Penny Lane
Sitting For The Arnolds
The Girl With Colitis Goes By
Posts: 2,888
|
Post by Penny Lane on Apr 16, 2008 23:12:25 GMT -5
I just read this one and I really liked parts of it. I loved the beginning -- Chapter 2 was actually chapter 3! OMG Amazing! I always like it when we see the sitters interacting with non sitters who are their age. I thought the lead up to the announcement that it was Amelia was done really well. I didn't like how the grieving process was done so much. It's been my experience that whenever something bad happens to a classmate; whether it be death or a major car accident or whatever, everyone in school freaks out and breaks down and has to see peer/grief counselors, whether they knew the person or not. It turns into a huge show and it's sick and wrong and it drives me crazy. But that's not what bothered me, because we only saw the people who's emotions were real.
I was bothered by the simplistic approach. Not every grieving person wants to hear from a hundred people how sorry they are. Sometimes, people just want to move on and hide inside themselves. They need time or space. It doesn't help when people are afraid either. Oh well. I still liked this book and thought it was reasonably well done. I was not bothered by not knowing Amelia before -- I thought they did a good job of building up the fact that she was someone that Mary Anne did know, and wanted to know better. Hearing the sirens was weird, but I guess these things happen.
I liked the subplot, even if it was really unrealistic. None of these parents questioned anything about the sudden clean up of the lot? I guess if they all thought someone else was in charge... but it seemed clear the Dawn was calling the shots. Carol or Jack never questioned her on the plans for the lot prior to the day of clean up? None of the parents in the neighborhood ever wanted to do anything about it before? I mean, if it really was covered with trash and dangerous, they could have had the property condemned, seized and put into public use. Instead they cleaned it up prior to any sort of zoning approval for it to be used as community use and basically increased the property owners worth. And no one explained this to Dawn or Sunny?
I liked that it tied into the main plot by inspiring Mary Anne. I am shocked that Amelia's parents didn't think of something on their own, like a scholarship or monument.
I did not care for the SADD stuff. I might be a horrible person, but I would have preferred for Amelia to not have died in such a cliched fashion. I mean, Drunk Driving is SO 1995. And of course it would be Kristy to come up with starting a SADD chapter, not a teacher or any other student. Not in years prior or anything.
|
|
|
Post by greer on Apr 19, 2008 2:25:14 GMT -5
was the vacant lot in sunny and dawn's neighborhood? don't you think that someone would have done something about it, if it was such an eyesore?
|
|
bsclover18
Junior Sitter
God loves you!
Posts: 813
|
Post by bsclover18 on Jul 2, 2008 14:59:39 GMT -5
When I read this book, I think I actually cried. The book really shook me. I was only 9 when I read it, but I've re-read it and it still wakes up the reality that every day could be my last.
|
|
|
Post by sparklymouse on Dec 23, 2008 15:15:37 GMT -5
Just read this one. Trying to say things that haven't been said already... Mary Anne was a bit unbelievable to me, but there were a few hints in the book that explained a little bit why she was hit so hard for so long. At the very beginning she said how she was relying so much on Kristy since Dawn moved back to CA and that she wanted to make new friends. Most of her friends were either people Kristy was involved with or people who had approached her (both Dawn and Logan made the first move with her). So I assume that making a friend completely on her own was a huge deal to Mary Anne, and to lose that person when the friendship was just beginning may have had a bigger effect on Mary Anne than it would on one of the other BSC members.
Was SADD ever mentioned again? I have irritating memories of SADD because every year before prom they would set up a big fake crash scene in one of the parking lots at school. It was the same exact thing every year and it was preachy and nobody learned anything.
I agree with everyone who said Dawn's chapters were out of place and unnecessary. When I got to her first chapter--RIGHT after everyone found out Amelia died--I seriously thought WTF. It brought the story to a halt. I doubt it, but has there ever been a book without any sitting chapters in it?
|
|
tiff85
Junior Sitter
Posts: 583
|
Post by tiff85 on Mar 20, 2009 20:51:19 GMT -5
I actually cried when I read this. I felt bad for Mary Anne because she had just started to be friends with Amelia before she died. She never really got a chance to say good-bye.
|
|
|
Post by firecausesburns on Mar 29, 2009 3:29:01 GMT -5
One thing I really liked in this book was Mary Anne's fear when they're walking to school, when she knows a girl from Stoneybrook has died and she's really worried that it could be Kristy. The books seem to focus a lot more on her relationships with Dawn or Logan than with Kristy, so that was just something nice to show that they really care a lot about each other. I didn't mind the book, on the whole. When I was about seven or eight, two older girls from my school died in the same year - one from cancer, one suddenly, I don't remember the details. I remember the school going on and on about it for ages and making me feel terrible because I wasn't grieving. I didn't know either of them at all, but they kept throwing it in our faces that ZOMG EVERYONE MUST FEEL TERRIBLE. I wonder if anyone at SMS felt like that about Amalia's death - then again, I was a little kid, a few years later it might have been different.
