this is the one where mr. & mrs. ramsey invite aunt cecelia to come live with them & help out now that mrs. ramsey is going back to work (at an advertising firm, like 92% of all working mothers in stoneybrook). cecelia is mr. ramsey's older sister--much older, as far as i can tell, if jessi's parents are close in age. cecelia has children of her own, but they are grown & she was recently widowed, while mr. ramsey has an infant son. so there's like a twenty year age difference between cecelia & mr. ramsey? hmmmm.anyway, jessi & becca are not psyched about this development. jessi is still upset because cecelia acted like it was jessi's fault when becca got stranded on that desert island off the coast of connecticut. jessi & becca are used to have a certain degree of independence & autonomy, & cecelia treats them like babies. & even with squirt, who is a baby, jessi is upset because cecelia doesn't spend much time playing with him or engaging with him. she leaves him in his high chair while she cleans & plunks him down in front of "sesame street," she won't let jessi & becca take him for walks, & she lets him nap too late in the day. she also forces jessi & becca to snack on cookies, rather than the sandwiches to which they are accustomed (& jessi is quick to specify that they aren't even good cookies, but some kind of healthy grain bar situation), & once when jessi is ten minutes late coming from from a babysitting job, cecelia won't let her attend a babysitters club meeting. which is pretty fucking out of line. you'd think mr. & mrs. ramsey would have had a detailed chat with cecelia before she moved in, detailing the kids' after-school responsibilities & privileges. cecelia won't even let jessi ride her bike to mallory's house because cecelia hasn't met mallory, & she almost doesn't let jessi leave for a scheduled sitting job.not that jessi & becca handle things all that well. they leave fake spiders in cecelia's bed & fill her shoes with sahving cream, hoping to drive her out of the house. it doesn't work.subplot: the stoneybrook elementary school science fair is coming up, & various babysitters are helping out various kids with their entries. jessi is helping jackie rowdowsky build a real exploding volcano. but mostly she is just doing the project for him. all jackie wants to do is make a mess, & jessi forces him to memorize a speech about igenous rocks & shit. when jackie bombs in front of the judges because he failed to actually learn anything & can only repeat that facts jessi made him memorize verbatim, jessi realizes that she was babying & bossing jackie the same way cecelia has been doing to her. this motivates her to have a talk with her parents, who proceed to talk to cecelia, & everything gets better. although i had to roll my eyes at the part where cecelia claimed that she came down like a ton of bricks on the girls because she feared she wouldn't be as good a babysitter as jessi is. really? a grown woman who has raised children of her own feared she wouldn't measure up against an 11-year-old? unless cecelia's kids are ritual murderers/cannibals or never learned how to use their own thumbs or something, i think cecelia has little to fear.this one was kind of boring.
I remember thinking that this one was another good example of kids reacting to problems in highly inefficient, silly ways. In this case, Jessi is frustrated with her Aunt Cecelia becoming her caretaker and suddenly turning into a dictator (questioning her babysitting jobs, controlling what she eats, etc.). So she and her sister decide the obvious thing to do is play stupid pranks on their aunt so she'll want to leave. This reminds me of the ridiculous crap Dawn pulled to get Mary Anne out of her room in a previous book. Why do these kids have to learn over and over again that being a passive-aggressive jerk to adults is something you probably ought to not resort to, especially since everything is fixed as soon as you just talk to the grown-ups and tell them how you feel? Communication, kids, communication! Of course, it wouldn't be a Baby-Sitters Club book without a remarkably parallel plot in the kids' babysitting lives, so Jessi finds herself babying and bossing one of her sitting charges around until she realizes what she did to him is a lot like what Aunt Cecelia is doing to her. Surprise!
What do You think about Jessi's Baby-sitter (1990)?
Jessi's mom has decided to go back to work and they need somebody to watch Squirt during the day and Becca after school. So Jessi's dad's sister, Aunt Cecelia, is going to move in with them. She's apparently way older than her brother, because she is a widow(er?) with grown kids and doesn't want to live at home alone anymore. Jessi and Becca are horrified by this turn of events, but of course, they don't sit down and have a rational discussion with their parents. No, they decide to play stupid pranks on her to make her want to leave. Because pranks always work out well. Aunt Cecelia moves in with a UHaul stuffed full of all her old crap and they have to cram it in anywhere it will fit. Jessi is upset because her room doesn't say "Jessi" anymore but "Jessi and some old lady" haha!!Full review here!
—Jenn
Jessi's Aunt Cecelia is a drag. When she moves in with the family, she suddenly starts telling Jessi what to do and treating her like a baby, commenting on her diet and trying to control whether she pursues her babysitting. Jessi's had it, and she hopes her actions will make Aunt Cecelia feel as unwelcome as her unsolicited comments feel!This felt like a wholly unnecessary book to me because its problems are solved by doing what every other book has advocated: ENGAGING IN COMMUNICATION. I cannot understand why so many of these books feature one of the babysitters getting upset at someone else and thinking it's going to solve the problem if they just treat that person like crap, harass them, scare them, or do something otherwise passive aggressive to them. I also thought it was a bit of a stretch to have Jessi realizing she's being too controlling herself in her babysitting life. The parallels that most of the books try to draw between the babysitter's life and the babysitter's charge's life seem so thin.
—Julie Decker
