#44 Dawn and the Big Sleepover (or, Dawn and the Lawsuit Just Waiting to Happen)

 Now I get to snark a book I like.  I enjoyed this one as a kid.  I thought it would be cool to have a pen pal, just for the simple reason I like getting mail.  I also thought all the fundraising ideas sounded fun.  Ha!  Fun, fund…don’t give me that look!  Anyway, it is ghostied by Peter Lerangis and is the 3^rd time through 8^th grade for these young ladies.

Before we jump into the fun that is this book, we need to stop for a shout out about the cover.  It is blaze orange (my ’91 copy anyway) and we see Dawn looking like she’s described in the books, for once.  She also appears to be grabbing some girl chest, even though I think she’s supposed to be breaking up a fight…

So we start with Dawn sitting at the Pike’s with Mallory, of course, and the kids are jumping all over, reading their letters from their pen pals.  Who are these pen pals?  Zunis!  Yeah, that’s just how it’s written in the book.  It’s a group of Native Americans in New Mexico and, according to Wikipedia, the tribe actually exists.  Excellent work, Peter Lerengis!  You used a group of people that actually exist!  By the end of the chapter, the kids have decided to send some stuff from Stoneybrook in their next letters….didn’t realize Stoneybrook was big enough to have bumper stickers and decals.

Sensitive Mary Anne looks up at Dawn when she gets home and assumes the worst, but no, Dawn’s just bummed about not having a pen pal.  This must be pretty devastating to Dawn, considering Mary Anne just looks at her and sees that something’s wrong.  Blar de blar, chapter two stuff and suddenly Dawn’s famished and happy again. 

Uh-oh, Mal’s late for Monday’s meeting and Kristy pulls the rack out of the closet.  Discipline must be swift and fierce!  But then Mal comes in and drops a bomb – the Zunis’ school burned down after a gas station explosion.  No kidding, one of my biggest fears after reading this book was being at a gas station when it blew up.  Thank you, Ann and Peter.

Dawn wants to do something to help, calls Mal that night, who is helping comfort crying kids, and pretty much doesn’t do anything helpful to cheer anyone up.  But Dawn starts thinking and decides to have a food and clothing drive.  Mary Anne’s all, “That’s a lot of work – what teacher is going to want to do that?”  Dawn thinks long and hard and decides, “Why not Ms Besser?  She had Jeff in her class two cycles ago and he was an absolute terror before moving back to Cali.  She’ll be really happy to hear from his crazy sister (whom she met in book 14? 15? But they pretend in this book that they haven’t met….oh, continuity errors!).  Amazingly enough the woman does NOT slam the phone down on the crazy girl calling on the weekend and agrees to take up the project.

Dawn tells Kristy (big chance she took, telling her great idea to the queen of great ideas.  It’s like Snow White telling her stepmom how pretty she herself is.) and Kristy calls the club together half an hour earlier for Operation Help.  Of course, the club members are enthusiastic about spending every waking minute helping with the fundraising and they decide there needs to be some kind of reward.  A GIANT SLEEPOVER!  What could be more fun than 100 kids crammed in a smelly gymnasium…to me as a parent, the idea has pedo-bear written all over it.

All 7 girls are excused from morning classes to head over to SES for an assembly (genius Charlotte’s idea!) to announce the plan.  Best quote in the book: “and as an experienced baby-sitter, I knew those kids were not all angels." It took you 13 years to figure that out, did it Dawn?  You didn’t realize it as YOU were sitting in the assembly as a kid?  Anyway, they are met with resounding excitement from the students.  The prizes are especially exciting to them, which may lead to some problems later…

The kids get creative with their fundraising.  The Pikes hold a carnival in the backyard (really Peter….er….Dawn?  You don’t know what a free throw is?  You have a father and a brother, yes?), there is a yard sale that goes horribly awry (kids donate items without asking the ‘rents…oops.  Most of them are pretty generous and just buy their stuff back since it’s for a good cause.), and Haley Braddock dresses up as Madame Leveaux and tells fortunes (Yeah, wow…don’t know what to say about that one).  May I just take a moment to say that I really hate how badly the writers, ghosties especially, murder Claudia’s spelling.  I get she hates school, but really?  She can’t use the correct spelling of the word sale?

After the yard sale disaster, Dawn starts going through the donations and finds really nice stuff, such as a brand new suit and caviar. Yeah, caviar.  More parents become upset that the kids are giving their stuff away without asking, so the girls come up with a permission slip that must be turned in with donations.  I get that a kid or two will get carried away trying to win prizes, so much so that they clear out the house.  It just seems like parents would be involved with this a bit more so that the issue wouldn’t be so widespread.  More like, “Hey, let’s go through everyone’s stuff, maybe buy some groceries for you to drop off” rather than “Good luck, hope you find what you’re looking for.”

Everything finishes on the up and up and it’s time for the big night.  There are the to be expected issues, like the pizza place trying to cancel their large gratis order of pizzas, the CD player not working, homesick kids.  But the night goes pretty well as a whole, the kids love the prizes and apparently they have collected an astronomical amount of money to send to the Zunis, so astronomically high it couldn’t be put into print.

The girls get the kids ready for bed and start tucking them in.  As Dawn’s tucking in a 2^nd grader, he asks, “Is Johnny going to have dinners, too, now?”  Well, rip my heart out with a flipping spoon.  I sat and cried over that one for awhile. 

And before the babysitters hit the hay, Ms. Besser delivers this line: “Do me a favor.  Would you mind staying exactly the same age for a few years until I have a child old enough to be baby-sat for?”  Ahhh, the dramatic irony.  If only Ms. Besser knew this was already Dawn’s third time through 8^th grade.

They wrap up the party the next morning and ship off all of the goods.  They used the “phenomenal” amount of money raised to ship it and what wasn’t used for shipping was sent in a check.  There are many heartfelt letters of thanks ending the book.

It was a nice story, decently done, and with the exception of a few parents with their heads in the clouds, they seemed pretty supportive of the whole thing.