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The Baby-Sitters Club Portrait Collection #3
Dawn's Book
Writing her autobiography after moving back to California, Dawn records such memories as the time she met her best friend Sunny, her adventures with the Baby-sitter's Club, and her decision to leave Stoneybrook.
149 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
11 people are currently reading
224 people want to read
About the author
Ann M. Martin
1,102 books3,046 followersAnn 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...
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...
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
March 24, 2018
dawn’s portrait collection book, written by ghostwriter Jeanne Betancourt, is just what you’d expect, considering it’s about dawn. it’s mostly annoying and pointless (dawn is the master of sensationalizing minor events), but some of the stories are fun and interesting. here are her stories:
at age 6: a new girl (sunny, who we know from all of dawn’s california books) moves to the neighborhood and is super weird and hippyish so dawn doesn't want to be friends with her. but then one day they're shopping in a department store with their moms, and their moms get stuck in an elevator. the hippie girl is able to communicate with her mom using morse code and helps save everyone inside by getting information from the folks that are stuck in there and conveying it to the emergency workers. dawn ends up becoming best friends with her.
at age 10: dawn goes on a trip to san francisco with her family for her granny and pop pop’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. granny and pop pop bicker a lot and dawn thinks they're not in love anymore, but when pop pop is late to a special dinner they’re supposed to have granny freaks out so that means they are in love? I guess? because love is bickering and being terrible to each other but then still caring enough that you freak out when you think your loved one is dead?
at age 12: dawn is stressed because her parents are fighting all the time. her stress manifests as a paranoia about fires and a need to practice fire safety all the time (dawn definitely has some mental health stuff that she never seems to work on…). coincidentally, there ends up being a fire at a house where she’s babysitting. she handles it well and afterwards freaks out less about fires, because she knows she can stay levelheaded in the case of a fire.
at age 13: in what is BY FAR the most interesting story in this book, dawn has moved to stoneybrook and is working for the bsc. she accepts a sitting job for a new family and finds out by snooping through their mail that the girl she’s babysitting will be left behind at school. she accidentally lets it slip to the girl, and the girl tells her mom who is furious with dawn since she hadn’t been planning on telling her until closer to when school would start. dawn worries that she will call the bsc to complain, but it doesn’t end up happening. still, dawn is taught a lesson and will likely never snoop like that again.
highlights:
-baby dawn loves playdoh and sticks it in her ears, thinking it's earrings.
-this description of the winslows' (sunny’s parents’) car: "the car was a small, banged-up red thing painted all over with brightly colored flowers and white peace symbols. a plastic flower bobbed on the tip of the radio antenna."
-when the winslows arrive at their new house, they call their house their "new home of peace and love" and dance in circles on the lawn. I’m reminded of this store/restaurant I recently went to:
-sunny asks if dawn wonders what’s pouring out of the big dipper, and jeff says green slime. I love jeff.
-funny how dawn thinks her parents are desperately in love and her grandparents aren't, but which couple is together a couple years later?
lowlights/nitpicks:
-how convenient that vista (dawn’s school in california, since she just moved -- see Farewell, Dawn) has the exact same assignment that sms has!
dawn's kid kit:
-magic markers
-easy-to-read book (a madeline one)
at age 6: a new girl (sunny, who we know from all of dawn’s california books) moves to the neighborhood and is super weird and hippyish so dawn doesn't want to be friends with her. but then one day they're shopping in a department store with their moms, and their moms get stuck in an elevator. the hippie girl is able to communicate with her mom using morse code and helps save everyone inside by getting information from the folks that are stuck in there and conveying it to the emergency workers. dawn ends up becoming best friends with her.
at age 10: dawn goes on a trip to san francisco with her family for her granny and pop pop’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. granny and pop pop bicker a lot and dawn thinks they're not in love anymore, but when pop pop is late to a special dinner they’re supposed to have granny freaks out so that means they are in love? I guess? because love is bickering and being terrible to each other but then still caring enough that you freak out when you think your loved one is dead?
