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The Baby-Sitters Club Portrait Collection #6
Abby's Book
So, I guess this makes me an official SMS student - I'm writing my autobiography just like every other eight-grader here. This hasn't been easy. It's a big job, plus it's very emotional for me. Looking through all the family photos has made me remember some pretty difficult times. My family has been through a lot, but it hasn't all been bad. There was the period when my sister an I had to be color-coded so people could tell us apart! And then there was the crazy move to Stoneybrook, and my unforgettable first meeting with Kristy Thomas. So now here I am, a Stoneybrookite, working on my first major school project. I sincerely hope I don't blow it!
--Abby
160 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1997
5 people are currently reading
229 people want to read
About the author
Ann M. Martin
1,101 books3,051 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
May 15, 2018
this is the last of our portrait collection series, also by ghostwriter Jeanne Betancourt. the following are the sections of abby’s biography, divided by age and plotline:
-first grade: everyone thinks abby and anna are exactly the same and calls them abby-anna. the teacher forces them to wear different colors (abby always wears red, anna always wears blue), because she can’t be bothered to tell them apart. the kids tease them more, call them red and blue, respectively, and finally they switch clothes to test whether anyone notices the difference (very tia and tamera style). no one can tell that they switched, even their dad. they're bummed out that their dad doesn’t know the difference but it turns out he was playing along and knew they switched. they decide that anna will cut her hair so they can wear different clothes and people will tell them apart. they also get different clothes and stop dressing alike all the time.
-fourth grade: abby and anna’s dad dies. they sit shivah. but then their mom basically stays depressed and can't move on. the house is a complete mess, and she just wears their dad's bathrobe moping and eating nothing but peanut butter and crackers. she won't even wash the clothes and says they should buy new ones instead of washing their old ones. finally abby says that dad would have hated how the house had gotten, and that’s enough of a wake up call that their mom sort of gets it together.
-fifth grade: abby, anna, and their mom never spend any time together because their mom works all the time and abby and anna have after school activities. they take a family vacation to sanibel fl, but it's more of the same. mom just golfs all the time, abby does sports, and anna sits around talking about music, or something. abby’s upset and intervenes, and so they start a new tradition of having a family day on new years eve.
-seventh grade into eighth grade: abby figures out that her mom has been planning on moving the family to connecticut, partly because she got a promotion and has a ton of money to waste on a huge house for a small family, but also because she can’t deal with living in the town where she has so many memories of her dead husband. she encourages abby and anna to get rid of all their stuff and buy new stuff (which explains why there was so little stuff they moved with in Kristy and the Dirty Diapers). they move and we see abby’s side of meeting kristy and co that happened in dirty diapers.
highlights:
-one of abby’s first memories is seeing herself in the mirror but thinking it was anna
-at the mall they meet identical twin adults named jan and jean who always dress alike and live in identical houses next door to one another. it’s creepy but also HILARIOUS.
-the dad death is handled well. the funeral is genuinely sad. kids at school feel sorry for abby and anna and don’t know how to act around them. the mom's depression is pretty real.
lowlights/nitpicks:
-what an awful teacher they had for first grade. she resents twins in general and forces abby and anna to each wear one color all the time so she can tell them apart. it’s your effing job to treat these kids like individuals, not to force them to wear things to accommodate you.
-I just don't think it's healthy to get rid of all your stuff and get all new stuff just because you miss your dead husband. he died four years ago. it’s time to move on, and by that I don’t mean to buy new furniture that he never sat on, cause that’s creepy.
-also it's annoyingly extravagantly rich and wasteful. I got rid of a lot of things when I moved from dc to michigan last year, but I still kept about 4 van loads of items (and most of what I got rid of was either stuff I didn’t use anymore or furniture that was in bad shape). and it was still extremely expensive. I can’t even imagine being so astonishingly rich that you don’t even care to keep things and just want to buy new EVERYTHING when you move.
-I don’t think we needed the abby perspective of the story in dirty diapers. it feels like a waste, when they could have told an additional actual story (maybe a babysitting story or something?)
