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Post by sugarfrostedflake on Mar 5, 2012 19:03:53 GMT -5
It bothers me, too, that the difference between being 'fired' and being 'laid off' isn't made clear and that 'laid off' isn't used when reffering to what happened to Mr. P. I was ready to give the book a pass on it though, thinking that most of the people using the term 'fired' were Mal's age and younger and realizing that people that age might not understand the difference or even possibly realize that there IS a difference. Then I was re-reading the book the other day and I saw both Mr. and Mrs. P. refer to Mr. P. as having gotten "fired."
And I am also sure that when Stacey agreed with Amanda D. that Mal's dad "got fired", she just didn't feel like explaining it to Amanda, and I don't blame her.
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Post by virgoscorpio on Mar 5, 2012 22:52:04 GMT -5
^ ITA. I guess fired means being let go because of something you've done wrong whereas laid off means that you go because of outside circumstances.
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Post by zoar3 on Oct 14, 2012 17:19:13 GMT -5
I like this book because it is basically a Pike family story, with the exception of how OOC Mr. Pike is. I understand his frustration along with possibly mild depression at worrying about how his family would make it without him working. However, both he and Mrs. Pike should have made it clear (immediately) that he was earning severance pay for however long. I also hated how he didn't see to it that Claire had eaten lunch. I still don't get why one of Stoneybrook's many other lawyers couldn't have helped out or even why Watson perhaps could have had some temp work at Unity. I wanted to yell at Mal, however, when she said on Page 47 how baby-sitting for Jenny was akin to a soldier walking into enemy territory. That really took the Jenny frustration way too far. Delaney subplot, that 11 year old Mal was left in charge of 5+ swimmers at a time. This is just like when MA watched Scott drown and the neighbor was on-call but not present. How does that do any good? Did it seem to anyone else that Angie (diving girl) was older than the other children. I don't know why but she struck me as being 9 or 10 whereas the others were probably 5-7. ETA: Since when does a 8 or 9 year old boy (Linny's age varied) watch I Love Lucy? Pages 93-94. Linny just happens to have job agency knowledge through watching that show. Enough Ann.
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Post by sparklymouse on Oct 14, 2012 19:39:16 GMT -5
I don't know, my brother watched stuff like I Love Lucy.
I did think Angie was a little older, but wasn't Amanda 8? Angie could have been a slightly older friend the same way that Amanda was Karen's slightly older friend.
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Post by wiggir13 on Oct 14, 2012 21:05:01 GMT -5
I just realized the title could be 2 things! 1. Poor Mallory because u feel bad for what she's going through 2. Poor Mallory b/c now she's poor!
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Post by zoar3 on Oct 14, 2012 23:00:26 GMT -5
^Sparklymouse, maybe just my perception probably because I am not a fan of Lucy. I know these books were basically set in the 50's and 60's even though it was the 80's and 90's. I guess to me a 9 (Linny was 8 and 9, I checked) year old boy would be much more into either cartoons or sports. I guess in Stoneybrook Linny might have even liked Derek's dull sounding sit-com. Amanda was 8 and Max 6, btw, good memory. ETA: two years later--4/14: I loved reading about the Pikes odd jobs and wish we could have read more about ABJ, Nicky's paper route, and of course, Miss Vanessa, so funny and clever. Even Claire and Margo sold lemonade--maybe Karen could have helped them. I realized that Richard Spier (form some reason I think he doesn't do corporate law but more with individual people except in #4 I am now remembering he did say something about clients so who knows), anyway, MA's dad is a lawyer and so is Mal's best friend Jessi's Dad. I know Stacey's Dad lives in NY but I think at one time he might have worked for a corporation so its possible he might have had some contacts in Stoneybrook. This time around I also realized that Mr. Delaney is a lawyer, I imagine his name, of course, must be John. My point is a truly interesting sub plot might have been had Mal either talked with one of her friends or if on their own one of the other BSC members had asked their dad about either a job idea or contact for Mr. Pike. I loved how supportive everyone in the BSC was to Mal and this was definitely a book that made me want to be a BSC member even more.
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scrounge
Sitter-In-Training
Boo and bullfrogs!
Posts: 414
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Post by scrounge on Feb 25, 2015 16:15:02 GMT -5
I was making lunch today and this book popped into my head and I said out loud "What kind of MORON leaves a random eleven-year old in charge of a bunch of little kids in a swimming pool?" and I must have been very worked up about it because I said it so loud it scared my cat.
But for serious, if you have the money to install an in-ground pool, you probably have the money to hire a CPR certified sitter with lifeguard training. (I know the girls took a safe sitter course at some point, but I am way too lazy to look up if it was before or after this book.)
