Claudia And The Middle School Mystery (1991) - Plot & Excerpts
this book opens with janine the genius helping claudia study for her upcoming remedial math test. claudia has to figure out how much chocolate is in each of eight cookies if gertrude is using 2/3 cup of chocolate altogether. i tried to figure it out myself & remembered why i failed every math test i ever took. the answer is 1/12, which becomes obvious once you know the answer. anyway, claudia is doing pretty well & janine is proud of her. she tells claudia that she knows the material forwards & backwards.claudia wants to do well on this test because her parents require her to keep her grades up if she wants to remain in the babysitters club.claudia goes in to take the test the next day, & at first, she blanks. then she remembers janine's test-taking advice, & she starts scanning the test for a problem she can answer. she finds one, & the studying she did comes flooding back. she works her way through the test & feels really confident when it's over. she can hardly wait to get her test results back.mr. zorzi, the teacher, makes the students review some new material in the next class before he hands back the tests. claudia can barely concentrate. but finally she gets her test back & finds that she got an A-! all her studying really paid off. she is walking on air...until mr. zorzi requests that she & shawn riverson stay after class. he requests that they both show their papers. they both received the exact same grade...& got the exact same questions wrong...in the exact same way. claudia is an idiot who does not see where this is going. she tells mr. zorzi that she thinks she knows how she messed up one question: she divided when she should have multiplied. shawna is much quicker on the uptake, & tells mr. zorzi in no uncertain terms that she did not cheat. claudia is dumbfounded. it never crossed her mind that mr. zorzi might suspect cheating. rather than defending herself after shawn's statement, she just stands there, looking like a guilty, guilty cheater. shawna is a really good student who has trouble with math, which is why she's in the remedial math class. but even so, she's one of the better students in the class. claudia figures no teacher would accept her word over shawna's when it comes to academics. so, even though she knows she didn't cheat, she just stands there silently. mr. zorzi says he'll have to tell the principal, who will be calling claudia's parents.at dinner that night, mr. & mrs. kishi approach claudia about the call they got from the principal. claudia explains what happened. her parents gently tell her that they would like to believe that she diesn't cheat on the test. claudia feels even more defeated by the note of doubt in their voices. but janine sticks up for her & says she KNOWS claudia didn't cheat. mr. & mrs. kishi apologize...but no one knows how to deal with the situation. janine offers to tutor claudia in math for the rest of the year so she can maintain a passing grade even with an F in this test.this all just seems weird to me. i never cheated on anything when i was in school, but had i been accused, & had my parents believed in me, you better believe they'd be going down to the school & having some words with administrators. but claudia tells her parents to stay out of it, that she wants to handle it herself...even though she doesn't know how. & they agree. it seems like a failing grade on an important test & a black mark as a cheater should really out-weigh the desires of a 13-year-old right now...but then we wouldn't have a book, would we?claudia tells the BSC what happened. mary anne tells claudia that the rest of the club will stick with her even if she did cheat on the test. everyone is like, "mary anne, WTF?" & mary anne bursts into tears. another reason i dislike mary anne. she basically tells claudia that she doesn't believe she didn't cheat, & when she gets called on not supporting her friend, SHE cries. fuck you & your manipulative waterworks, mary anne.anyway, the rest of the girls realize that if claudia didn't cheat, shawna must have. dawn suggests breaking into shawna's locked to look for an incriminating note. mary anne opposes this idea, but she is overruled. in school the next day, claudia slips into a bathroom stall while shawna & her friends are in the bathroom, & she overhears them bragging about how shawna got away with cheating. in order to explain the situation to the myriad BSC readers who can't begin to fathom why anyone would ever cheat off of claudia kishi, shawna explains that she heard that janine was helping claudia study, & she knows janine is a genius, & that claudia would probably do well on the test as a result. this is a remarkably thin explanation, but it's the best we've got, so let's just go with it. that afternoon, dawn, claudia, & stacey break into shawna's locker. they do indeed find an incriminating note, & at first, they are joyful. but as they leave, claudia realizes she can't show anyone the note without explaining how she got it, & then she'd get into trouble for breaking into shawna's locker. so she puts the note book. mary anne the pious is pleased.the next day in math class, claudia decides to try to trick shawna into confessing by using loaded words around her. she's all, "shawna, can i steal your worksheet for a minute? i misplaced mine & i don't want to cheat mr. zorzi out of another copy," etc etc. shawna doesn't fall for it. then she thinks she can prove shawna cheated by proving that she can see shawna's paper. she looks over at shawna's desk & becomes absorbed in the juicy note shawna is writing to a friend. mr. zorzi catches claudia, which...way to look even more guilty, claudia.meanwhile, at the pike house, the triplets have broken a basement window. they are grounded until they admit which triplet is responsible, but they refuse to turn on each other. the babysitters try several tricks to get them to confess, to no avail. finally mallory suggests that they re-enact the crime so they can see who was responsible. it turns out that all of them made a small mistake that resulted in the broken window. so they're all responsible, & none are responsible. they are not only ungrounded & have their allowances reinstated, but mr. & mrs. pike decide to take them out to a movie & ice cream to celebrate. which seems to counteract the intentions of the punishment...but since when have the pikes been the greatest parents in the world?the triplet situation gives claudia an idea. she thinks they should re-enact the test-taking, & then mr. zorzi will see shawna cheat. someone has to explain to claudia that shawna probably would not cheat again under carefully controlled re-enactment conditions. duh. claudia really is an idiot in this book.but it gives janine an idea. she goes to see the stoneybrook middle school principal & explains her faith in claudia & her knowledge of the test material. the principal & mr. zorzi agree to allow claudia to re-take the test. she does, & she scores even better than she did the first time. at the end of class, shawna is called up to the teacher's desk & mr. zorzi tells her that she'll have to re-take the test the next morning. claudia doesn't think this is fair, because it gives shawna advance warning & time to study (which claudia didn't get). but it doesn't matter because shawna panics & confesses to cheating. she has to take an F for the test & is suspended for two days. problem solved.i enjoyed this book, because claudia books are always pretty entertaining, but there are a lot of headdesk moments here. the school thought claudia had cheated, & she was given an F for the test...but why wasn't she suspended? why didn't her parents step in & insist on some kind of resolution? why didn't the school make both claudia & shawna re-take the test right away? why did they believe shawn over claudia? why didn't claudia stick up for herself? why are the babysitters friends with mary anne? & so forth. this is a pretty unrealistic "mystery" in a lot of ways.