at age 12: dawn is stressed because her parents are fighting all the time. her stress manifests as a paranoia about fires and a need to practice fire safety all the time (dawn definitely has some mental health stuff that she never seems to work on…). coincidentally, there ends up being a fire at a house where she’s babysitting. she handles it well and afterwards freaks out less about fires, because she knows she can stay levelheaded in the case of a fire.
at age 13: in what is BY FAR the most interesting story in this book, dawn has moved to stoneybrook and is working for the bsc. she accepts a sitting job for a new family and finds out by snooping through their mail that the girl she’s babysitting will be left behind at school. she accidentally lets it slip to the girl, and the girl tells her mom who is furious with dawn since she hadn’t been planning on telling her until closer to when school would start. dawn worries that she will call the bsc to complain, but it doesn’t end up happening. still, dawn is taught a lesson and will likely never snoop like that again.
highlights:
-baby dawn loves playdoh and sticks it in her ears, thinking it's earrings.
-this description of the winslows' (sunny’s parents’) car: "the car was a small, banged-up red thing painted all over with brightly colored flowers and white peace symbols. a plastic flower bobbed on the tip of the radio antenna."
-when the winslows arrive at their new house, they call their house their "new home of peace and love" and dance in circles on the lawn. I’m reminded of this store/restaurant I recently went to:
-sunny asks if dawn wonders what’s pouring out of the big dipper, and jeff says green slime. I love jeff.
-funny how dawn thinks her parents are desperately in love and her grandparents aren't, but which couple is together a couple years later?
lowlights/nitpicks:
-how convenient that vista (dawn’s school in california, since she just moved -- see Farewell, Dawn) has the exact same assignment that sms has!
dawn's kid kit:
-magic markers
-easy-to-read book (a madeline one)
May 31, 2011
i'm so relieved that this is the last of the portrait collection books. i like to read them, it's interesting to get some backstory on these characters about whom i have read over 200 books, but i don't like recapping them because they're pretty heavy on exposition & pretty light on plot.
so the gimmick here is that dawn, out in california, attending vista middle school, is also assigned an autobiography writing project. she says that her stoneybrook friends teased her when she moved back to california, saying that she was only doing it to avoid the autobiography assignment. now she thinks it's a fderal law that all eighth graders have to write their autobiographies. i'm just gonna say that this was never an assignment i had when i was in eighth grade (though i would have loved it). what eighth grade english teacher wants to read & grade like ninety autobiographies?
dawn unimaginatively opens with her baby years. apparently she was a week late in being born. sharon finally went into labor after taking a long walk on the beach. both she & dawn speculate that this walk on the beach is what has inspired dawn's life-long love of the ocean. because, surely, had sharon chosen to walk instead along the side of the highway, dawn would love highways. this is so stupid. dawn says that she took her first steps when her parents took her to the beach one day. she stood up & walked to the surf. that sounds safe for a baby. she goes on & on about how much she loves play-doh when she was a kid. she even tells this rather disgusting story about putting white play-doh in a big pot of chili her mom made for dinner, insisting that it was sour cream. way to ruin dinner, dawn. she tells an even more disgusting story about her mom panicking when she walked into dawn's room & saw something red in her ears. she thought dawn was, like, bleeding from the ears, but she had just stuffed red play-doh in her ears. this book is really making me think twice about wanting a child. kids are gross though, i guess. better to make your peace with it early. she also writes about being very resentful when jack & sharon brought jeff home from the hospital. dawn thought she was the baby, but suddenly everyone was fussing over jeff all the time. as an oldest child, i can relate to that. when my parents brought my sister home from the hospital, i smacked her across the face & told them to take her back (i was a year & a half old).
