In which middle-schoolers create a price fixing cartel.
My brother used to read and love these books and my older sisters and my mom used to really give him crap for it in some real internalized misogyny kind of way.
But if you haven’t read these, and this is the only one I’ve ever read and am only reading it now for the first time, I think it’s solid and holds up. There’s some funny 80sness from it, some references to hair and clothes that both do and don’t seem up to date (everything circles back), and how much of this book revolves around people using the phone and not having cellphones feels almost quaint now. Divorce is obviously a much less common and more sour place, and there’s some casualness around a possible eating disorder that wouldn’t really be in a book today. I’ll tell you one thing: Kristy is mean. She says some really really awful things to her potential stepdad that are phew, bad. Obviously she makes it up with him and he seems like a good guy and all, but it’s almost shocking how dark she goes with him for a living-laughing-loving book.
I wonder now how much people let teens and tween babysit anymore. It seemed like a really big deal in my youth. We both had babysitters and were babysitters, and we pulled some obnoxious things in our days (we found the parents’ porn, and had to have some awkward conversations) and I also ate a ton of Hot Pockets, watched Toy Story on tape, and played Myst. Anyway, these new recordings are read by Elle Fanning, who is solid, but really had me worried she was going to be in the new show, and luckily she isn’t.
(Photo: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/233722.Kristy_s_Great_Idea?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=6i84FkuEkn&rank=2)
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