Review: "Dawn's Family Feud: The Baby-Sitters Club #64"

Dawn's Family Feud: The Baby-Sitters Club #64 by Ann M Martin
2 out of 5 stars

This book gets 1 star for Claudia's outfit below and 1 star for Mrs Barrett finally getting her "happily ever after". No stars for Dawn or Mary Anne or their entire plotline. But I guess I'll go over it anyway.

Jeff is coming to town to visit for a whole week and Dawn is understandably super excited. Mr Spier takes off for the whole week to spend it with Jeff and suggests they take a family roadtrip to either Washington DC or Boston at the end of the week. The first few days are great, everyone is getting along and they have lots of fun making fun of a silly alien movie and eating Mexican food. But then the girls have to go to school, Jeff is left alone with Mr Spier (Mrs Schafer has to work), and Jeff gets sulky when he's forced to clean up after himself and the Pike boys don't want to play soccer. Things go downhill from there. Mr Spier is boring (duh), Dawn & Mary Anne start bickering amongst themselves, "a crack was starting to form in [their] family".

Let's pause the misery for a What Claudia was Wearing, shall we! Today for instance she was dressed in black overalls that she had splattered with pink and green and yellow globs of paint. Her purple high top tennis shoes matched her purple long sleeve t-shirt. Claud has beautiful black shining hair that she'd fixed in a French braid. On top of her head perched a little white painter's cap that she'd also splattered with paint. She looked awesome. (She always does.) (I would totally wear this outfit today. Also, those were my wedding shoes. :))

Okay, back to the Spier-Schafer breakdown. They head out on their trip to Boston. Jeff pouts because he suddenly changes his mind and wants to go to DC. Mary Anne thinks Jeff is being a pest and hurting her dad's feelings, Dawn thinks Mary Anne is being a baby, none of the 3 kids want to do anything that the "other family" does. Including share a hotel room, go on the same sightseeing tours, and eat at the same restaurants. And for some reason, their parents go along with it, splitting up into their "original families". Like, what? No. This is a family vacation, you do things together, whether you like it or not. Also, Dawn and Mary Anne are 13 years old and old enough to baby-sit. Let them go off on their own and the parents can do what they want. Ugh. Anyway, the trip is a huge failure and they head home early. 

Dawn's mom has scheduled a photographer to come and take a family picture before Jeff leaves and since they're all fighting still, it starts off awful. None of the kids are wearing their fancy clothes, the parents bicker over where to stage the photo, Mary Anne wants Tigger in the picture but he runs off, and everyone has angry faces. When they all see the test shots they realize how stupid they're all being and start laughing, breaking the tension finally. Everyone apologizes, retakes the pictures, and enjoys Jeff's last day there.

Alright, let's move on to the part that rated a star: Mrs Barrett finally getting her a decent man lol. You remember Mrs Barrett, right? The divorced mom of 3 who was kind of a wreck until Dawn helped her get her life turned around? Well she's finally found a good man and his name is Franklin DeWitt. The impossible 3 love Franklin, until they find out he has 4 kids of his own! Yikes. And they're all around the same age. Disaster in the making. The kids don't get along, the adults don't know how to handle it, and the baby-sitters save the day, as usual. Mrs Barrett makes her kids dress up for a fancy dinner, there's a disaster picnic in which a goat steals a sandwich, and lots of crying. Towards the end, the kids realize it's more fun to get along and play games together and it's all good. I do remember Mrs Barrett & Franklin getting married eventually, but not sure when. I'm sure there will be more drama before they do.