# 4 Mary Anne Saves the Day

[Deleted]

I always thought that MA's life sounded so depressing before she got the BSC and Dawn and Sharon. She and her dad didn't have a relationship at all in the first books, I think they could have done a better job of transitioning him to "loose" Richard. In Book 102 Mary Ann can barely make it through a week without him and calls him "Daddy" at the airport. That's a 180 from book 4.

[zoar3]

I just finished re-reading this book and it made me re-think Mary Anne especially in terms of her so-called bff with Kristy.

On page 38: "Dawn wasn't the same as Kristy or my other friends, but she was something."

That is cold! Even I feel bad for Dawn there. Too bad MA so very quickly lost those feelings toward her friendship with Kristy especially but also with Claudia and Stacey. Later Dawn was everything it sure seemed like.

I will admit as I said in another thread that re-reading this book yesterday opened my eyes to the truth that it was not Dawn who tried to take MA away from K or lesson their friendship, it was all MA. :/

On a lighter, Dawn-snarkier note from page 43: "I can't stand dim rooms," She explained, "so Mom let me get lots of lamps and I put one-hundred watt bulbs in all of them."

So much for her being an environmentalist!

On page 68, I first (and one of the few times) felt empathy and liking Jenny when she shows MA her "play clothes" of new shirts, blouses, slacks, etc and then gives MA "a look that plainly said I told you so." So Jenny paints by water in her underwear for the rest of the afternoon.

Page 69 When MA reports to Mrs. P that Jenny was an "absolute angel." Now I at long last see the beginning of their bond.

I admit to never quite getting what was so horrendous about Mimi calling MA "My MA." I can sort of understand that since Claudia loves Mimi so very fiercely and truly thinks of her as "mom" along with true best friend, that to hear Mimi even suggest that type of relationship with another was beyond what C could stand. Though we already know that C is fine with MA being close to Mimi.

A Pike Mystery:

on page 90 "Only Claire and Margo and the YOUNGER children generally require a sitter. The older ones can take care of themselves. Does this mean there's at least one secret Pike whose younger than 4? And/or that Nicky suddenly has regressed from 7 to who knows how young? The ever present age mystery in the BSC!

Yearbook question: Don't friends generally sign the yearbooks of one another? When MA and Dawn are looking at Richard's yearbook (p 110) they discover a note Richard wrote to Sharon under his picture in HIS yearbook. p 111 We get to read Sharon's note to him. Weird! On Sun 2-1, MAand Dawn check Sharon's yearbook and find a note Richard wrote to her. (Lol, even disorganized Sharon did not write herself a note in her own yearbook

From the infamous Sat 2-7 when MA (and Dawn) take Jenny to the hospital. This has come up in other bsc books, unless this is on East Coast or mid 80's thing why does MA have the choice of either calling an ambulance or 9-1-1? Isn't an ambulance (if necessary) part of 9-1-1 or lol is Stoneybrook so fancy that they have these services divided?

I know this comment/question is completely off topic of this book but in thinking about phones, could someone tell me why other than AMM perhaps wanting to prevent another Tommy Tutone "Jenny" incident from happening (867-5309) did AMM give the girls the phone #'s KL 5-3231 (Claudia) what does KL mean?

Finally on page 110, MA calmly and with great poise talks to her Dad about her restrictions.

Jamie's 4th birthday party was truly a disgrace especially to someone who the BSC (K in particular) loved and thought so much of in Jamie. I admire Mrs. Newton's restraint during the party but certainly afterward, she should have at the very least called the bsc on their behavior.

Oh, one last note, and an age related one at that. Dawn's birthday was 2-5-74. SHE should have turned 13 in this book ; 5 days before Jamie turned 4.

That's all for now. Tired of typing!

[starrynight]

About the Pike thing...I don't think AMM meant the children that are younger than Claire or Margo. I think she just meant the younger Pike children INCLUDING Claire and Margo, but didn't say it very well.

[wenonah4th]

It used to be that telephone exchanges had letters in them. That's what the KL was. If you look at the phone, K & L are on the 5 button, so it's really a 555 exchange.

[zoar3]

Thanks Starrynight and Wenonah4th.

[wenonah4th]

You're welcome.