-why do they need such a freakin’ huge house for three people? I mean, look at this thing!
no wait, that’s manderley from Rebecca. here’s their house:
their dad's cooking mixtape:
-stop in the name of love - the supremes
-wooden ships - crosby, stills, nash, and young
-voodoo child - jimi hendrix
-ramblin rose - grateful dead
-everyday people - sly and the family stone
-fortunate son - creedence clearwater revival
claudia outfit:
"Yesterday, for example, she wore leopard-skin tights with a black velvet minidress to school. Her earrings were made out of fake-fur buttons."
no snacks in claudia’s room.
-first grade: everyone thinks abby and anna are exactly the same and calls them abby-anna. the teacher forces them to wear different colors (abby always wears red, anna always wears blue), because she can’t be bothered to tell them apart. the kids tease them more, call them red and blue, respectively, and finally they switch clothes to test whether anyone notices the difference (very tia and tamera style). no one can tell that they switched, even their dad. they're bummed out that their dad doesn’t know the difference but it turns out he was playing along and knew they switched. they decide that anna will cut her hair so they can wear different clothes and people will tell them apart. they also get different clothes and stop dressing alike all the time.
-fourth grade: abby and anna’s dad dies. they sit shivah. but then their mom basically stays depressed and can't move on. the house is a complete mess, and she just wears their dad's bathrobe moping and eating nothing but peanut butter and crackers. she won't even wash the clothes and says they should buy new ones instead of washing their old ones. finally abby says that dad would have hated how the house had gotten, and that’s enough of a wake up call that their mom sort of gets it together.
-fifth grade: abby, anna, and their mom never spend any time together because their mom works all the time and abby and anna have after school activities. they take a family vacation to sanibel fl, but it's more of the same. mom just golfs all the time, abby does sports, and anna sits around talking about music, or something. abby’s upset and intervenes, and so they start a new tradition of having a family day on new years eve.
-seventh grade into eighth grade: abby figures out that her mom has been planning on moving the family to connecticut, partly because she got a promotion and has a ton of money to waste on a huge house for a small family, but also because she can’t deal with living in the town where she has so many memories of her dead husband. she encourages abby and anna to get rid of all their stuff and buy new stuff (which explains why there was so little stuff they moved with in Kristy and the Dirty Diapers). they move and we see abby’s side of meeting kristy and co that happened in dirty diapers.
highlights:
-one of abby’s first memories is seeing herself in the mirror but thinking it was anna
-at the mall they meet identical twin adults named jan and jean who always dress alike and live in identical houses next door to one another. it’s creepy but also HILARIOUS.
-the dad death is handled well. the funeral is genuinely sad. kids at school feel sorry for abby and anna and don’t know how to act around them. the mom's depression is pretty real.
lowlights/nitpicks:
-what an awful teacher they had for first grade. she resents twins in general and forces abby and anna to each wear one color all the time so she can tell them apart. it’s your effing job to treat these kids like individuals, not to force them to wear things to accommodate you.
-I just don't think it's healthy to get rid of all your stuff and get all new stuff just because you miss your dead husband. he died four years ago. it’s time to move on, and by that I don’t mean to buy new furniture that he never sat on, cause that’s creepy.
-also it's annoyingly extravagantly rich and wasteful. I got rid of a lot of things when I moved from dc to michigan last year, but I still kept about 4 van loads of items (and most of what I got rid of was either stuff I didn’t use anymore or furniture that was in bad shape). and it was still extremely expensive. I can’t even imagine being so astonishingly rich that you don’t even care to keep things and just want to buy new EVERYTHING when you move.
-I don’t think we needed the abby perspective of the story in dirty diapers. it feels like a waste, when they could have told an additional actual story (maybe a babysitting story or something?)
-why do they need such a freakin’ huge house for three people? I mean, look at this thing!
no wait, that’s manderley from Rebecca. here’s their house:
their dad's cooking mixtape:
-stop in the name of love - the supremes
-wooden ships - crosby, stills, nash, and young
-voodoo child - jimi hendrix
-ramblin rose - grateful dead
-everyday people - sly and the family stone
-fortunate son - creedence clearwater revival
claudia outfit:
"Yesterday, for example, she wore leopard-skin tights with a black velvet minidress to school. Her earrings were made out of fake-fur buttons."
no snacks in claudia’s room.
Read
December 15, 2018I swear I'm going back to grown-up books after this one.
