Dawn's Portrait

[celaeno]

I just found this one at a thrift store and read it, which means that now Abby's Book is the only Portrait book left for me to find and read!

In the story of Dawn and Sunny meeting, they made Sunny such a clever, logical kid, which seems kind of pointless since those were character traits they never brought up again in the future.

Does anyone know if Ann grew up in a fairly well-to-do family? Because after reading so many BSC books, it seems clear that all or most of the sitters come from families with household incomes that are WELL above average, yet (except for Kristy's), all of them are treated as just average, typical suburban families. Like, in this book Jack and Sharon pay for an entire trip to San Francisco for Sharon's parents for their anniversary, which would be expensive enough, but then on top of that they give them *series* tickets to the Metropolitan Opera in NYC? I mean holy cow the Schafers must be loaded!

I really enjoyed that chapter with Dawn's grandparents, though. For most of the sitters' grandparents, they were either extremely present (Mimi, Nannie) or completely nonexistent, so it's nice to read about a normal but loving grandparents/granddaughter relationship.

[booboobrewer]

I loved Sunny as a little girl...so smart and cute.

Yeah, Ann grew up pretty comfortably.

I love the anniversary chapter! I love SF and reading about Dawn's family all together there. The scene where Granny was so relieved that nothing bad had happened to Pop-Pop was super sweet.

[virgoscorpio]

Yeah, I think it's safe to say that the BSC community is similar to Ann's life growing up.

[greer]

Princeton is a wealthy town.

Ann's dad was a cartoonist for the New Yorker, and her mom and grandmother both went to Mt. Holyoke, so she strikes me as coming from a wealthy, intellectual family background.

[oldhickory]

Jul 28, 2012 18:09:06 GMT -5 celaeno said:

it seems clear that all or most of the sitters come from families with household incomes that are WELL above average, yet (except for Kristy's), all of them are treated as just average, typical suburban families.

what i think is odd is that elizabeth, a struggling mom with four kids, somehow afforded payments on her house when her immediate neighbors (who probably have similar payments and identical houses) include a lawyer with his own practice, a stockbroker/librarian couple who are said to be super smart, and a retired couple who can afford to give out entire candy bars for halloween. even though richard is a single parent and mrs kishi's job at the library probably doesn't pay much, each of those households still has one awesome paycheck. elizabeth somehow afforded the same kind of house as them, in the same neighborhood, for the six or so years between patrick and watson, and did so with more kids to feed than the kishi and spier kids combined.

[virgoscorpio]

Jul 29, 2012 15:39:40 GMT -5 oldhickory said:

a retired couple who can afford to give out entire candy bars for halloween. .

Now that you mention it, it might have been cool to learn more about the Goldmans other than them conveniently relocating so that Mary Anne, Richard and Sharon could move into their house while the barn was being redesigned. Weren't they in a mystery? Also, didn't they take many trips to Florida? I'm surprised they're not mentioned in their portrait collections more, too.

[sarish]

;DMaybe the Goldmans just favored their neighbors girls/boys and always had whole candy bars for them and regular candy for the rest of the neighborhood. But they thought they gave them to everyone since all three families would get the entire bars?

[greer]

I think Ann just had little exposure to non-upper middle class life, and didn't think of things like maybe a single mom with four kids wouldn't be living in the same neighborhood as an investment banker and a lawyer. The Thomases' fourth bedroom was mentioned as being very small, but it was still a four bedroom house.

[oldhickory]

^ that's more rooms than we had growing up, and my mom WAS an investment banker.

[virgoscorpio]

One of the rooms was similar to the size of a closet though, right? Reminds me of (a) "2nd bedrooms" in condos which are terribly small. I've lived in one for years. (b) I actually slept in a closet as a baby. My Mom put the crib and such in there because she lived in an apartment at the time, and my sister (a year older than me) got the 2nd bedroom. So DM's situation always reminded me of mine.

[supprazz]

Jul 28, 2012 23:15:01 GMT -5 booboobrewer said:

I loved Sunny as a little girl...so smart and cute.

Yeah, Ann grew up pretty comfortably.

I love the anniversary chapter! I love SF and reading about Dawn's family all together there. The scene where Granny was so relieved that nothing bad had happened to Pop-Pop was super sweet.

I love how she knew morse code and didn't like kids playing with guns , very wise for a 6 year old!

