lilafowler
Sitting For The Johanssens
Posts: 1,163
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Post by lilafowler on Jun 1, 2011 17:47:29 GMT -5
Haha, the time warp already blows my mind, can you imagine adding multiple academic repetitions to the mix? My brain hurts imagining it.
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Post by zoar3 on Jun 1, 2011 18:00:14 GMT -5
^Lol, that could cause a lot of trouble. But then, since their (one) 8th grade year never finishes" until the Graduation Day (13 years later). They should have sent Claudia back after 6 years of 8th grade, giving her 7 more to get it together.
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Post by CharlotteTJohanssen on Feb 10, 2021 14:30:00 GMT -5
I think an age change in either direction would alter the feel of the books too much. You make them younger and there is no club yet. The club was the whole point of the series. You send them to high school, are you going to keep the reading level the same and dumb down the high school experience or make the books more mature and alienate the target audience (or the parents of the target audience)? I wish most of the new characters introduced had not been new to Stoneybrook. It was lazy, and most of their background stories wouldn't have had to change much if they had been townies. I just didn't like how so many people had so few ties to where they were living. What if Abby & Anna had transfered from Kelsey Middle School because Anna liked SMS's music program and Abby wanted to stick with her sister? They could still be from Kristy's neighborhood (though probably not right next door or Kristy would have noticed them, lol), have their dad be dead and their mom commute to work every day. Maybe Pamela Harding's parents wanted a private school with a more relaxed atmosphere and moved her from Stoneybrook Day School to Stoneybrook Academy. Or maybe Logan decided to approach Mary Anne after her first make-over, the braids to big girl hair one. The southern accent added nothing to him anyway, and hey, Robert was hiding in that school for years before Stacey noticed him. It could happen. About Pamela, that's something I really appreciate about Addie when she joined Ms. Colman's class! She transferred from SES so it was nice to see that someone didn't just move and randomly show up.
On your first point I wish SMS was grades 7-9 instead maybe? At least we'd get the series to span three years instead of 1 year and repeated eighth grade over and over. Plus same school. The only downside would be that Jessi and Mal would join later but that's not a bad thing.
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Post by sparklymouse on Feb 10, 2021 18:51:24 GMT -5
I think it could potentially work better if Mallory and Jessi were still junior members but were in a different school. It would reinforce that they were a bit younger.
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oldhickory
Sitting For The Arnolds
Heather Loves Boys and Gym
Posts: 3,263
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Post by oldhickory on Feb 11, 2021 19:30:06 GMT -5
At my school, 5th and 6th grades were in one school and 7th and 8th were in another. So Mallory and Jessi would have been separate from the other girls, and all club members would have been in the oldest grades at their school. That would be kind of neat but I wonder if they would be too removed from the community at that point. They wouldn't know the older girls' enemies or crushes except by name, wouldn't go to the same dances, wouldn't have the same teachers, etc.
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Post by m0drnmoonlight on Feb 11, 2021 20:53:50 GMT -5
I think an age change in either direction would alter the feel of the books too much. You make them younger and there is no club yet. The club was the whole point of the series. You send them to high school, are you going to keep the reading level the same and dumb down the high school experience or make the books more mature and alienate the target audience (or the parents of the target audience)? I wish most of the new characters introduced had not been new to Stoneybrook. It was lazy, and most of their background stories wouldn't have had to change much if they had been townies. I just didn't like how so many people had so few ties to where they were living. What if Abby & Anna had transfered from Kelsey Middle School because Anna liked SMS's music program and Abby wanted to stick with her sister? They could still be from Kristy's neighborhood (though probably not right next door or Kristy would have noticed them, lol), have their dad be dead and their mom commute to work every day. Maybe Pamela Harding's parents wanted a private school with a more relaxed atmosphere and moved her from Stoneybrook Day School to Stoneybrook Academy. Or maybe Logan decided to approach Mary Anne after her first make-over, the braids to big girl hair one. The southern accent added nothing to him anyway, and hey, Robert was hiding in that school for years before Stacey noticed him. It could happen. I think the books could have continued on to high school. Yeah, there's more mature themes but they were already handling some "very special" topics in the BSC. But then that brings up the discussion we've had in other threads - how long would the BSC last once they're in high school, with more schoolwork and interests and other activities? But I do like the idea of them being "mentors" and Mallory and Jessi becoming the senior members and seeing some of the charges become babysitters themselves. That could have been a fun passing of the torch.