I always like the part in this book where Vanessa styles hair on the playground. I would have rolled my eyes so hard if she'd sold any of her poetry to magazines like she first though of, but playground hairstyling is cute and age-appropriate. (And is the sort of thing that spreads lice by sharing combs and hair ties, but I'll ignore that little fact.)
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starrynight
Sitting For The Kuhns
The Royal Diner of Pizza Express
Posts: 4,004
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Post by starrynight on Mar 4, 2015 13:52:58 GMT -5
^ The safe sitter class was after this book, either in #45 or #52....can't remember which! Pretty sure it was #45, though, because I remember Kristy narrating.
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Post by stolenbooks on Mar 7, 2015 13:48:17 GMT -5
I knew people that were teased for being poor, but they weren't at Pike level of poor. Their clothes were ratty, they smelled a lot of the time since they didn't have the water on, they most likely didn't have the newest gadget or whatever. But they had been poor their entire lives. Not that it made it right, but it was more realistic than the Pikes being bullied when Mr. Pike had just gotten fired. The field trip, maybe, if people cared that much about it but it seemed like the people "bullying" Mallory were never really her friends anyway.
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Post by booboobrewer on Mar 7, 2015 16:25:33 GMT -5
^yeah, totally agree. Stoneybrook was just full of well-off families. When I was in school it was the kids who you could SEE were very poor that got teased.
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Post by Honeybee on Mar 8, 2015 0:06:24 GMT -5
^Sparklymouse, maybe just my perception probably because I am not a fan of Lucy. I know these books were basically set in the 50's and 60's even though it was the 80's and 90's. I guess to me a 9 (Linny was 8 and 9, I checked) year old boy would be much more into either cartoons or sports. I guess in Stoneybrook Linny might have even liked Derek's dull sounding sit-com. Amanda was 8 and Max 6, btw, good memory. ETA: two years later--4/14: I loved reading about the Pikes odd jobs and wish we could have read more about ABJ, Nicky's paper route, and of course, Miss Vanessa, so funny and clever. Even Claire and Margo sold lemonade--maybe Karen could have helped them. I realized that Richard Spier (form some reason I think he doesn't do corporate law but more with individual people except in #4 I am now remembering he did say something about clients so who knows), anyway, MA's dad is a lawyer and so is Mal's best friend Jessi's Dad. I know Stacey's Dad lives in NY but I think at one time he might have worked for a corporation so its possible he might have had some contacts in Stoneybrook. This time around I also realized that Mr. Delaney is a lawyer, I imagine his name, of course, must be John. My point is a truly interesting sub plot might have been had Mal either talked with one of her friends or if on their own one of the other BSC members had asked their dad about either a job idea or contact for Mr. Pike. I loved how supportive everyone in the BSC was to Mal and this was definitely a book that made me want to be a BSC member even more. BSC, is set in the 50's or 60's?
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Post by thejunkbucket on Oct 12, 2015 12:45:35 GMT -5
^Me too! Also when Jordan started to sing "We Are the World" and then Mr. Pike shut him up. Well, Jordan was being disrespectful toward his mother. .
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Post by thejunkbucket on Oct 12, 2015 12:56:27 GMT -5
ETA: Since when does a 8 or 9 year old boy (Linny's age varied) watch I Love Lucy? Pages 93-94. Linny just happens to have job agency knowledge through watching that show. Enough Ann. That always bugged me, too. The constant I Love Lucy and 1950s/1960s pop culture references. It would be one thing if watching/liking I Love Lucy was one character's quirky trait. (As a kid/teen in the '80s and '90s, I was a practically the only one of my peers who enjoyed old, black-and-white movies. I was 'the classic movie buff.') But to have various characters watch and enjoy the show is just ludicrous. Especially a 3-decades old black-and-white show! I wish the books made more modern (for their time) references. That may have dated them, but it would've been more realistic.
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Post by booboobrewer on Oct 12, 2015 15:06:13 GMT -5
I'm surprised someone's favorite show wasn't Full House, since they were kind of like the Brewers...a big family in a big house. All we got was Charlotte liking the Cosby show.
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Post by bscfan1997 on Oct 13, 2015 12:26:21 GMT -5
I've always liked this book a lot. I think it's one of my favorites. I loved how this is about the entire family instead of just Mallory and her own problems like boys and gym and writing. Vanessa and the hairstyling thing is so adorable and certainly more age-appropriate than publishing poems in magazines. And I liked the part when Mal confronted her "friends". I didn't like how depressed and off-character Mr. Pike was. I understand getting fired is hard, but forgetting to feed your five year old lunch is crazy. It was nice when Mrs. Pike told her husband that Mallory shouldn't be looking after the kids herself. They didn't totally rely on her to practically be a second mother.
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