We Love Kids Club - Jill, Maggie and Sunny

[Kylie90210]

I'm guessing Dawn Diary One? Anyone wish to clarify? :/

[msstock87]

^I think it was one of the Dawn diaries, because I remember Dawn talking about how wild Maggie used to dress and now she doesn't dress like that anymore. I also remember Maggie talking about it herself in one of her diaries.

[Honeybee]

I can't really tell you. Since, I haven't read any California Diaries at all. Not sure, what character I like best.

[greer]

By the time California Diaries starts, Maggie is already not punk. It is referenced in the books, though.

[mallorypike]

I never had much of an opinion of these girls in the BSC books. Didn't like em, didn't DISlike em. However, in California Diaries, I really liked them a lot. Especially Sunny. She was an interesting character with true genuine problems.

[Sideshowjazz1]

I have one point to make, and it's very straight forward. The We Love Kids Club is a way better name than the Baby-Sitters Club.

Although neither of them are actually clubs.





[merrymelody]

Feb 28, 2008 20:50:11 GMT -5 alula said:

^I also thought that Jill was absolutely entitled to be furious that she was basically trapped into covering for the other girls with her mother and sister. That's an awful thing to do to a friend. And I also think she was genuinely worried about what could have happened to them, which isn't particularly immature. I used to worry about my friends when they did spectacularly stupid things, and I would have been worried about my thirteen-year-old friends walking alone on unlit streets at ten at night IS stupid, before they even got to the party.

I tend to think that for whatever reason (personality or family history or being a 'late bloomer' etc), Jill was much more disjointed by the move to the high school than the others were, and was overcompensating. In that way, I actually kind of think she's sort of like Kristy is, except that because they have different personalities and styles, their anxieties manifest differently. Kristy becomes a control freak; Jill works REALLY REALLY hard at not dealing with adolescence. And because CD writes her off so quickly, we have no way to guess what the underlying reasons for her behavior are, as we get for pretty much anyone else.

Absolutely. Jill seemed to be the only one who grasped how messed up the situation there was; and tbh, if she had attended the party, it might not have ended so messily. And it's weird that the others are so mad at her (other than it's in the plot to be since Jill doesn't get a diary, I guess!) when really, they all behaved nastily in that instance. Sunny completely isolates herself from the others, then demands they look after her; Jill wants them to get into trouble over something rather than being grateful it wasn't worse; and Dawn and Maggie only worry about themselves and their reputations and how they look in front of the older kids. (I guess it's good Amalia joined their group, since she at least seemed to worry about her friends.) It's not like anyone's a paragon of maturity here, I didn't think Jill was so bad. 

[chirpchirp]

While I like the CD books, I really hate the treatment of Jill! Anyway there was a huge unicorn makeup/fashion craze in the late 2010s so I feel she is vindicated.

I wonder if there was any real reason for the CD books to be related to the BSC at all other than marketing and having a built-in fanbase? CD just doesn’t compute as a part of the BSC universe to me. Plus the CDs treat the BSC and Stoneybrook like this embarrassing secret that has to be kept at arms length lol

[merrymelody]

Jun 13, 2020 15:53:54 GMT -5 chirpchirp said:

While I like the CD books, I really hate the treatment of Jill! Anyway there was a huge unicorn makeup/fashion craze in the late 2010s so I feel she is vindicated.

I wonder if there was any real reason for the CD books to be related to the BSC at all other than marketing and having a built-in fanbase? CD just doesn’t compute as a part of the BSC universe to me. Plus the CDs treat the BSC and Stoneybrook like this embarrassing secret that has to be kept at arms length lol

Yeah, I feel like their crossovers were like when you had two linked TV shows. I used to watch Buffy and the spinoff Angel, and they'd always have this Event episodes where one character from a show visited the other; but a lot of the times, it felt like they were forcing a mood, so one character would be having these huge life events, but for the purpose of the crossover they were peppy and cheerful. 

When they have Dawn return in BSC books, it always seems weird that she's like 'Yay, babysitting, I missed you guys!' when CD!Dawn is the opposite.

(I liked the Friends Forever book where Sunny, Dawn and Mary Anne hang out; but it's hilarious that from Mary Anne's POV, she's like 'Poor Dawn, she's been so busy being a good friend and supporting Sunny that she hasn't dealt with her own grief!' when in California Diaries, she's actually quite cruel to Sunny until literally Mrs. Winslow's last week of life. If Mary Anne saw Dawn in California, she'd be horrified!)

[oldmeanie]

I love the CDs, but I don't get why they're all so different aside from Sunny. Her personality change makes sense.

I feel bad for Jill, but her being ditched by her friends is sadly realistic, so I don't fault the series for that. I think Dawn could've been less harsh (I don't think her slip up about Carol's pregnancy was all that bad honestly. Who did it ACTUALLY hurt?), but it felt natural at the same time, like the girls were just growing apart. I do think CDs tried too hard to make Jill seem super babyish, though, when I remembered her being pretty grounded otherwise.

Dawn is more moody than in BSC, but I think it's understandable given that the series is more serious.

Maggie is the really weird one. She seems COMPLETELY different from the BSC. I like her more in the regular series, but I guess they needed to change her to balance the 5 of them out more since now Sunny is the wild one. I think this was sort of explained in one of Ducky's diaries where he said something about Maggie changing her look every week or month or something. She said a few times that she didn't have a style. Maybe there's more depth to her character than I thought.

Were there any references to get perfectionism in earlier BSC books? I haven't read the regular series California books in years so idk. I do remember liking them in general, especially Sunny, but being annoyed that they were so similar to Dawn. I'm from CA and I do have a few vegetarian friends (although they're mote like acquaintances), but of my closest friends, I'm actually the only one haha. And Californians are not laid-back AT ALL (living here is stressful) aside from being on time.

[oldhickory]

Apr 30, 2022 14:40:57 GMT -5 oldmeanie said:

Were there any references to get perfectionism in earlier BSC books?

I don't remember any specifically, but there were books about taking on too much and struggling to do it all. Kristy for President, Genius of Elm Street, Jessi's Gold Medal, and the Addison subplot from Sad Goodbye came to mind. None of these are super early, but all are 1992 or earlier. The lesson was always that you need to let some things go.

[oldmeanie]

May 3, 2022 8:55:14 GMT -5 oldhickory said:

Apr 30, 2022 14:40:57 GMT -5 oldmeanie said:

Were there any references to get perfectionism in earlier BSC books?

I don't remember any specifically, but there were books about taking on too much and struggling to do it all. Kristy for President, Genius of Elm Street, Jessi's Gold Medal, and the Addison subplot from Sad Goodbye came to mind. None of these are super early, but all are 1992 or earlier. The lesson was always that you need to let some things go.

Oops! Silly autocorrect. I meant Maggie's perfectionism specifically. I don't remember that being implied at all throughout regular BSC, but I could be mistaken.