when dawn was six, her parents moved to a new house in palo alto. lots of other families in the neighborhood had kids, but they were all at least a couple of years younger than dawn. she was bummed because she didn't have any neighborhood friends her own age. so when the winslows bought the house two doors down, & dawn learned that they had a daughter her age, she was really excited. until she actually met the winslows & found out that they were giant hippies. mrs. winslow & sunny wore long prairie dresses & no shoes. mr. winslow had a long ponytail & drove a car covered in peace signs, with a flower on the antennae. when they arrived at their new house to move in, they did a ridiculous spinning hippie dance on the front lawn before they started carrying boxes inside. mr. winslow dug up the front yard & planted white flowers in the shape of a peace sign. bet the neighbors loved that. sunny invites dawn over to play, but dawn is confused by the fact that sunny's only toys are a wooden train, some blocks, & a rag doll. the winslows don't have TV & mrs. winslow just sits down right in the front yard to tie-dye some curtains.
dawn decides that sunny is just too weird to become a friend.
unfortunately, the day dawn makes this decision, sharon says that she & dawn are going to be escorting sunny & mrs. winslow to a department store for a girls' afternoon out. mrs. winslow has to pick up some home goods, like wooden spoons & shit. sharon & mrs. winslow deposit the girls at a toy store & tell them they'll be back soon. dawn decides to try to alienate sunny by looking at all the plastic barbie stuff. sunny is in the middle of giving dawn a lecture about the dangers of plastic (now we know where dawn learned it) when a big storm blows through & knocks out the power. dawn starts to panic, but sunny rescues her with a clown doll that has a light-up nose. they use the doll as a flashlight & track down an employee. sunny takes control & explains that their mothers are on the second floor & should be coming for them. the employee escorts them to home goods, where they learn that sharon & mrs. winslow left right before the power went out. then dawn & sunny see some maintenance guys who explain that an elevator got stuck when the power died. they don't know if anyone is in the elevator. sunny speculates that because no one knows where sharon & mrs. winslow are, they are probably in the elevator.
it turns out that sunny & her mother both know morse code. sunny uses morse code to communicate with her mom inside the elevator. the maintenance dudes have her ask some questions that will help them get the elevator open faster or something. dawn is suddenly proud to be with sunny because sunny stayed so calm & resourceful in an emergency. dawn notices that no one is gawking at sunny's long hippie dress & thinking she's weird for only liking wooden toys. they think sunny is very bright & helpful. for now. just wait 'til she turns 13.
when dawn is 10, her grandparents on her mom's side are celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary. sharon decides to treat them to a special trip to san francisco. this chapter is really fucking boring. basically, granny & pop-pop tease each other a lot & dawn takes this to mean that they don't love each other at all. she spends a lot of time fretting over how awful it must be to be married for fifty years to someone you don't love. she constantly compares granny & pop-pop against her own parents, who stroll around san francisco holding hands & being nice to each other. she thinks she's lucky that her parents love each other. then pop-pop is half an hour late meeting everyone else for dinner (jeff gave him the wrong time) & granny almost has a heart attack waiting for him. not literally. she's just panicked because pop-pop is always punctual. when he finally shows up, dawn sees how much they love each other. but then, even at dinner, she starts fretting over whether or not they got each other anniversary gifts, assuming that if they didn't, they must not really love each other. of course, they did get each other gifts & dawn needs to give it a fucking rest already.
when dawn is 12, her parents' marriage is getting rocky, & dawn has developed a debilitating fear of fire. her parents throw a barbecue & invite the winslows over. jack accidentally sets a stack of newspapers on fire when he knocks a hot coal out of the grill. no word on why the fuck there was a big stack of newspapers laying in the yard right next to the grill. sharon extinguishes the fire pretty quickly, but dawn freaks anyway. she develops a fire action plan for the family, with escape routes & tips on the proper functioning of a fire extinguisher. there's one kind of fun scene where she stages a fire drill at like midnight. her parents yell at her in the hallway while she worries that jeff has slept right through the drill. then the doorbell rings & it's jeff. he had climbed out his bedroom window, per dawn's instructions. jeff is hilarious.
