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Title: Kristy + Bart = ?
WonderClub
Item Number: 9780785775263
Number: 1
Product Description: Kristy + Bart = ?
Universal Product Code (UPC): 9780785775263
WonderClub Stock Keeping Unit (WSKU): 9780785775263
Rating: 2.5/5 based on 2 Reviews
Image Location: https://wonderclub.com/images/covers/52/63/9780785775263.jpg
Weight: 0.200 kg (0.44 lbs)
Width: 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Heigh : 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Depth: 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Date Added: August 25, 2020, Added By: Ross
Date Last Edited: August 25, 2020, Edited By: Ross
Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
$99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub (9296 total ratings) |
Edward Downing
reviewed Kristy + Bart = ? on November 23, 2017[The Reckoning isn't kicked off by any particular event. Kristy notices that Bart has been gradually pushing their relationship into more romantic territory by calling her "girlfriend" in front of his friends and initiating more physical affection, including kissing and arm-around-the-shoulders. She has conflicting feelings about this. Although she claims kissing is "no big deal," "fun," and something she and Bart have done before, she describes their PDA in profoundly joyless and uncomfortable terms, saying that Bart's fingers dangling off her her arm look like a bunch of bananas and other random unsexy analogies that indicate pretty strongly that she is not attracted to him.
When she and Bart are caught kissing in front of a baseball game on TV, Kristy's parents ground her harshly. Kristy blames Bart, giving her the excuse she needs to cut him out of her life. Then she feels remorseful, and misses him, so she asks him to go back to being just friends. She feels great about this, until he rescinds a prior dance invitation. She wants things to go back to exactly how they were - when they were still ambiguous - but they never can.
In some ways, I'm excited this this idea is finally being addressed: I mean, really, DOES Kristy like Bart "that way"? It's always been an open question. Obviously, I'm invested in any outcome that preserves my deep-seated need for Kristy to be a lesbian, but that's my issue. A book with this premise could have been a good example of how to react when a boy you like as a friend wants more and you don't.
But the execution in this book is cringeworthy in ways both intended and unintended. It's a confusing book, somewhat aptly because Kristy is so confused about her feelings, but the author also seems not to have a consistent theory. Sometimes Kristy seems so grossed out and upset by kissing, but other times it's nbd/fun. At various points she is both freaked out by Bart calling her his girlfriend and by his not doing so. Her awkward, multi-stage breakup is muddled and confusing, and while that's realistic I suppose, it's not very narratively satisfying. In the end, the lesson is "people mature at different rates, so don't worry if you're 13 and your friends are dating but you don't want to," which is a good lesson... I just feel like it could have been presented more coherently.
The subplot has the Baby-sitters creating a Guinness Book style book of records of the various weird, unimpressive things their charges have done.
Ghostwriter: Peter Lerangis. You can tell because of its "juicy gossip" content and the humorous narration style. I really like Lerangis's voice for Logan, Sunny and Ducky in the California Diaries, and sometimes Jessi and Dawn, but his Kristy feels off the mark to me. Maybe it's just that he's a little more off the reins than usual in this book and his schtick becomes grating. It's ture that Kristy's a high-energy tomboy sportsfan, and can be funny, but her strong sense of responsibility and citizenship are missing here, and they are some of her most important qualities.
Most Profoundly Upsetting Part of This Book: After coming home early to find Kristy kissing Bart, Kristy's mother grounds her, not to her home, but to her ROOM for two days. She can't leave except to go to the bathroom. Her mother brings her food at mealtimes but doesn't stay to engage with her. As Kristy tests various boundaries, her mother adds addendums to the rules, until the terms of Kristy's grounding are that she is not allowed to speak (on the phone, through the window, through the door of her room to family members, even to herself) or be seen through the window. The arms race of Kristy trying to get around the spirit of her grounding and her mother modifying the rules is presented as a comical sequence, which makes it all the more upsetting. Kristy reacting as if it's solitary confinement is supposed to show that she's melodramatic, but it IS solitary confinement! This is a book that is flip about child abuse.
Granted I don't know what a "good" grounding is supposed to look like (it's a tool my parents didn't employ), but clearly neither does Lerangis. I don't doubt that there are teenage girls out there who have been outsize punished for kissing a boy, but I'd never expect that kind of reaction from Kristy's mother and stepfather as they have been characterized so far in the series. Honestly, I think it's kind of dangerous to write a book where good, reasonable parents are shown casually dishing out this kind of cruel, punitive, Puritanically sex-negative punishment. It says to a child who has experiences a similar situation, "That was normal, that was good parenting."
It's SO EASY to come up with the types of punishments that a child would find deeply upsetting but a parent would consider reasonable. Off the top of my head:
- They could have kept her from attending a particular event she wanted to go to. There's nothing specific in the book that would warrant a melodramatic "ohhh noooo" reaction from Kristy, but something easily could have been set up.
- They could have simply given her a concerned lecture/discussion about Feelings and Boys and The Birds and the Bees. This is definitely what I see Elizabeth Brewer doing, and it IS good parenting, but Kristy would have found it so mortifying and awkward that I can see her swearing revenge on Bart for even getting her into this situation.
- They could have put her on baby-sitting probation. This is a logical response since the kissing technically happened while Kristy was baby-sitting (the kids were in bed). And this is a punishment that would have deeply humiliated Kristy, who prides herself on being an A+ sitter. How can the president of the baby-sitting club be on baby-sitting probation? She's the ur-sitter! She would have had to go back to the club and shamefacedly request that all her scheduled sitting jobs be shifted to other members. She would have felt terrible that she was inconveniencing so many people, and horrified at the possibility that her clients would ask or would find out the reason. Worst of all, she would completely recognize that the punishment was a fair one (she would have had the same reaction if she found out one of her fellow club members had been watching TV and kissing a boy on a sitting job, even if the kids WERE asleep), so she'd have nobody to blame but herself - herself and Bart.
GAH IT'S SO EASY TO IMPROVE WHY DID THE EDITORS APPROVE THIS HORRIBLE SOLITARY CONFINEMENT SCENARIO
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