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Post by wiggir13 on May 21, 2011 21:23:40 GMT -5
I really do feel like this book was the beginning of the end of the well written books. Yes the snarkiness and float ideas were great but man oh man. It was so boring! I read it and couldn't remember much after 30 minutes b/c nothing seems noteworthy.
I did however love poor charlie being humiliated by having to pull the ugly float. Poor guy just trying to help his sister. I'm sure the ladies ate that up though!
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celaeno
Sitting For The Papadakis's
I have to share a room with Vanessa
Posts: 1,514
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Post by celaeno on Jan 11, 2012 0:07:26 GMT -5
I just finished this book, and it's one I had not read when I was younger. I had heard lots of fans saying how bad it was, and I can definitely see why they were saying that, but it also made some parts more entertaining to read. Like, the scene where they were each telling their float ideas read like a bad fanfic, where each sitter is boiled down to her one defining trait. For example, Dawn saying the float should be "really different", and Stacey saying it should look "sophisticated". Really writer? That's really how you think they would talk? lol... It annoyed me in the beginning of the book how the girls suddenly seemed so inexperienced with babies. It seemed like they had sat for Lucy, Andrea, and Laura plenty of times, so why on earth would Kristy suddenly be nervous about sitting for Andrea??? I was also rolling my eyes at the scene where they're at their first baby class, and baby Ricky starts crying, and NO one in the room - adult or sitter - can figure out why he's crying, until Kristy finally guesses that his diaper is dirty. Seriously? It took the entire room that long to wonder if he might need his diaper changed? One of the biggest redeeming factors of this book is that, for once, the baby-sitters DON'T come in first place! Hurray! I loved that they sucked at something. Of course, it was kinda ruined when, of course, Andrea comes in first place. And, of course, Claudia heinously misspells the sign on their float. But she misspells it so badly (it was something like "THAIR WAS AN OLD WOMMANN WHO LIVED IN A SHUE") that I'm sure that the audience thought it was intentional (like "Toys R Us"). Little did they know. I also noticed that this book used quite a few longer words than is normally found in the series. Off the top of my head, I remember that Kristy used "posterity" and "caterwauling", which I wouldn't expect in a series that usually uses such simple language. I'm embarrassed to admit that I had to look up "caterwauling" in the dictionary. And, yeah, the cover was weird. For one thing, why do all the people watching the parade look like middle aged men on their way to a business meeting? Sorry for the small pic, but: Like others have said, it's annoying that the float looks so perfect on the cover while in the book it was nothing more than a big orangeish-red blob. While I never read this book as a kid, I have seen the cover plenty of times, and it never even crossed my mind that the two infants on the cover were supposed to be real. They look so fake, I totally thought there was going to be baby dolls on the float.
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Post by virgoscorpio on Jan 11, 2012 0:32:11 GMT -5
^ Word on the cover. In fact - as we know (sorry, I added that in because I didn't want to sound condescending) - the original cover was so horrible that they changed it!
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celaeno
Sitting For The Papadakis's
I have to share a room with Vanessa
Posts: 1,514
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Post by celaeno on Jan 11, 2012 1:41:14 GMT -5
Yeah, I searched for the cover on Google Images tonight and I was really surprised that it had a totally different artwork on the newer covers!
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Post by virgoscorpio on Jan 11, 2012 10:51:15 GMT -5
They ditched the ugly float and went for the kids-in-stollers approach, adding in Claud and Dawn (still with shoulder length hair).
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Post by maddieruns on Jan 11, 2012 14:19:05 GMT -5
And, of course, Claudia heinously misspells the sign on their float. But she misspells it so badly (it was something like "THAIR WAS AN OLD WOMMANN WHO LIVED IN A SHUE") that I'm sure that the audience thought it was intentional (like "Toys R Us"). Little did they know. haha, Claudia's misspellings!! How did she make it to the 8th grade? I don't think I've ever read this one... probably because of the ugly shue on the cover. And having it be almost the same color as the book background doesn't help.
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wanderingfrog
Sitting For The Arnolds
Official BSC Archivist
Posts: 2,552
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Post by wanderingfrog on Jan 12, 2012 22:01:55 GMT -5
I don't understand why they kept letting Claudia make signs for everything and never discussed the proper spelling of the words on them until after she's already made them and spelled everything wrong. They just never learn.
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Post by booboobrewer on Jan 12, 2012 23:45:42 GMT -5
Haha, yeah. "As usual, she misspelled the words, but the signs were beautiful." I wouldn't call a sign full of words like "celebrayshun" or whatever beautiful. You would think Kristy in particular would have had a problem with it...
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Post by candykane on Jan 14, 2012 21:24:58 GMT -5
After all the other times Claudia botched spelling on signs, you'd think at least ONE of the girls would think to just write the words on a piece of paper, hand it to her, and tell her to copy the wording exactly onto the sign. Didn't she make two signs for the float - one for each side - and misspelled the same words different ways? I think she wrote "shue" on one and "show" on the other.
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Post by wiggir13 on Jan 14, 2012 23:03:11 GMT -5
Did no one write it out for her?? Come on ladies, how many times will it take until you learn!
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Post by anzuhana on Jan 15, 2012 9:25:28 GMT -5
It does appear that no one wrote it out for Claudia. I don't think they'll ever write it for her. I imagine that even if everything was written out for Claudia, she'd still somehow make a mistake.
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Post by candykane on Jan 21, 2012 12:09:30 GMT -5
I remember when Stacey was tutoring her in Claudia's Friend and Claudia kept that journal. She looked up EVERY word in the dictionary to make sure everything was spelled correctly, since Stacey b*tched at her for making so many mistakes previously. And then she spelled "Jello" as "jellow." HAHAHA! Of course she screws up the one word that's not in the dictionary, even though it's a junk food that she ought to know!
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Post by booboobrewer on Jan 21, 2012 13:04:58 GMT -5
She loves tacking on that w! (See "farrow")
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lilafowler
Sitting For The Johanssens
Posts: 1,163
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Post by lilafowler on Jan 22, 2012 23:04:35 GMT -5
Haha, yeah. "As usual, she misspelled the words, but the signs were beautiful." I wouldn't call a sign full of words like "celebrayshun" or whatever beautiful. You would think Kristy in particular would have had a problem with it... My boss is a Kristyish Type A and totally flipped out the other day when he discovered misspellings on signs my coworker made for a client meeting. It actually was really embarrassing but I feel like it would have been worse if the misspellings had been ornately lettered all fancy-like.
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wanderingfrog
Sitting For The Arnolds
Official BSC Archivist
Posts: 2,552
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Post by wanderingfrog on Jan 23, 2012 21:54:03 GMT -5
I remember when Stacey was tutoring her in Claudia's Friend and Claudia kept that journal. She looked up EVERY word in the dictionary to make sure everything was spelled correctly, since Stacey b*tched at her for making so many mistakes previously. And then she spelled "Jello" as "jellow." HAHAHA! Of course she screws up the one word that's not in the dictionary, even though it's a junk food that she ought to know! AND it`s a junk food that had TV commercials where ITS NAME IS SPELLED OUT. Although even if Claudia remembered that, it still wouldn`t help her with the hyphen or the capitalization.
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