It could be you coming from NYC that's influencing this.
Possibly...but funny because people coming from NYC like Stacey initially see Stoneybrook as small.
Stoneybrook IS a small town and the characters say so many times over the course of the series.
Sure, some characters say so...and being that the stories are told in first-person, we get the feel that some characters feel as if compared to metropolises like NYC or DC or Chicago, Stoneybrook is small.
No one is saying it has one traffic light or anything, but the nearest mall is thirty minutes away and the club knows a ton of children through word of mouth.
Thirty minutes is actually not that long a ride...in fact, in a few books, the BSC bussed to Washington Mall.
And the fact that the BSC knows a ton of children and has them as regular clients is telling...that although Stoneybrook is not huge, it's not tiny either.
Otherwise, there would only be a dozen clients or so.
Are you familiar with Maryland, particularly Prince Georges County, Maryland?
Have you or anyone you know ever visited Prince Georges County, Maryland?
I have friends who live in the large suburban town of Greenbelt, Maryland in PG county and I visit them there on occasion.
Lovely area, Greenbelt is...it has a huge mall in the heart of it, several theaters, a huge library and dozens of great restaurants.
Sometimes, we also trek out to the neighboring towns of Laurel or Hyattsville...either by bus or car...to shop, see films, eat, etcetera.
Greenbelt is a half-hour or so ride from Washington, DC, where I have family and friends living.
I would say that Stoneybrook is a lot like Greenbelt, Maryland and the city of DC is equivalent to Stoneybrook's NYC.
It's not large, it's not "everyone knows absolutely everybody" - but it's in between.
Good, glad you see it...perhaps Stoneybrook is a medium-sized town.
I know it's not any huge metropolis either.
For me from a big city, it would seem actually small.
But don't forget that Stoneybrook is less than an hour from NYC and the BSC girls made regular weekend trips to NYC by train, especially in the later books.
My hometown is a lot like Stoneybrook...easy to get around, one knows a lot of different families, but there are still pockets perhaps one is unfamiliar with.
I suspect you also are influenced by your town like me and my city.
Anyway...I agree that Stoneybrook is easy to get around...not too unlike NYC...and that one would know lots of different people in their neighborhood.
I think it's more than just "pockets" that one would be unfamiliar with, though.
Probably, there would be several neighborhoods one would be unfamiliar with.
I get the feeling that Stoneybrook has at least a couple of dozen large neighborhoods.
You seem to equate small town with lack of diversity, but it's obvious Stoneybrook is diverse.
Good, glad you see it! No, I know some medium and even small towns that are diverse.
I still say Stoneybrook is at least a medium town, not a small town.
Also, some people forget that Stoneybrook is just a train ride away from NYC and is not in the middle of nowhere.
Stacey did make a splash...
Sure, in the BSC circle a bit...but not at SMS...as I said, her entry into SMS was low-key and no, the other students did not turn to stare at her in the hall on her first day at SMS.
And even with the BSC, while Kristy and Mary Anne admired her style, they were not stunned or totally blown away.
...she dressed super trendy...
She was rather trendy, true there, but not super-trendy and not noticeably more trendy than several other SMS students.
In an interesting way, she was, but she was no model and was no more beautiful than many other SMS girls
She was fairly attractive, but was no Marilyn Monroe or
Taffy Sinclair or
Jessica Wakefield look-alike.
Claudia could also be classed as beautiful as Stacey, so no, Stacey did not stand out radically there at SMS.
It's all a matter of keeping things in perspective.
That I agree with a zillion percent...glad you see it.
Stacey was gifted and her high intelligence, especially at math, gained her quite a lot of attention, especially from her teachers.
I say that it was her sharp mind that impressed the three other BSC members a bit more than her looks, which is why they considered her a shoo-in for the club treasurer.
...became part of the popular crowd fairly quickly
.
Only because Claudia was part of SMS's popular crowd and was able to introduce Stacey to the popular kids on her first day.
It was not as if the popular crowd noticed her out of nowhere and were necessarily bowled away by her looks or clothes.
As I stated earlier...Stacey's arrival in Stoneybrook and at SMS was a low-key affair with Stacey quietly intermingling both with the popular crowd and with the BSC.
The BSC, including Kristy and Mary Anne, almost immediately felt as if Stacey was one of them, especially when she talked about the baby-sitting she'd done back in NYC.
Also...another tidbit to snack on...Stacey, while stylish, was never too vain to allow herself to get rumpled with the kids.
I'd say that upon the BSC's graduation from SHS and in their adult years, Stacey's claim to fame would not be her looks or even her clothes, but her sharp mind and her gift with numbers and with complicated maths.
I see her taking advanced honors calculus, physics and advanced chemistry and acing those classes in high school and university.
There is where she could blow people away, including Stoneybrookers.
Throughout the books, the other BSC members often state how impressed they are with Stacey's ability to figure out complicated math and the BSC's amount of money in her head within seconds.
What would you estimate the population of Stoneybrook to be?
Hard to say,
Sparklymouse, since Stoneybrook has grown significantly since the days of Kristy and company.
In Richard and Sharon's high school years, Stoneybrook was smaller to the point where it could be classed as a small town.
I say Stoneybrook is bigger than it used to be and is growing even today.
Perhaps 10,000 to 17,000 during Richard and Sharon's teen heyday, 30,000 to 50,000 during the original BSC days and about 80,000 to 100,000 today...?
Also, not to mention that Stoneybrook is not only close to NYC, but to small cities like Stamford, Mercer and a larger town of New Hope.
So, Stoneybrook, while not large, is not any "typical" small town depicted in so many films, telly shows and books.
To see true small town life, read either about Sweet Valley or about
Girl Talk's Acorn Falls.
In Girl Talk, the four heroes stand out in tiny Acorn Falls, Ran Zak, who is a new girl from NYC, is viewed by most of Acorn Falls as "weird" and a "freak" because of her goth/punk rocker clothes, dark hair, brown eyes and Asian features and Allison Cloud, another girl in the Girl Talk gang, is almost the only non-Anglo student and also stands out because of her shy, bookish nature in their Acorn Falls middle school.
That is a depiction of a truly small...as well as a non-diverse town.
Poor Ran has quite a culture shock when she moves to Acorn Falls in a way that neither Stacey or the Stevenson twins have.