#45 Kristy and the Baby Parade

Summary

Stoneybrook is going to be holding their biannual baby parade, and Kristy thinks that it would be fun for the club to make a float and enter. They've all got babies on the brain anyway; the girls just took an infant care class, and Kristy is helping prepare Andrea Prezzioso for the stroller division of the parade as part of her long-term sitting job. The club's float project is a disaster from the start, though. The girls argue over what the theme of the float will be, and have no problem making fun of each others' ideas (some of them are pretty stupid...). They eventually decide on "The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe;" lots of characters are involved in that one, which means lots of babies can be a part of the float.

When the girls meet to start working on the float itself, things get even worse. Everyone has their own ideas about what the float should look like, but no one is sharing those ideas with the others. Stacey mixes up an orangey-red paint that she loves, but it clashes horribly with the bright pink fabric that Mallory bought for the babies' costumes. Claudia is in charge of actually constructing the giant shoe, and since she's trying to use everyone's advice, it looks like a lump of nothing. It's pretty clear that this is not going to be the club's most successful project....

By the day of the parade, things have gone from bad to worse. The pink costumes clash just as much as you might imagine with the orange paint on the float, which looks even worse than it did during construction, if that's possible. Poor Charlie Thomas, who had agreed to pull the float behind the junk bucket, is completely embarrassed to be seen with it. All of the club members are mad about how everything turned out, and none of them are speaking to each other. They survive the parade, thought, and Kristy quickly sends Charlie to the dump with the float.

After the parade, Kristy calls the other club members to make up. None of them were really mad at each other; just mad at how things turned out. At least they learned an important lesson about communication and working together (Ellen Miles really lays it on with a shovel at the end of the book). Also, Andrea Prezzioso won first prize in her divison, so the day wasn't a total loss. :)

Rating: 2

Thoughts and Things

• This book is a really rough read when it comes on the heels of the awesomeness that is New York, New York!
• Those babies on the cover look like dolls....
• I'm actually kind of surprised that the BSC had never taken an infant care class before this. That sounds like something that Kristy would insist they do to drum up business!
• Heh...Squirt's favorite Sesame Street character is Elmo, who "isn't on very often, so he has to watch carefully to catch him." What a difference a few years makes! This book was written in 1991, and (I think) Tickle Me Elmo first came out in 1996.
• One good thing about the BSC never leaving 8th grade is that we never have to deal with the stupid baby parade again.