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cnj
Sitting For The Papadakis's
Posts: 1,708
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Post by cnj on Mar 8, 2021 2:54:06 GMT -5
I think an age change in either direction would alter the feel of the books too much. You make them younger and there is no club yet. The club was the whole point of the series. You send them to high school, are you going to keep the reading level the same and dumb down the high school experience or make the books more mature and alienate the target audience (or the parents of the target audience)? I wish most of the new characters introduced had not been new to Stoneybrook. It was lazy, and most of their background stories wouldn't have had to change much if they had been townies. I just didn't like how so many people had so few ties to where they were living. What if Abby & Anna had transfered from Kelsey Middle School because Anna liked SMS's music program and Abby wanted to stick with her sister? They could still be from Kristy's neighborhood (though probably not right next door or Kristy would have noticed them, lol), have their dad be dead and their mom commute to work every day. Maybe Pamela Harding's parents wanted a private school with a more relaxed atmosphere and moved her from Stoneybrook Day School to Stoneybrook Academy. Or maybe Logan decided to approach Mary Anne after her first make-over, the braids to big girl hair one. The southern accent added nothing to him anyway, and hey, Robert was hiding in that school for years before Stacey noticed him. It could happen. I think the books could have continued on to high school. Yeah, there's more mature themes but they were already handling some "very special" topics in the BSC. But then that brings up the discussion we've had in other threads - how long would the BSC last once they're in high school, with more schoolwork and interests and other activities? But I do like the idea of them being "mentors" and Mallory and Jessi becoming the senior members and seeing some of the charges become babysitters themselves. That could have been a fun passing of the torch. Me too, M0drnmoonlight!!! I love the idea of the original BSC passing the torch on to their charges. I wrote fanfics long ago about the BSC in high school and upon graduating from high school, they train the next generation of the BSC and pass their legacy on. I have to go back and add far more to it and tweak and edit it, but I had fun writing it. I love the idea of the BSC's story, especially their high school years being a feminist coming-of-age female bonding epic.
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Post by booklover85 on Mar 20, 2021 10:40:52 GMT -5
My biggest wish is that the girls are allowed to age once in a while. The time warp got very confusing after awhile there.
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Post by CharlotteTJohanssen on Apr 2, 2021 22:12:38 GMT -5
My biggest wish is that the girls are allowed to age once in a while. The time warp got very confusing after awhile there. I agree on that one. I kind of wish that SMS was like grades 7-9 or something.
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cnj
Sitting For The Papadakis's
Posts: 1,708
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Post by cnj on Apr 4, 2021 9:43:01 GMT -5
My biggest wish is that the girls are allowed to age once in a while. The time warp got very confusing after awhile there. I agree on that one. I kind of wish that SMS was like grades 7-9 or something. No, that would be dreadful and trite...I think of middle school as grades 6-8. Ninth grade is high school, not middle school and sixth grade is middle school, not grammar school. And too many other pre-teen series have the characters in a seventh grade time warp for over a hundred books, so that would not resolve the timeline issue. It would have been fun to see the BSC in high school starting with ninth grade.
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Post by sparklymouse on Apr 4, 2021 20:00:57 GMT -5
I agree on that one. I kind of wish that SMS was like grades 7-9 or something. No, that would be dreadful and trite...I think of middle school as grades 6-8. Ninth grade is high school, not middle school and sixth grade is middle school, not grammar school. It would have been fun to see the BSC in high school starting with ninth grade. I went to a 7-9 school, so that thought has always been very natural to me. Just because it doesn't fit into one of your fan fiction plots doesn't make it a bad idea.
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cnj
Sitting For The Papadakis's
Posts: 1,708
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Post by cnj on Apr 5, 2021 0:02:42 GMT -5
No, that would be dreadful and trite...I think of middle school as grades 6-8. Ninth grade is high school, not middle school and sixth grade is middle school, not grammar school. It would have been fun to see the BSC in high school starting with ninth grade. I went to a 7-9 school, so that thought has always been very natural to me. Just because it doesn't fit into one of your fan fiction plots doesn't make it a bad idea. Maybe so...but most people I know and I went to a K-8 school, then a 9-12 high school, so starting high school in 9th grade is natural to me and most people around me. I just prefer the BSC starting high school in 9th grade. To me, there always seemed to be a difference between 5th and 6th grade, then a bigger difference between 8th and 9th grade. For most people I know, 9th grade was a pivotal year in their growing up where they began to leave childhood behind and move full-scale into adolescence. 9th and 10th grade were the peak years of oily hair and acne also at the schools I went to and for my nieces and nephews growing up. Also, most kids didn't start seriously dating or becoming sexually active until 9th grade or later. 6th through 8th grade is more the pre-adolescent years of first crushes and growth spurts in my experience. I always think of the BSC as in their pre-adolescent phase in 8th grade, then in 9th grade hitting full adolescence with high school.