dawn takes a sitting job with clover & daffodil one afternoon. they play outside for most of the day & then go in for a snack. dawn smells smoke. she hustles the kids over to her house & calls 911. turns out some faulty wiring ignited in the kitchen & the room was pretty much consumed by fire. (the rest of the house was okay.) dawn is awarded some kind of good citizen medal for "saving" clover & daffodil from the fire. i remember references to this in some of the other books & it never seemed like it was that big a deal. in this book, the fire is practically a four-alarm conflagration. weird.
the last chapter takes place shortly after dawn moved to stoneybrook & joined the babysitters club. she takes a job with some new clients, a family named lazar. they have an eight-year-old daughter named sandra. sandra really struggles with reading. she's not up to her grade-level at all. she's not even at the grade-level of a kid two years younger than her. while taking a phone message for mrs. lazar, dawn kind of inadvertently reads a letter sent home from stoneybrook elementary, recommending that sandra repeat the second grade. dawn feels really bad for sandra, but she knows she shouldn't have read the letter, so she vows to keep it to herself. the sitting job goes really well.
the lazars call again a few days later, & they specifically request dawn. she takes the job, & again tries to help sandra with her reading. sandra becomes really frustrated & says something about thinking she's stupid. dawn says something about, "repeating the second grade will be a really good thing for you." sandra is like, "what? i already did second grade. now i'm going into third." don't bet on it, kid. this is stoneybrook. they can boot you back to kindergarten at any moment. just ask claudia. dawn is all, "oh, that's right, my mistake," & she distracts sandra with a game.
but when mrs. lazar gets home, sandra runs to her & says, "dawn said i'm repeating second grade." mrs. lazar sends sandra up to her room & confronts dawn. she figures out right away that dawn read the letter. dawn apologizes but mrs. lazar explained that she & her husband had decided not to break the news about being held back to sandra until a few days before school started. she's a worrier & now she'll be worrying about it all summer instead of having fun. dawn apologizes again, but that's not good enough for mrs. lazar. she never hires the BSC again. dawn never tells anyone what happened, & the club has enough new clients that summer that no one notices the loss of the lazars. i kind of question whether it's wise to save the news about being held back for a few days before school. won't that be even more shocking for a kid? for her to think she's going to be going on to third grade with her friends all summer, only to find herself back in the second grade? but what do i know?
dawn gets a A in content, a B in presentation. i want to know what was so shitty about her presentation. not that a B is a shitty grade. i think scholastic just doesn't want us to think the babysitters club members are 100% perfect all the time.
so the gimmick here is that dawn, out in california, attending vista middle school, is also assigned an autobiography writing project. she says that her stoneybrook friends teased her when she moved back to california, saying that she was only doing it to avoid the autobiography assignment. now she thinks it's a fderal law that all eighth graders have to write their autobiographies. i'm just gonna say that this was never an assignment i had when i was in eighth grade (though i would have loved it). what eighth grade english teacher wants to read & grade like ninety autobiographies?
dawn unimaginatively opens with her baby years. apparently she was a week late in being born. sharon finally went into labor after taking a long walk on the beach. both she & dawn speculate that this walk on the beach is what has inspired dawn's life-long love of the ocean. because, surely, had sharon chosen to walk instead along the side of the highway, dawn would love highways. this is so stupid. dawn says that she took her first steps when her parents took her to the beach one day. she stood up & walked to the surf. that sounds safe for a baby. she goes on & on about how much she loves play-doh when she was a kid. she even tells this rather disgusting story about putting white play-doh in a big pot of chili her mom made for dinner, insisting that it was sour cream. way to ruin dinner, dawn. she tells an even more disgusting story about her mom panicking when she walked into dawn's room & saw something red in her ears. she thought dawn was, like, bleeding from the ears, but she had just stuffed red play-doh in her ears. this book is really making me think twice about wanting a child. kids are gross though, i guess. better to make your peace with it early. she also writes about being very resentful when jack & sharon brought jeff home from the hospital. dawn thought she was the baby, but suddenly everyone was fussing over jeff all the time. as an oldest child, i can relate to that. when my parents brought my sister home from the hospital, i smacked her across the face & told them to take her back (i was a year & a half old).
