2 out of 5 stars
Darn you, younger self, for stealing my Special Postcard from Ann M Martin inside!! It's time for another ridiculous premise for a BSC vacation special and it is a doozy. Stoneybrook Middle School is taking the ENTIRE SCHOOL (all 3 grades) to a ski lodge in Vermont for a week. Go back and read that sentence again, I'll wait. Is that not the most absurd thing you've ever heard or what?? So this special diary is going to be for Logan from Mary Anne, because he "has" to go with his parents to Aruba or something and she thinks that a 13 year old boy will just *love* a journal written by a bunch of girls. Okay.
The action at the beginning is probably the best part of this book. The Stoneybrook kids get to the lodge after a slightly harrowing drive up thru a snowstorm and barely get unpacked when two people come bursting into the lobby and collapse on the floor. We find out that they are chaperones for an elementary school trip and their bus crashed on the highway, injuring the bus driver pretty bad. The BSCers, of course, jump into action and volunteer to go along on the rescue and help keep the little kids calm. All the kids are okay, except for one obnoxious little girl named Pinky, who has a sprained ankle. Kristy offers the club to stay with the kids and be sort-of in charge of them, because the chaperones (is that spelling right? I can't figure it out) are mostly out of commission. And now on to the individual stories...
Mary Anne was so awful and soppy in this one, it was really pathetic. She kept trying to write all these love letters to Logan and daydreaming that he was meeting all these hot 8th graders in Aruba and holding hands with them and maybe more. Really Ann? You're getting a little risque there! You already had Mary Anne have a girl crush thing on the cruise ship, now you've got Logan doing it with some girl on the beach?! So between that and the "ghost mystery" at the lodge, Mary Anne is pretty preoccupied for most of the week.
The ski lodge holds Olympic-style games each winter, so you know Kristy is all over that with her bossy, sports-obsessed self. She's captain of the Red Team and she is so determined to win that she forces half the school to join, even clumsy Dawn who apparently has never seen or been on snow/ice. Kristy doesn't even realize she's turned into a sports Nazi until a boy breaks his ankle while competing.
It turns out Claudia is an awesome skier and is up against Kristy in the big race. I think it's because of her super awesome ski outfit I came up with for her. :) And yes, I know the Powerpuff Girls weren't around then, but how cute is that sweatshirt?! Claud takes some expert ski lessons from this hot French dude named Guy and she automatically thinks he has a crush on her because she's so freakin' hot herself. But it'll never work because he's married and has a kid and duh, she's only thirteen. Oh and also, Kristy gets super pissed at Claud because C doesn't pick K's team as the winning ice sculpture. Even though K's kinda sucked and C has the "artist eye" or some junk.
(click here for details)
And finally, there's Jessi, who gets this book's "big lesson". (Didn't she get the "big lesson" in the last Super Special too?) She is hosting and organizing the talent show and also keeping Pinky company while her ankle heals. Pinky is understandably Little Miss CrankyPants, what with her ankle and being away from her family after a frightening ordeal. But, somehow, Jessi takes her behaviour to mean that Pinky is racist and wants nothing to do with her. What?? She figures things out in the end and decides to have a conversation with her parents when she gets home about racism and seeing it when it's not there. (I think there's a term for that, but I can't think of it right now.) Also, Jessi gets to dance for her peers for the first time and is a raging success.
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