Stacey's so excited! She's invited her friends from the Baby-sitters Club down to New York City for a long weekend. It's going to be perfect - a party and a sleepover Friday night, a big baby-sitting job on Saturday, and lots of sightseeing on Sunday.
But what a mistake! The Baby-sitters are way out of place in the big city. Mary Anne sounds like walking guide book; Dawn's afraid of everything; Kristy can't keep her mouth shut; and Claudia's jealous of Stacey's friends.
Does this mean Stacey can't be the Baby-sitters' friend anymore? Will the Baby-sitters Club fall apart?
So Stacey has been in New York for awhile, and even though she's glad to be back in the city, has her friends, and is getting all the baby-sitting jobs, she misses the Baby-Sitters Club. Luckily for Stacey, her apartment building decides to have a meeting regarding the homeless problem going on around their neighbourhood, and 5 different families need a sitter at the same time. Sounds like a job for the Baby-Sitters Club!
Stacey and everyone is all excited for a long weekend, but it immediately starts to go downhill. Despite Stacey having said nothing about going up any escalators, the girls end up getting lost in Grand Central Station. Then they have to do a detour back to Stacey's apartment to drop off their stuff because Claudia packed a ginormous suitcase. They go out for lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe, where Kristy orders the "fill-it mig-nun". Stacey is super embarrassed, and quickly tries to keep the group moving. They end up stopping by Bloomingdale's, where the girls continue to embarrass Stacey by loudly exclaiming their excitement and awe at everything. Furthermore, Mary Anne mistakes the cosmetic testers from the counter as free samples, and is stopped by store security. Stacey quickly ushers everyone out, and takes them back to her apartment to get ready for the party.
But first, they stop to meet all the children, who all live in Stacey's apartment building. The girls (well, not Stacey) are surprised and sad to see that despite being a gorgeous day, all the kids are playing inside. Stacey explains that despite living within walking distance of Central Park, it's not a place to go unsupervised until you're well into your double-digits. That's why the next day was going to be so great for everyone, because they'd get to go outside and explore. They then head back to Stacey's apartment for the party.
At Stacey's, things unravel further. Mary Anne insists on having Stacey spot-check everyone's wardrobe, much to everyone's dismay. Stacey insists that everyone is fine, and that they should just dress however they want and just be themselves. Mary Anne, being a total hypocrite, then turns down Stacey's dressing advice, which is unfortunate, because her choice of dressing up makes her look particularly quaint and small-town.
Laine arrives before the other guests to help Stacey and the girls set up for the party. Stacey is excited to have everyone meet her New York friends, but especially to have Claudia and Laine meet each other. Right away though, Claudia starts acting jealous and challenging Laine, bringing up past indiscretions. Not one to back down from a challenge, Laine immediately starts fighting back. Stacey is dismayed, but figures that with so many other people and things to do for the party, that it'll blow over.
The party goes disastrously. Mary Anne keeps boring everyone with all her random tourist-y facts about NYC, then acts incredulous when the kids who have lived there all their lives don't know them. Eventually, Mary Anne decides to fall back on the old social standard: gossip. She starts telling them about how terrified of NYC Dawn is, and how she over-reacts to things the NYC kids take for granted, like cockroaches and mice. Don't be so uppity, Mary Anne: you were freaked too (just not to the extent that Dawn was).
Stacey invited a bunch of dudes to her party so that it won't be all unbalanced and a total chick-fest. When she realizes that her two groups of friends aren't interacting, she quickly sets up Kristy with one of the more sports-oriented guys, and is happy to see them hitting it off and talking. Soon they even start dancing! Of course Claudia can't have that. She's used to being one of the girls who hangs out with guys, and being surprisingly shy, she decides that the only guy approachable is the one who has already been broken in by a Stoneybrook girl: the one Kristy is dancing with! Coincidentally, just as a slow song starts. Kristy is surprisingly meek about all this, and spends the rest of the evening sulking on the couch.
So now everyone is pretty mad at each other, and Laine wants nothing of it, so when the party ends, everyone goes home and Stacey splits the girls up. They need a good night's sleep since the next day is their baby-sitting job!
