Karen's New Year

Baby-Sitters Little Sister #14

by Ann M. Martin

It's fun to be a Baby-sitters' Little Sister! For New Year's Eve, Karen thinks everyone should make a promise. Hannie is going to stop biting her nails. Kristy promises not to talk to her boyfriend on the phone so much. And Karen makes the most promises of all ― nine! But pretty soon, everyone starts breaking their promises. And her brothers and sisters are calling Karen a spy! Poor Karen. Why is everyone being bad except her?

Genres: Childrens, Fiction, Middle Grade, Chapter Books, Young Adult, Family Drama, Drama

112 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Ann Matthews Martin was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane. After graduating from Smith College, Ann became a teacher and then an editor of children's books. She's now a full-time writer.

Ann gets the ideas for her books from many different places. Some are based on personal experiences, while others are based on childhood memories and feelings. Many are written about contemporary problems or events. All of Ann's characters, even the members of the Baby-sitters Club, are made up. But many of her characters are based on real people. Sometimes Ann names her characters after people she knows, and other times she simply chooses names that she likes.

Ann has always enjoyed writing. Even before she was old enough to write, she would dictate stories to her mother to write down for her. Some of her favorite authors at that time were Lewis Carroll, P. L. Travers, Hugh Lofting, Astrid Lindgren, and Roald Dahl. They inspired her to become a writer herself.

Since ending the BSC series in 2000, Ann’s writing has concentrated on single novels, many of which are set in the 1960s.

After living in New York City for many years, Ann moved to the Hudson Valley in upstate New York where she now lives with her dog, Sadie, and her cats, Gussie, Willy and Woody. Her hobbies are reading, sewing, and needlework. Her favorite thing to do is to make clothes for children.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/annmma...

Reviews

[Suz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Karen and a wedding?!
My first Little Sister.
I loved reading this on a rainy summer Sydney day. I own all the little sister books and I randomly chose this one out of my pile. They are very short, written in the voice of Karen who is only just 7, so the quirky voice she speaks in is quite mature for her age.

Here it is new years eve and she is not one bit happy her loved ones are not sticking to their resolutions. I found the solution to this via the adults was quite harsh, but the lesson was learned.

I cannot wait to make my way through little sister, and the original BSC series. Bring it on! (and I will be looking out for annotations from my now 21 and 23 yo daughters - I found one this morning that landed literally on my feet!)

[Chloe (Always Booked) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Gosh Karen-- she's such a little snot, but I also get it so much! I think she's an Enneagram 1 maybe. In this book, its New Years and everyone in her big family makes resolutions and Karen keeps a notebook detailing every time they fail. She also resolves to make Ricky Torres marry her? She learns a lesson about tattling and spying on other people, but I hope we can continue to feel endeared to Karen as the series goes on instead of just annoyed by her.

[Pastel Paperback · Rating 2 out of 5]

Snuck this one in right at the end of the year, as I spent the evening comforting my five-year-old daughter, who was distraught listening to fireworks blow up in our neighborhood. Pretty epic NYE, I know, I know.

Karen at her most annoying, which is saying something.

But, I did like that it introduced the concepts of resolutions to younger kids who may not understand them. Although don't be like Karen and make it your mission to make everyone feel bad for breaking them.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Parenting fail.

Even compared to other LS books the parenting in this one is bad. I'm talking Sweet Valley bad. If Karen's parents, any of the four of them, had sat her down right at the beginning and had explained to her properly what a resolution was the whole book never would have happened.

There's the big one, but there's a million other examples all through the book. Including one where Karen's get blamed for Emily Michelle crying even though she was crying because Watson yelled at David Michael. And sure, it was something Karen did that made David Michael be a pain, but Elizabeth acts like Karen did on purpose. And the only reason she was acting that way was because no one had explained to her what a New Year's resolution was.

All in all this book make me angry and feel sorry for Karen.

I hate Karen so feeling sorry for her just made me more angry.

[Sayo -bibliotequeish- · Rating 3 out of 5]

When you were too old for childrens books, but too young for The Baby Sitters Club.
Ann M. Martin really is a genius to piggy back on the success of The Baby Sitters Club.