when dawn was six, her parents moved to a new house in palo alto. lots of other families in the neighborhood had kids, but they were all at least a couple of years younger than dawn. she was bummed because she didn't have any neighborhood friends her own age. so when the winslows bought the house two doors down, & dawn learned that they had a daughter her age, she was really excited. until she actually met the winslows & found out that they were giant hippies. mrs. winslow & sunny wore long prairie dresses & no shoes. mr. winslow had a long ponytail & drove a car covered in peace signs, with a flower on the antennae. when they arrived at their new house to move in, they did a ridiculous spinning hippie dance on the front lawn before they started carrying boxes inside. mr. winslow dug up the front yard & planted white flowers in the shape of a peace sign. bet the neighbors loved that. sunny invites dawn over to play, but dawn is confused by the fact that sunny's only toys are a wooden train, some blocks, & a rag doll. the winslows don't have TV & mrs. winslow just sits down right in the front yard to tie-dye some curtains.
dawn decides that sunny is just too weird to become a friend.
unfortunately, the day dawn makes this decision, sharon says that she & dawn are going to be escorting sunny & mrs. winslow to a department store for a girls' afternoon out. mrs. winslow has to pick up some home goods, like wooden spoons & shit. sharon & mrs. winslow deposit the girls at a toy store & tell them they'll be back soon. dawn decides to try to alienate sunny by looking at all the plastic barbie stuff. sunny is in the middle of giving dawn a lecture about the dangers of plastic (now we know where dawn learned it) when a big storm blows through & knocks out the power. dawn starts to panic, but sunny rescues her with a clown doll that has a light-up nose. they use the doll as a flashlight & track down an employee. sunny takes control & explains that their mothers are on the second floor & should be coming for them. the employee escorts them to home goods, where they learn that sharon & mrs. winslow left right before the power went out. then dawn & sunny see some maintenance guys who explain that an elevator got stuck when the power died. they don't know if anyone is in the elevator. sunny speculates that because no one knows where sharon & mrs. winslow are, they are probably in the elevator.
it turns out that sunny & her mother both know morse code. sunny uses morse code to communicate with her mom inside the elevator. the maintenance dudes have her ask some questions that will help them get the elevator open faster or something. dawn is suddenly proud to be with sunny because sunny stayed so calm & resourceful in an emergency. dawn notices that no one is gawking at sunny's long hippie dress & thinking she's weird for only liking wooden toys. they think sunny is very bright & helpful. for now. just wait 'til she turns 13.
when dawn is 10, her grandparents on her mom's side are celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary. sharon decides to treat them to a special trip to san francisco. this chapter is really fucking boring. basically, granny & pop-pop tease each other a lot & dawn takes this to mean that they don't love each other at all. she spends a lot of time fretting over how awful it must be to be married for fifty years to someone you don't love. she constantly compares granny & pop-pop against her own parents, who stroll around san francisco holding hands & being nice to each other. she thinks she's lucky that her parents love each other. then pop-pop is half an hour late meeting everyone else for dinner (jeff gave him the wrong time) & granny almost has a heart attack waiting for him. not literally. she's just panicked because pop-pop is always punctual. when he finally shows up, dawn sees how much they love each other. but then, even at dinner, she starts fretting over whether or not they got each other anniversary gifts, assuming that if they didn't, they must not really love each other. of course, they did get each other gifts & dawn needs to give it a fucking rest already.
when dawn is 12, her parents' marriage is getting rocky, & dawn has developed a debilitating fear of fire. her parents throw a barbecue & invite the winslows over. jack accidentally sets a stack of newspapers on fire when he knocks a hot coal out of the grill. no word on why the fuck there was a big stack of newspapers laying in the yard right next to the grill. sharon extinguishes the fire pretty quickly, but dawn freaks anyway. she develops a fire action plan for the family, with escape routes & tips on the proper functioning of a fire extinguisher. there's one kind of fun scene where she stages a fire drill at like midnight. her parents yell at her in the hallway while she worries that jeff has slept right through the drill. then the doorbell rings & it's jeff. he had climbed out his bedroom window, per dawn's instructions. jeff is hilarious.