The next day, the girls still aren't talking to each other, but Stacey insists on calling a truce so that they can get through their baby-sitting afternoon together. They are sitting for 10 kids: Natalie and Peggy Upchurch (very posh and sophisticated girls), Dennis and Sean Delucca (normal boys), Carlos, Blair and Cissy Barrera (rambunctious boys and a tomboy), Leslie Reames (a very fussy, gluten-intolerant [before gluten-intolerance became cool!] little girl), and Grace and Henry Walker (two shy African-American little kids). With 10 kids and 5 sitters, they decide to divide into groups of 2+1 to go about their afternoon.
Their first stop is the American Museum of Natural History. Everyone immediately wants to go see the dinosaurs, especially Henry Walker. So it's no surprise when they move on to the sea life exhibit, they soon discover that they lost Henry. Of course, he's still up with the dinosaurs. Everyone's sufficiently scared, but they find him right away.
Afterwards, they head to Central Park. As they walk through, they stop and see all the things that Stacey and Laine usually just zip right past. The girls are happy to see Stacey still be able to marvel and look at things with fresh eyes. It surprises Stacey to realize that perhaps, she'd been taking her city for granted. They take the kids to the children's zoo, and soon start to head back home. One the way home, the kids start singing a song for the girls, and Stacey finds herself mortified and embarrassed. She then realizes that she has nothing to be embarrassed about: the kids are being nice and showing their love and appreciation, and the small amount of witnesses are all smiling at the sight. Stacey feels ashamed, having realized that she's starting to become too cool for school, and doesn't want to be like that.
Upon returning the kids to their parents, Laine calls Stacey with an incredible offer: her dad (a "big-time producer of Broadway plays") has managed to get them tickets to a Broadway show. He also managed to get them a limo, so the girls decide to be friends again and go out for a night on the town!
Afterwards, they head back to Stacey's and have a big sleepover, with everyone apologizing and becoming friends again. They stay up most of the night, and have to be pried out of bed the next morning. Stacey promises them an authentic New York breakfast, and presents them with fresh bagels, lox and the New York Times. Soon though, it is time for the girls to head back to Stoneybrook. They pack up and Stacey sees them off at the train station.
Random Thoughts
- This book is pretty self-contained. It's almost like a bottle episode. It takes place in one weekend, and all the drama unfolds and then wraps up. It's very fast. All killer, no filler. I have zero feelings about this book. It's not my favourite, but it's not my least favourite either.
- Mallory and Jessi aren't in this book at all. It's kinda weird. In the later books, you totes know we would be flashing back to Stoneybrook for some sort of subplot with the two of them. Part of me is kinda curious as to what they were up to, but I mostly know it's nothing and I'm glad they didn't try to shoehorn some subplot in.
- Stacey is strangely self-aware in this novel. Although she doesn't anticipate the problems ahead of time, when they do come up, she acknowledges that she should have seen it coming.
- Stacey is a bit of a snob though. She's easily embarrassed by her friends. This will be a recurring theme in the books.
- Part of me is incredulous that Mary Anne would think that the cosmetics at the counter were free samples, but I'm pretty sure I thought the same thing when I was just a couple of years younger, the first time I saw an open cosmetics counter like that.
- I like that Kristy hit it off with that guy, and I'm sad that nothing ever came of it, despite the fact that they exchanged addresses with the promise to write. Even Mary Anne still mentions Alex every now and then.
- I like the idea that Stacey and her friends "don't appreciate" what they have around them. They grew up in NYC! Of course they're not going to think twice about things that seem amazing to Mary Anne, or know random historical facts. I think most people take their hometowns for granted and don't know much about them. I'm that weird person who is always the only local in tour guide groups, like haunted walks haha
- Fun fact: the show the girls see, Starlight Express, was a real show! And it was indeed in NYC on Broadway at the time of this book's publication. I didn't realize that until just now, when I decided to look it up haha
- Random fact: my boyfriend is a total bagel snob, and refuses to eat pre-packaged bagels. He would prefer his bagels to be all fresh, New York-style, but since that's not feasible where we live, he at least insists on getting "bakery fresh" "bag-your-own" bagels at the grocery store. Reading the Sunday breakfast scene made me think of him, cuz that's totes what he'd ideally like to do every Sunday morning.
- This book just ends. It literally just ends.
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