Always hated mysteries, but I was glad to see that this one wasn't really a traditional mystery. As in, no one thinks there's a ghost or a burglar somewhere stupid. However, the mysteries involved--who broke the window at the Pikes' house, and how Claudia got blamed for cheating when she didn't cheat--are extremely contrived. Of course there's some silly explanation for why none of the accused triplets are actually fully responsible for the broken window. And of course the girl who got the same grade and the same problems wrong as Claudia somehow planned ahead of time to cheat off Claudia and left a string of evidence. What really kinda sucked about this book is that even though plenty of people knew that Claudia's older sister--Janine the genius--helped her study for the math test, no one seemed to take this into account when considering whether she might have cheated--her parents disbelieved her, her teachers disbelieved her, and even her friends disbelieved her, yet some jerk girl in her class had enough faith in her sister's tutoring abilities to conspire to cheat off her. Okay.
What do You think about Claudia And The Middle School Mystery (1991)?
Mr. Zorzi deserves the Bonehead Teacher of the Babysitters Club award. In this book, Claudia and another student are questioned about their identical math test answers. Mr. Zorzi automatically suspects that Claudia is the cheater -- on the evidence that the other student said she didn't do it. Poor Claudia, who really is innocent, knows it's futile to take the same approach: nobody would believe her because she has a history of getting bad grades.It's easy to sympathize with Claudia's plight. A lot of kids can understand being blamed for something they didn't do, so it is gratifying that Claudia and the Babysitters Club and her sister Janine are able to prove that Claudia had earned her A- honestly. Sadly, it's not a scenario that would play out in the real world: today the teacher would just flunk both of the students. But it's nice to see the characters correct an unfair situation.
—Kate
Claudia is the victim of the 'perfect' crime: cheating off the probably-learning-disabled kid.Janine helps Claudia study extra hard for a math test, and Claudia’s thrilled when she earns an A-. But her teacher isn’t so thrilled. Shawna, the girl who sits next to Claudia, got the same grade, and the same points off for the same questions. Claudia is subjected to disciplinary action for cheating. Claudia is distraught; it seems so unfair that she should work so hard just to be accused, and she doesn’t know how to tell her parents she’s been branded a cheat. The BSC rallies round and spies on Shawna and her friends; and while they do hear Shawna bragging that she overheard Claudia explaining her extra study efforts and decided that cheating on her would be the perfect crime, they realize that this knowledge is unprovable and therefore useless to them. Claudia finally makes an agreement with the teacher to retake the test. She does well, but Shawna, caught by surprise by the teacher’s request that she do the same, does not. Claudia’s name is cleared.In a thematically similar but not identical subplot, one of the Pike triplets breaks a window, but the boys, on an all-for-one-and-one-for-all kick, refuse to say which one it was, so Mrs. Pike grounds all three until the culprit comes forward. Mallory and Jessi stage a dramatic reenactment and trick the boys into identifying the window-breaker, but even after they’ve been outsmarted they all insist on accepting equal punishment on principle.This was my absolute favorite BSC book as a kid. I liked school milieus, especially school stories with actual schoolwork in them (there is at least one math problem you can actually do), and I had a fascination with Claudia as struggling student, perhaps because I myself was such a straight-A nerd. I liked that the predicament made sense, and that it arose even though all of the players acted logically (the weakest link is Shawna, who certainly took a gamble by cheating off a bad a student--it seems unlikely that she would happen to hear about Janine’s assistance and foresee that it would actually help this time, since I’m sure Janine has unsuccessfully helped Claudia in the past. But it’s not impossible.) I sympathized with the sense of unfairness and futility of Claudia’s situation (I had a deep sense that elementary and middle school life was unfair and futile.) I liked the sense of the BSC working as a team, rallying around Claudia and maintaining a "we can do anything!" hope even when Claudia is hopeless. I liked that in this book, Claudia and Janine are such great allies. Janine really goes to bat for Claudia, acting as a surrogate parent at the school and advocating for her even when Claudia’s actual parents don’t entirely believe her. I felt that the themes of honor and brotherhood were bad ass.Still do, really. I suspect this is an undeserved 5 stars, but I had a lot of affection for this one.Timing: Schooltime, obviously. There aren’t many details other than that. Revised Timeline: This should occur around December or January of tenth grade, but Claudia doesn’t seem to be dressed warmly enough. In her Under the Sea themed outfit, she wears a tropical fish skirt (which I can’t believe is lined) and jellies. Maybe she doesn’t mind suffering for fashion.
—Laura Hughes