dawn takes a sitting job with clover & daffodil one afternoon. they play outside for most of the day & then go in for a snack. dawn smells smoke. she hustles the kids over to her house & calls 911. turns out some faulty wiring ignited in the kitchen & the room was pretty much consumed by fire. (the rest of the house was okay.) dawn is awarded some kind of good citizen medal for "saving" clover & daffodil from the fire. i remember references to this in some of the other books & it never seemed like it was that big a deal. in this book, the fire is practically a four-alarm conflagration. weird.
the last chapter takes place shortly after dawn moved to stoneybrook & joined the babysitters club. she takes a job with some new clients, a family named lazar. they have an eight-year-old daughter named sandra. sandra really struggles with reading. she's not up to her grade-level at all. she's not even at the grade-level of a kid two years younger than her. while taking a phone message for mrs. lazar, dawn kind of inadvertently reads a letter sent home from stoneybrook elementary, recommending that sandra repeat the second grade. dawn feels really bad for sandra, but she knows she shouldn't have read the letter, so she vows to keep it to herself. the sitting job goes really well.
the lazars call again a few days later, & they specifically request dawn. she takes the job, & again tries to help sandra with her reading. sandra becomes really frustrated & says something about thinking she's stupid. dawn says something about, "repeating the second grade will be a really good thing for you." sandra is like, "what? i already did second grade. now i'm going into third." don't bet on it, kid. this is stoneybrook. they can boot you back to kindergarten at any moment. just ask claudia. dawn is all, "oh, that's right, my mistake," & she distracts sandra with a game.
but when mrs. lazar gets home, sandra runs to her & says, "dawn said i'm repeating second grade." mrs. lazar sends sandra up to her room & confronts dawn. she figures out right away that dawn read the letter. dawn apologizes but mrs. lazar explained that she & her husband had decided not to break the news about being held back to sandra until a few days before school started. she's a worrier & now she'll be worrying about it all summer instead of having fun. dawn apologizes again, but that's not good enough for mrs. lazar. she never hires the BSC again. dawn never tells anyone what happened, & the club has enough new clients that summer that no one notices the loss of the lazars. i kind of question whether it's wise to save the news about being held back for a few days before school. won't that be even more shocking for a kid? for her to think she's going to be going on to third grade with her friends all summer, only to find herself back in the second grade? but what do i know?
dawn gets a A in content, a B in presentation. i want to know what was so shitty about her presentation. not that a B is a shitty grade. i think scholastic just doesn't want us to think the babysitters club members are 100% perfect all the time.
October 23, 2021
Normally I enjoy a Portrait Collection book well enough, but considering we finally got Abby in the previous book, I was really looking forward to more from her! This is what I get for reading these books in publication order like a sucker.
I actually feel like I enjoyed this book more than the previous two, which surprises me because Dawn definitely does not top my list of favourite baby-sitters. But I guess it isn't even Dawn that I like in this book; I find Sunny fascinating, I loved seeing Granny and Pop-Pop, and it was interesting meeting a new BSC client that we had never heard of. Dawn's stories were only interesting because of the other people in them. (Though I totally would have loved if, instead of going to San Francisco, Dawn and family went to Stoneybrook to visit Granny and Pop-Pop. Maybe even a run-in with a younger BSC girl? Also, I love Granny and Pop-Pop and wish we saw them more (ever?) in the main book series.)
Okay, enough with Dawn, bring on Abby!