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Post by sparklymouse on Apr 5, 2021 12:37:07 GMT -5
I went to a 7-9 school, so that thought has always been very natural to me. Just because it doesn't fit into one of your fan fiction plots doesn't make it a bad idea. Maybe so...but most people I know and I went to a K-8 school, then a 9-12 high school, so starting high school in 9th grade is natural to me and most people around me. I just prefer the BSC starting high school in 9th grade. To me, there always seemed to be a difference between 5th and 6th grade, then a bigger difference between 8th and 9th grade. For most people I know, 9th grade was a pivotal year in their growing up where they began to leave childhood behind and move full-scale into adolescence. 9th and 10th grade were the peak years of oily hair and acne also at the schools I went to and for my nieces and nephews growing up. Also, most kids didn't start seriously dating or becoming sexually active until 9th grade or later. 6th through 8th grade is more the pre-adolescent years of first crushes and growth spurts in my experience. I always think of the BSC as in their pre-adolescent phase in 8th grade, then in 9th grade hitting full adolescence with high school. My point was you want people to imagine or pretend scenarios that you suggest but are very dismissive to ideas that you don't agree with.
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cnj
Sitting For The Papadakis's
Posts: 1,708
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Post by cnj on Apr 5, 2021 20:23:46 GMT -5
Maybe so...but most people I know and I went to a K-8 school, then a 9-12 high school, so starting high school in 9th grade is natural to me and most people around me. I just prefer the BSC starting high school in 9th grade. To me, there always seemed to be a difference between 5th and 6th grade, then a bigger difference between 8th and 9th grade. For most people I know, 9th grade was a pivotal year in their growing up where they began to leave childhood behind and move full-scale into adolescence. 9th and 10th grade were the peak years of oily hair and acne also at the schools I went to and for my nieces and nephews growing up. Also, most kids didn't start seriously dating or becoming sexually active until 9th grade or later. 6th through 8th grade is more the pre-adolescent years of first crushes and growth spurts in my experience. I always think of the BSC as in their pre-adolescent phase in 8th grade, then in 9th grade hitting full adolescence with high school. My point was you want people to imagine or pretend scenarios that you suggest but are very dismissive to ideas that you don't agree with. Naturally, I want people to use their imaginations. 😁😁😁 And anyway the 6-8 Stoneybrook Middle School is a real canon part of the BSC books anyway, not a "pretend" scenario. Part of the reason that the 6-8 middle school is more likely and more realistic is that it's what most people worldwide are familiar with. In actuality, most European schools have their secondary schools start at the sixth grade level, not seventh grade. It's mostly the United States that had the "junior high" 7-9 schools. Also, there were too many pre-teen books...the Fabulous Five series being one of those...with the plotline of "starting 'junior' high" after sixth grade being all calm and childlike and at the start seventh grade and the kids be all OMG! We're starting seventh grade! Everything is going to be so different! and "junior high" being like high school. Even worse is when too many series have preteen girls not even think about boys in sixth grade, but all of a sudden in seventh grade, all the girls are paired off with boyfriends and are dating by that autumn. That's too trite a plotline. I like that the BSC series didn't fall into that hackneyed plotline. What I like about the BSC is that although there was the sort of time warp of them being in eight grade for a hundred books, the girls grew up gradually, not all at once at the beginning of seventh grade like some other series make the mistake of doing. Ann Martin depicted pre-teen girls and middle school very realistically for the most part. Middle school...generally the sixth through eighth grade years is a mix of a bit of adolescence and childhood. Most middle schoolers I know are not ready for steady dating or to be thrown full-fledged into high school activities. Ninth grade is more the turning point in my experience. Ninth grade is when kids start dating in earnest and become more full-fledged adolescents. And I live in a huge, diverse city and have lots of nieces and a couple of nephews as well as have friends who are middle and high school teachers. None of them have had any OMG dramatic explosion that autumn of seventh grade. For them, my friends and myself, ninth grade was the more dramatic, rather explosive year. Not only were kids dating more seriously, but becoming more sexually active, some kids experimented more with drinking and that year was when we went to some pretty huge and some wild parties. That also was the year many more kids started some serious career and university planning and branched out into new interests that they had not explored in grammar or middle school. It's not being "dismissive" to point out the possible faultiness of an idea, dear. It's real life and the fun of discussions of for people to chat, disagree, toss about ideas and toss out...yes, gasp...dismiss...some ideas. 😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁😁
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Post by CharlotteTJohanssen on Apr 5, 2021 21:40:36 GMT -5
I always age up the girls in my head and picture them at 15 for the most part, which would be perfect if they were in 9th grade anyway. My school had the grade system divided up so much it didn't seem to matter. I know Boy Meets World had a strange use of continuity but I kind of wish the BSC was kind of like that, grades 7-12 and not even mention their ages or grade change until it's time for graduation. Not every girl would make a big deal of their 16th birthday and not everyone could get a car at the same time.
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