[mafan4life]

My favorite part was when Mary Anne proved her father that she was twelve, not two. Thank god for that. I found out why he was strict later in one of the MA mysteries: The Secret in the Attic when she was reading. Her father wanted to prove to be a perfect parent and to raise her on his own. I could understand why her grandparents from Iowa didn't want to give Mary Anne back to her father.

[wenonah4th]

^"The shattered egg man"....

[mafan4life]

what does that mean, wenonah4th?

[mafan4life]

Sept 24, 2008 16:30:36 GMT -5 @mrc1203 said:

I always thought that MA's life sounded so depressing before she got the BSC and Dawn and Sharon. She and her dad didn't have a relationship at all in the first books, I think they could have done a better job of transitioning him to "loose" Richard. In Book 102 Mary Ann can barely make it through a week without him and calls him "Daddy" at the airport. That's a 180 from book 4.

that was in Mary Anne and the Little Princess. I got that book. Im glad MA has a better life. If it wasnt for her friends and the late Mimi, she would still have a miserable life.

[wenonah4th]

Oh, Mimi referred to Humpty Dumpty that way.

[mafan4life]

Jul 24, 2006 14:37:34 GMT -5 greer said:

also in this one, mary anne basically flat-out says that dawn is ugly.

when did she say that

[candykane]

She didn't come right out and say "ugly," but she said Dawn wasn't exactly pretty, rather, "pleasant-looking." It wasn't until later books that Dawn was consistently described as being drop-dead gorgeous.

[supprazz]

I don't understand though how richard and mary anne had no relationship, yet in mary anne's book they seemed very very close and he seemed relaxed. It must have been the ghost writers glossing over everything

[celaeno]

Mar 10, 2010 11:52:30 GMT -5 supprazz said:

I don't understand though how richard and mary anne had no relationship, yet in mary anne's book they seemed very very close and he seemed relaxed. It must have been the ghost writers glossing over everything

That drives me crazy too! To try to reconcile it, I like to think that they had a pretty normal father/daughter relationship as she grew up (if somewhat stiff and formal), but that things started going downhill when she reached around age 10/11, and he couldn't accept that she was an adolescent, not a little girl. So they started becoming more and more distant.

Anyway, the weird thing about rereading these books as an adult is that for a lot of them, I remember absolutely nothing about the plot, but I'll know that I read it when I was younger because I remember tiny details. In this book for example, I remembered nothing about the fact that the BSC had a huge fight, but I could have told you - when it was 15 years since I had read the book - that Mary Anne says that her favorite colors are navy blue and yellow. I remember when I was little I told someone that my favorite colors were navy blue and yellow, because for some reason when Mary Anne said it it seemed like such a sophisticated color scheme (probably because, y'know, a 12-year-old liked those colors). Then I realized I hated yellow and I hated navy blue, and the combination of them sounded really disgusting. So I stopped saying those were my favorite colors.

I also remembered that Mary Anne said she had a picture of Humpty Dumpty on her wall. So those were basically the only two things I remembered about this book: that Mary Anne's favorite colors are navy blue and yellow, and that she had a picture of Humpty Dumpty on her wall.

Anyway, since I've now reread it: Does anyone else think the action starts too fast in the early books? In later books, not much usually happens in Chapter 1 (they're usually just framing the story), and Chapter 2 is of course Chapter 2, so the plot doesn't usually get underway until around Chapter 3. In this book, the BSC is split up at the end of chapter 1! It's not even like they were hinting at it in the previous books - it just comes out of NOWHERE. They're all friendly and normal at the start of chapter 1, and then BAM fight!

I don't know why, but I really love the scene where Mary Anne meets Dawn - like, I think it might be one of my favorite scenes in the whole series. At that age I could relate to Mary Anne's feellings (feeling like I had never made a real friend on my own - all I really had were friends I had grown up with, and then friends I met through my original friends), so I can understand her feeling proud for making a friend on her own. I think early Dawn is awesome and it's sad they changed her so much.

Also, I know that when the books were first written they had no plans to continue the series, and so I'm creating continuity where there's no continuity to be found, but there's a scene where Mary Anne is looking through a photo album in her house and she says she recognizes none of the people, and it's cool to pretend that they're her secret Iowa relatives that she doesn't yet realize are alive.