I actually feel like I enjoyed this book more than the previous two, which surprises me because Dawn definitely does not top my list of favourite baby-sitters. But I guess it isn't even Dawn that I like in this book; I find Sunny fascinating, I loved seeing Granny and Pop-Pop, and it was interesting meeting a new BSC client that we had never heard of. Dawn's stories were only interesting because of the other people in them. (Though I totally would have loved if, instead of going to San Francisco, Dawn and family went to Stoneybrook to visit Granny and Pop-Pop. Maybe even a run-in with a younger BSC girl? Also, I love Granny and Pop-Pop and wish we saw them more (ever?) in the main book series.)
Okay, enough with Dawn, bring on Abby!
June 5, 2020
Dawn was my favorite sitter as a kid, and I know now that I was definitely in the minority about that. (And truthfully, I see her in a different light now that I’m an adult.) But, due to her being my favorite, I re-read this book obsessively growing up.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t as good as I remembered. I LOVE the description of Sunny and her hippie parents, and I loved the fire chapter, but overall it was a lot more lackluster than I remember it being.
Also, why on earth did she get a “B” for presentation? I’m pretty sure that’s the lowest grade any of the girls got on this “assignment”. Maybe California schools grade harder than Connecticut?
Unfortunately, this wasn’t as good as I remembered. I LOVE the description of Sunny and her hippie parents, and I loved the fire chapter, but overall it was a lot more lackluster than I remember it being.
Also, why on earth did she get a “B” for presentation? I’m pretty sure that’s the lowest grade any of the girls got on this “assignment”. Maybe California schools grade harder than Connecticut?
September 22, 2025
Did Dawn's mom's disorganization get worse in the aftermath of her divorce? It's mentioned only minimally in this book, yet in so many other books, it's described as so extreme to the point of being farcical. Also, several inconsistencies in this book, like the fact that Dawn was friends with Maggie and Jill since even before she knew Sunny, while in Dawn and the We Love Kids Club (where they're introduced as characters), she mentions not knowing them as well. Also are Dawn and her mom vegetarians or not???
July 29, 2017
I liked Dawn alright as a kid, but as an adult? Not so much. She's a pretty boring and hypocritical type person, and I am just not down with that. Her biography wasn't really nothing special, just rehashing a few things we already knew with more details. Like California Diaries era Dawn, the most interesting thing about her is Sunny Winslow. Burn.
March 30, 2022
As far as Dawn books go, this one isn't awful. Sections about her grandparents' anniversary (although, their personalities in this section make it difficult to believe that they disapproved of Mary Anne's dad so much in the past) and her mail snooping (which fits Dawn's personality all too well) saved this one from being a slog to get through. But...can we just stop with the Dawn books now?
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November 24, 2020Read my recap at A Year with the BSC via Stoneybrook Forever: https://www.livethemovies.com/bsc-blo...
August 15, 2023
This was pretty good. I found the Granny and Pop Pop anniversary section really sweet and young hippie Sunny is fun to read about.
May 8, 2024
Despite living in California Dawn still has to do one of these. She has just moved back for good. I am almost there in the regular series. It's sad because Mrs. Winslow is sick and knowing the end result of her cancer just makes it hurt even more. Dawn's story begins at her birth. Her mother walked on the beach to bring on labour since she was late. It goes on to talk about her initial jealousy when Jeff arrives. It picks up when they move to a new neighbourhood. Dawn is upset that all the kids there are Jeff's age or younger. Then a hippie family moves in two doors down. It's Sunny but she's too weird for Dawn at first until Dawn sees how well she does during a power outage. Then they are friends. Next is Dawn's Stoneybrook grandparents celebrating their 50th anniversary in San Francisco. They bicker a lot and Dawn is convinced that they will divorce. Meanwhile she thinks her parents are madly in love. Two years later her parents are fighting and Dawn has a weird obsession with fire.. she draws up evacuation plans gets her parents to buy fire extinguishers, freaks over a small BBQ fire. She even wakes up in the night screaming fire. It's kind of funny because she told Jeff to go out his window in a fire and they all think he slept through it until he knocks on the front door having jumped out his window. Then while babysitting next door there is an actual fire and she handles it calmly getting the kids out and even wins an award. Too bad she wasn't around when her Stoneybrook home burned to the ground. Finally she's in Stoneybrook and gets a job with a new client. She snoops and learns that the little girl she's sitting for has to be held back a year due to reading difficulties and ends up losing the BSC a new client but no one ever realizes it. Now I want to read Sunny's autobiography. I want to know what she thought of Dawn and also about her hippie lifestyle and her mom. But I guess that won't happen. Anyway there were a few inconsistencies like the fact that twice in the book Dawn ate chicken as a kid maybe she wasn't vegetarian yet, but during her grandparents anniversary they initially go to a vegetarian restaurant. She also loves ice cream another odd thing given her hatred of sugar. We can also blame Sunny for her later environmentalism. Thanks Sunny I used to like you. But overall this was a decent read I liked it as I did most of these portrait books.