|
|
wanderingfrog
Sitting For The Arnolds
Official BSC Archivist
Posts: 2,552
|
Post by wanderingfrog on Apr 27, 2010 12:17:29 GMT -5
I am rereading this one, and I just got to this part in Chapter Two-which-is-actually-in-Chapter Three:
Now I am picturing Claudia making collages out of random pieces of garbage. It makes me laugh.
|
|
lilafowler
Sitting For The Johanssens
Posts: 1,163
|
Post by lilafowler on Jun 14, 2010 18:09:02 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by Honeybee on Dec 28, 2010 2:13:35 GMT -5
I don't remember this book. I only read this once, when I was teenager. I'm glad, I bought this book, to reread again.
I wasn't crazy about Dawn's sub plot. (I'm not into saving the planet.)
When I was I was in 5th grade. Their was this girl in my classroom. (She was in 6th grade.) Our school have grades together. 1st & 2nd, 3rd & 4th, 5th & 6th & so on.... Well, one day, I went to school. (don't remember the date. it was in 1995.) Anyways, got their early. Our teacher ring her bell. that class had start. Doing the morning routine. Then, our principal came in, tell our teacher, he want to speak with her. She came back in. Told us, one of our classmates died. She was only 12. She died in her sleep. She told her mom, she was tired & the next morning, her mom told her to wake up, she'll be late for school. That's when her mom, found out she passed away. Over night. (our teacher explain this to us, of what the principal told her.) I'm not sure, what she died of. (She was healthy.) My first time experience for me, that was the same age as me. ( I was held back.) A classmate died. The classmates went to her funeral. few days later. My dad took me, it was in the evening. I really didn't know her. She was really nice girl. I did talk to her, when i was in school. But, I wasn't really friends with her. We plant a tree in the front of the yard of our school, when it was Spring time. (Nothing fancy in MA & the memory garden.)
I see, CA people like to name their children after flower names.
|
|
|
Post by booboobrewer on Dec 28, 2010 3:36:01 GMT -5
So did the Victorians...
|
|
|
Post by virgoscorpio on Dec 29, 2010 13:36:59 GMT -5
I skipped the Dawn sub-plot this time (I had already read it before...) I guess they added that in because it was a good break from all of the deep, heavy stuff happening in Stoneybrook. Although I think a storyline about the BSC dealing with some of her charges in respect to death -- like, let's say a charge finds out about Amelia's death and asks about it and the BSC members must explain death of a friend in a way that a child would understand.
I like the cover. Mary Anne looks good on it and I love the school scene in the picture.
|
|
u4me
Sitting For The Papadakis's
Posts: 1,655
|
Post by u4me on Jan 8, 2011 19:11:22 GMT -5
I remember when I saw this book sitting on Target's shelf and I was so excited to read it. I remember telling my mom that one of them might die in the book. I like that it deals with grief, but I agree with whoever said it should have been a minor character that we've met a little more than Amelia, but then that might have been a little much for the kid version of me to handle!
|
|
|
Post by zoar3 on Jan 8, 2011 19:51:26 GMT -5
I thought this book came out of left field. Other than briefly in Dawn and the School Spirit War we had never "met" Amelia. Yet right from the beginning of this story it sounded like Mary Anne was (at least wanting to become) close to her. I don't think SADD was ever mentioned again. Doing so would have given Amelia more justice. I hated the Dawn subplot. I agree that it was rather uneblievable that not one parent or community person did anything about the lot beforehand or that back in Stoneybrook, not even the Freemans gave thought to a tribute to Amelia. Maybe it should have been a character we had gotten to know better. Maybe Jessi or Dawn herself or hey Abby. Mean I know but nonetheless. This has been said before and by myself in other threeads but it seemed like this book was the ONLY instance either before or after Dawn where we saw that MA cared about Kristy. I wish this had brought them closer together. Way back in Claudia and the Bad Joke, it was Barbara Hirsch and Gordon Brown who warned Claudia about Besty. If only they (maybe Amelia, too) had become BSC members of some sort. Then this story would have been more endearing. Horribly sadder yes but maybe less shocking (MA/Amelia) if that makes sense.
|
|
oldhickory
Sitting For The Arnolds
Heather Loves Boys and Gym
Posts: 3,254
|
Post by oldhickory on Jan 8, 2011 23:08:21 GMT -5
^ i would have peed my pants with delight if dawn had been killed off.
|
|
|
Post by zoar3 on Jan 9, 2011 12:58:30 GMT -5
^Lol, I knew I liked you Oldhickory! Sincerely, I don't wish anyone killed off real or otherwise but if anyone in BSC verse (besides Abby) I'd go for Dawn all the way.
|
|