After reading the little sisters series I remember feeling like a real adult opening up that first BSC book.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1\2 ** cute book

[Annora · Rating 5 out of 5]

Karen was a brat, and was actually called on it. She actually faced ramifications that were appropriate. If only that happened more often.

[Jaclyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Karen goes overboard with the concept of New Year's resolutions and basically makes a big stink on how she's the only one even bothering to keep her resolutions (though as Karen's Mommy rightly points out, Karen's edited her resolutions to make them easier to keep). Karen also tattles on friends and family members whom she catches not keeping their resolutions, and at least in the case of Nannie, is unnecessarily judgey: Karen overhears Nannie saying she's too tired to keep doing her physical therapy exercises one evening, and Karen interprets that to mean Nannie's not trying her best. And like, wait till you get older, Karen Brewer, see how far your best gets you then...

Anyway, all's well that ends well: Watson gives Karen a stern talking-to about how she's hurting people's feelings with her judginess and tattling. Watson also enlists Karen's Mommy's help to give Karen a taste of her own medicine and see how it feels to have others tattling on her whenever she falls short of meeting her own resolutions.

To be fair, Karen does take the resolution thing waaaayyyy too seriously at first, and comes up with a list of like ten or so, which is obviously impossible to keep. And some resolutions in themselves are impossible to keep already, like always getting A's in spelling. So Karen learns a good lesson here.

Oh, and here's where she asks Ricky to marry her. :-) Which he does in Karen's in Love.

[Gemma Kraus · Rating 3 out of 5]

Karen's new year is a very fun and entertaining book.I think a real child could have gone through the
same events.Even I got motavated to do New years resolutions. It has some romance at the end but that's all the bad things. I highly recommend you to read it.
-Gemma, 3rd grade

[Mande Garrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Karen learns its not nice to spy and tattle.

[Phoenix · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book makes me want to kill myself of how uninteresting it is. I forgot about this book for a while it did not take me over three months to finish it.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Karen is seriously so insufferable sometimes.

[Nancy Bielski · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not one of my favorites of this series, but Kate liked it.

[caroline · Rating 2 out of 5]

Karen is such a little shit in this book. I’m glad they all put her in her place.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hahahaha Karen changing her resolutions so she's still keeping them is such a vibe.

[Joy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The parents are always so terrible in this series. No wonder the kid is the way she is.

[Luna · Rating 1 out of 5]

Doomsday strikes Stoneybrook. Karen and her family have to fight back against the imperial warlords who are threatening to take over Earth. Each member of Karen's family makes a vow to help prevent the aliens from winning. But, through reasons out of their control, they each break their vow and bring the aliens one step closer to wreaking havoc over the small town in Connecticut. Only Karen can help them, but to do will involve spying on her own side. Can she live with that guilt?

Duh, of course she can, she's Karen.

[Elise · Rating 1 out of 5]

Karen was horrible in this book. She made everyone make New Years resolutions and then kept a notebook of them breaking them and reads them out at the table. Hypocrite, cause she changed her own resolutions everytime she broke one and her family and friends taught her a lesson though I doubt she learned. One of the first signs that she would grow up to be a Karen haha

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

Karens big sister told her to make a new resolution. Karen is the only one keeping hers, so she starts spying on everyone to see if they are really keeping their New Years Resolutions. Then others start spying on Karen to see if she keeps her resolution.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

In which Karen resolves to rat out everyone who breaks their New Year's resolutions, taking a page from Harriet the Spy.

[Jackie Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

What young girl did not love the Baby-Sitters Club and Karen, the Baby-Sitters Little Sister?

[Sarah Lu]

Not much to say about this one. Karen learns that New Year's Resolutions are not laws, they are just suggestions to help better oneself.

[Alyssa McCloskey · Rating 5 out of 5]

really good

[Jamie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The books where Karen is a tattletale are especially annoying, lol.

[Mellanie C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Karen's approach to New Year's resolutions leaves her family very unhappy.