February 26, 2012
3.5 stars
This is the first BSC book that I have read in years. It is also one that I didn't read as a kid. It's not a traditional "numbered" book, but one of the special books, out of the "Portrait Collection". Dawn's Book, as one would assume is told from Dawn's point of view and is an autobiography assignment she has had to do for school. This is just afte she has moved back to California for good and is the first assignment she gets at school.
She looks back at a few critical areas of her life at that point and from what I recall about the books (and bear with me its been over 15 years) they don't go into alot of retelling from other BSC books. The stories are new o the reader and mostly centre around her life in California, with only one story in Sunnybrook.
I have to say that I liked the part inthe revolving restaurant for her granny pop pop's 50th wedding anniversary. I spent a wonderful wedding anniversary of my Grandparents in the revolving Restaurant at the CN Tower and can completely appreciate that part of the story.
All in all it was a really cute book and the only thing that it didn't have was the rest of the Baby Sitters Club in it.
This is the first BSC book that I have read in years. It is also one that I didn't read as a kid. It's not a traditional "numbered" book, but one of the special books, out of the "Portrait Collection". Dawn's Book, as one would assume is told from Dawn's point of view and is an autobiography assignment she has had to do for school. This is just afte she has moved back to California for good and is the first assignment she gets at school.
She looks back at a few critical areas of her life at that point and from what I recall about the books (and bear with me its been over 15 years) they don't go into alot of retelling from other BSC books. The stories are new o the reader and mostly centre around her life in California, with only one story in Sunnybrook.
I have to say that I liked the part inthe revolving restaurant for her granny pop pop's 50th wedding anniversary. I spent a wonderful wedding anniversary of my Grandparents in the revolving Restaurant at the CN Tower and can completely appreciate that part of the story.
All in all it was a really cute book and the only thing that it didn't have was the rest of the Baby Sitters Club in it.
October 15, 2023
I didn't like this one in full, but enjoyed reading about baby Dawn gluing blocks together in preschool when she didn’t want the other kids having a turn, about Sunny knowing morse code and using it to rescue their mothers stuck in an elevator, and the story where Dawn was snooping at her baby sitting charge's place and lost a client after outing herself about what she read when snooping. Not sure why she got a B and not an A on this assignment though.
I found the other stories kind of boring though
I found the other stories kind of boring though
December 6, 2024
Even though my name is Marianne, Dawn was always my favourite BSC member (Mary Ann is my 2nd favourite). She’s interesting, intelligent, sensitive, adventurous, likes healthy food, the outdoors, and fitness, plus loves the ocean and ghost stories. It was really lovely being able to learn more about her back story.
April 24, 2018
Dawn is a vegetarian and yet in this book she's eating chicken, right up until she moves to Stoneybrook. This means she's 12 and should know that chicken is meat. Does she just stop eating chicken when she moves to Connecticut?
January 31, 2011
It had its moments, but like in the other Portrait Books, I really miss the rest of the BSC. This one was better though, as it at least had Dawn's California friends.
I still haven't forgiven her for leaving Stoneybrook though! ;)
I still haven't forgiven her for leaving Stoneybrook though! ;)
May 10, 2015
19/25
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