[sparklymouse]

I liked this one for the most part. The stories Dawn picked to tell seemed more like filler than significant moments in her life, but at least most of them were interesting.

West Coast Beginnings: It was so short and Dawn was so young that it must have been a quick rehash of stories she’d heard over and over again. Sharon’s face in the family picture looks like a young Nancy Grace.

The New Girl on the Block: I hadn't realized that the Winslows started out so cartoony. They were every hippie stereotype you could dream up. That was a huge parental fail on Sharon and Mrs. Winslow’s part to drop their 6 year old kids off in a toy store four floors away from where they were going to be, completely unsupervised. I don’t even necessarily think it was a safety issue. It was just incredibly rude to the store clerks. They weren't baby-sitters regardless of how well behaved the girls may have been.

The Golden Anniversary: I didn't like this one that much. I didn't think it had much to do with Dawn herself in terms of an autobiography. We learned that Jack and Sharon were married for 15 years at the time, so they had been married for 5 years before Dawn was born, and about 17-18 before the divorce. I think they win the prize for longest BSC parent marriage, unless the McGills also had a large gap between marriage and baby.

Fire!: This one was in poor taste when you think about her mother’s house burning to the ground! It’s a little lame that both this fire and the one in Stoneybrook were caused by a wiring problem. I wonder how many kids reading these grew afraid that their house was going to randomly burst into flames because of that. I mean, you learn about fire safety and not playing with matches and all that, but there’s nothing a kid can do about what’s going on behind the walls of their home. I did like the humorous parts with Jeff.

A New Life on the East Coast: I’m guessing this took place right after the stuff with the Barretts got cleared up. So Dawn was the new girl in the club and was given two new clients back to back. That was the same summer as Watson and Elizabeth’s wedding, the play group and Mimi getting sick, and Mary Anne and Stacey being out of town with the Pikes. I can see why they wouldn't have missed the Lazars calling any more. Sorry to all you morally sound people, but I totally would have read the letter. She wasn't digging around in their underwear drawers. She read a letter on a table directly in front of the phone while she was trying to take a good message for someone who would rather complain about badly written messages than have the sitters ignore the phone and let the machine pick up. (Whew. That was a long sentence.) I appreciate that the Lazars didn't want to ruin Sandra’s summer, but it also seemed crummy to drop the bomb on her with little time to wrap her head around it. I don’t know which would be the best decision.

The paper ended with Dawn on the East coast even though she was back in her California school. Oops. Her cover sounded kinda messy too. A hand drawn map of the United States with two photos taped on it? Either the the photos were hanging over the edge and would most likely be ripped off by something, or they were covering the map that she drew. She won the prize for best title by far! ;D I think her grade was fair.

[virgoscorpio]

Dec 11, 2012 20:20:26 GMT -5 sparklymouse said:

Fire!: This one was in poor taste when you think about her mother’s house burning to the ground! It’s a little lame that both this fire and the one in Stoneybrook were caused by a wiring problem.

Technically, this book was published way before The Fire at Mary Anne's House was even conceived. But, with this in mind, we have to think - what is Sharon's connection with electrical fires? Did she bring forth the bad luck? Fires seem to follow that scatterbrained lass from coast to coast!

[sparklymouse]

^Yeah, I knew it was written before the farm house burned down. That's what made it so bad. Like "Hey, Sharon! Remember the time when your daughter was fire safety obsessed and you completely blew her off? Oh, btw, YOUR HOUSE JUST BURNED TO THE GROUND. XOXO, Karma."

[scrounge]

Again, every time I read Dawn's Portrait I wonder at what point she became a vegetarian, because she eats chicken throughout this whole book. The bit with Sunny and the Morse Code and the elevator is kind of cool but Sunny must have been quite advanced at spelling to be able to tap out entire questions and understand the replies.

The Golden Anniversary: I didn't like this one that much. I didn't think it had much to do with Dawn herself in terms of an autobiography. We learned that Jack and Sharon were married for 15 years at the time, so they had been married for 5 years before Dawn was born, and about 17-18 before the divorce. I think they win the prize for longest BSC parent marriage, unless the McGills also had a large gap between marriage and baby.

Janine Kishi is sixteen and assuming her parents were married when she was conceived, they would probably be close to their 20-year anniversary.