will be in her group. When she finally gets her assignment, she's in a group with Pete and Miranda, one of those twins she and Kristy used to hang around, but Logan is also in her group. During their first meeting, the principal comes over with a problem. Cokie, who never gave a crap about school before, suddenly has an extreme interest in Meghan Reinhart, the author they were assigned. Miranda jumps at the chance to switch places with her because she hates Pete for snapping her bra ...

Sarah and Aaron are siblings sent to Camp Cold Lake for the summer. Aaron loves the outdoors, but Sarah hates the idea of going to camp. She's also extremely annoying. As soon as she gets to her cabin, she demands that someone switch bunks with her. Apparently she can't handle the idea of sleeping near a window or on a top bunk. Needless to say, the other kids aren't too thrilled with her. They wind up pulling a few pranks on her. They convince her that someone threw a lit firecracker at her, and when she runs away, they all laugh. They then agree to start over again and instead put a snake in her bed. During a meeting at the first bonfire of the summer, she throws a fit and wanders off by herself because she gets tired of the long list of rules they have to follow. Sarah winds up finding a bunch of spiders, which she puts in their beds. Turns out the spiders were dangerous and bit the other girls, but she somehow doesn't get in trouble for doing it becaus...

It's now time for Stacey to write down her memories for her autobiography assignment. She gives us some background on her life. Her first word was ma-ma, she had a teddy bear she carried everywhere, and she remembers when they moved to the Upper West Side. We then get to the real memories. Stacey was around five when she and Laine were in school together and heard Cinderella. Stacey became obsessed with the story, and her mom got her a spot on the Cinderella float in the Macy's parade. Everyone watched for her and wanted to see her on television. The girl playing Cinderella lost her crown, and Stacey bent over to pick it up and missed her spot on television. She also realized that the girl was just an actress but didn't tell anyone else because she didn't want to ruin it for them. She and Laine's mom then enroll them in ballroom dance classes. They hate it so much that they skip classes and wander around NYC. They go for ice cream, window shop, and do...

Kenny is pretty much a little douche bag. Not only is he the resident bully, he's also super mean to his little sister. While shopping with her at the mall, he tells her that he can't take her to Santa's Village because Santa took off for the day. They run into one of his classmates named Timmy, and Kenny picks on him and calls him Tiny because he's so small. Timmy then reveals that Santa is still there, and Kristi begs him to take her. While she's talking with Santa and their mom is watching, Kenny sneaks up behind him and rips off his beard, which makes all the kids cry. Santa is actually Joe, a janitor at his school, and comments that Kenny will always be bad. After his mom starts yelling at him, he runs away and winds up in some dark room. He gets trapped in there for a few hours until someone lets him out. That someone is Joe who makes a cryptic comment about him being naughty all year. Kenny snaps about him being tired of the Santa routine and tugging ...

Aaron Dallas is totes out of control. He came home from school one day to find his parents waiting for him. After having an affair with a man, his mom decided to leave his dad for this other guy and move across the country with him. His dad kind of shut down after that. Aaron is now super aggressive and always in a bad mood. That makes thing tough for Elizabeth, given that this is one of those Jeffery books and his best friend is Aaron. They go out on a double date with Aaron and his girlfriend Heather. Heather kind of seems like a Jessica clone, but for some reason, Liz can't stand her. She *gasps* talks during the movie and then wants to chat when they go for ice cream. Liz finally tells her that she's private and doesn't like to talk about herself (ha!), which leaves them sitting there in silence. It doesn't help when Aaron fights with some guy and Heather does baby talk to calm him down. After another altercation on the soccer field, the coach tells Aar...