Mary Anne's Bad-Luck Mystery (1988) - Plot & Excerpts
Once upon a time, I mentioned to my sister that this was one of my favorite Baby-Sitters Club books, and that it was a shame that the family copy had been lost. Very soon after--the next day, perhaps--she walked up to me and handed me a new copy, signed by Ann M. Martin herself, which she'd found in a second-hand bookshop. A startling example, perhaps, of whatever cognitive bias it is that makes us likely to find things we've been prompted to look for, which is the theme of the book.I'm sure there are or have been thousands of quizzes on the theme of "What Baby-Sitters Club Member Are You?", and for that genre of quiz, they might be more insightful than usual. (Though I'm hard-pressed to imagine what questions might reveal that you are a "Dawn" or a "Jessi".) For me there is no question: I have always been a Mary Anne, overly sensitive, shy, and prone to self-doubt. Accordingly she is my favorite, along with Claudia, whose creativity I also identified with, though not the self-confidence it took to wear all those outfits. (You might say Mary Anne is who I am, Claudia is who I'd like to be, or at the very least, who I'd like to date.) The first BSC book I read was Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls, where Claudia faces a Halloween mystery; this time Mary Anne gets one.For a couple of minutes no one spoke. We watched the storm and the flickering lights. Finally, Claudia said, "This reminds me of last Halloween.""What does?" I asked."Almost everything."Like Claudia's mystery, the answer to the riddle lies in the affairs of the middle-school heart; unlike Claudia, Mary Anne lacks both the experience of being envied and the background of mystery novel reading that would arm her to solve it easily. Overall, I've always preferred the spookier episodes in the BSC annals. That's my experience of baby-sitting, myself, especially once the kids go to sleep: the eeriness of being in someone else's silent house, with no adults to protect you.My favorite sequence of the book is when they go to the library to try to find a magical antidote to the bad-luck curse that afflicts Mary Anne after throwing away a chain letter. Mary Anne, an avid reader, expects essentially to find the Necronomicon in some forbidden annex, and is disappointed: "The new library doesn't have any lost, dusty, spooky corners. The witchcraft books are just in a row of other books on metal shelves under a buzzing fluorescent light." They do have spells, but (as I myself found, when, under this book's influence, I tried to read a book called Ceremonial Magic that my dad owned) their instructions are impossible, calling for months of work or obtaining "scrapings from the underside of a sea snake".In the end I perhaps would prefer that Mary Anne's solution to the puzzle be better connected to her ongoing maturation and growing self-confidence. (Her dad, whose lightening-up from the terrifying, borderline abusive rigidity of the first few books parallels her growth, does contribute to the resolution, at least.) I guess her coming-of-age storyline was essentially finished and arrested when she got together with Logan, which is disappointing to realize: shy girl stands up to dad, comes out of her shell, gets the prince, The End. I think I liked her best in a book she's not even the protagonist of, Boy-Crazy Stacey, where pre-Logan she gets shit done and cleans up all of Stacey's messes while remaining sympathetic to the obvious train-wreck she's heading towards. Anyway, at least this is a relative high-point for Mary Anne before she's turned into an idiot hick in the next book, Stacey's Mistake, if you're reading them in order (which I never did). That book sucks anyway. This one has the non-spooky magic books, Mary Anne in a cat costume, Claudia shutting Kristy down and Mary Anne playing her like a fiddle, Jackie Rodowsky's robot, and Claire wondering if the bird knows Santa Claus. This is the one to get.
Mary Anne's a bit of a superstitious girl, so when she gets a chain letter and throws it out because her friends convince her to, she regrets it. Coincidentally, she then receives a sinister "bad luck charm" in the mail and is too chicken to defy the accompanying instructions that insist she must wear it. Various unlucky things keep happening to her and around her, and she's convinced she is the target of supernatural rage. How far will she go to appease the wickedness that's targeted her, and can her friends help her determine its source?I'm afraid this plot is as thin as vegetable broth, which really bothered me. Most mysteries of this type lean heavily on coincidence and villains making mistakes to reveal themselves, but in this one, there was a veritable landslide of "bad luck" occurrences Mary Anne attributes to the bad luck charm--most of which were not organized by the actual person behind the ruse--and without those, the "curse" would not have been as convincing. Furthermore, the perpetrator of this plot was phenomenally sloppy. She even referred to Mary Anne's "cursed" locket as a bad luck charm in front of her and Mary Anne still didn't make the connection that hey, maybe this girl has something to do with it, eh? And then everything becomes even more shallow when the motivation is powered by a girl who wants to "steal" Mary Anne's boyfriend. Because you know, if you freak her out enough and threaten her, surely she'll just stop having a relationship and you'll get in line and receive him as yours. What? It's so petty as a motivation, and completely unbelievable. Sometimes BSC books do a great job connecting us to characters, but this one generally involved everyone being manipulated blatantly by the author's outline.
What do You think about Mary Anne's Bad-Luck Mystery (1988)?
I've always hated mysteries, so I wasn't very excited about reading this one. But then it was worse because the "bad luck" stuff was so contrived in this book. Mary Anne gets a chain letter, throws it out because her friends think it's stupid, and then whenever anything bad happens to her she thinks she's cursed. But then, ridiculously, a girl who apparently wants to steal her boyfriend decides to try to trick her and anonymously sends her a bad luck charm that she's too chicken not to wear. You know, because the note said she had to wear it. Then the girl who sent it to her lets it slip that it's a bad luck charm while speaking to her, and yet Mary Anne's oblivious little self can't grasp that this chick is messing with her. I remember the group eventually figuring it out before falling for a trap--the rival girl and her group were planning to scare her in the graveyard after commanding her to go there at night, hoping to make her look weak in front of her boyfriend. Instead of behaving like sitting ducks, they come up with some elaborate plan to scare the rival gang again. I remember thinking it was a little much, and kinda felt sorry for one girl in the rival group who was whispering "oh help!" to herself. Aw! Poor kids wetting their pants! So the bad guys are shamed and there's no bad luck and everything's wonderful again. I hate mysteries. (The description of the locket kinda made me uncomfortable, though--it seemed sinister.)
—Swankivy
Fantastic books for young girls getting into reading!! Great stories about friendship and life lessons. The characters deal with all sorts of situations and often find responsible solutions to problems.I loved this series growing up and wanted to start my own babysitting business with friends. Great lessons in entrepreneurship for tweens.The books may be dated with out references to modern technology but the story stands and lessons are still relevant.Awesome books that girls will love! And the series grows with them! Terrific Author!
—April