May 29, 2011
i realized that i accidentally skipped dawn's book like thirty books ago. oops. i'll read that one this week & write it up, & then i think i'll be all done with any books in which dawn is the narrator.
so this is another one of those eighth grade autobiography books. somehow abby whips this together over the course of a weekend. i wonder if the ghostwriter only took two days in writing it. it opens with abby's recollections of her baby- & toddlerhood, which are mostly about how she felt a special connection with her sister, anna, because they are twins. there is the obligatory reference to them developing a secret twin language (she also mentions that both she & anna were delayed in learning how to speak real words because they were able to communicate with each other, which was interesting), & how they liked to dress alike & have the same toys & stuff. when their dad takes them to buy new backpacks for school, abby chooses a backpack covered with images of soccer balls & baseballs & sports stuff, while anna chooses a backpack in the shape of a piano. the girls proceed to freak out because they chose different backpacks & together they choose plain purple packs.
but this kind of comes back to bite them on the ass when they start elementary school. no one really makes any effort to tell them apart. all the other kids, even their friends, call them "abby-anna". their teacher sends a note home to their parents, recommending that one of them dress in red while the other dresses in blue, so that both she & the kids can tell them apart. the twins are not pumped about this idea, but they give it a whirl. all that happens is that the kids start calling them "red" & "blue" instead. abby hates it, while anna would prefer not to make a fuss. abby convinces anna that they should pull a twin switch, & then anna will see that no one can tell them apart. they trade t-shirts in the bathroom before school one day, & abby sits in anna's chair while anna sits in abby's. sure enough, no one suspects a thing. their dad swings by the school at recess for some reason, & even he calls them by the wrong names. abby & anna are crushed by the thought that their own father can't even tell them apart. they are both quiet & sad that evening at home & mr. stevenson asks them what's wrong. they refuse to say. he asks them how the twin switch went. the girls are shocked that he knew all along. he explains that if they had switched t-shirts, they must have had a good reason for impersonating each other & he was just playing along. they admit that they thought he couldn't tell them apart & he apologizes profusely. they explain that wearing different colors isn't really getting them anywhere in school, & he suggests that maybe one of them could cut their hair. abby & anna are scared about the idea of not looking alike, but eventually they decide they will still look enough alike to feel their special twin bond even if one of them has short hair. anna has her hair cut & the girls go back to wearing whatever they want to school. the teacher is satisfied that anna's new haircut will help her tell the twins apart, & oon the other kids are actually using their correct names. problem? solved.
though i have to say, i think it's kind of fucked up of the teacher to make such a big fuss about having to deal with twins. color coding their outfits? that seems weirdly oppressive. i went to elementary school with twins & it was never any big deal, though i think the school did make an effort to assign them to different classrooms. i don't know. i'm not a twin, so i guess i can't speak with authority on this issue, but it seems weird.
when abby was in the fourth grade, her father died in a car accident. this is just really sad. mr. stevenson seemed like a cool dude. & mrs. stevenson is a total mess after he dies. her parents move in for a little while to help out, but mrs. stevenson is just wrecked. one day abby points out that they have no clean dishes, no clean clothes, no food in the cupboards, & mr. stevenson never would have stood for such a thing. this compels mrs. stevenson to get her head screwed on straight for the sake of the girls. she makes them go back to their after-school activities, & she hires a housekeeper to help out while she's at work.
unfortunately, she kind of turns into a workaholic. before long, she's working 12-hour days, anna's off with her friends or at music lessons all the time, & abby is with her friends or playing sports everyday. abby starts to feel like they aren't even a family anymore. she breaks down & admits this one evening, & mrs. stevenson decides they need some family togetherness time. she books them a vacation on the floridian island of sanibel. everyone is excited, but the three don't take long to split off & start pursuing their own activities. anna makes friends with a girl in the next cabin over who is also a violinist, abby spends all her time on the beach playing volleyball, & mrs. stevenson alternates between golfing alone & catching up on work. a lot of nights, they don't even eat together.
abby finds out about an upcoming family new year's eve dance & asks if they can sign up for it. mrs. stevenson agrees, but the guy manning the sign-up sheet comments that he hadn't realized she was there with her family because he only ever saw her alone. then he sees abby & anna standing next to each other & says, "twins! i never saw you together so i thought you were the same person!" that makes mrs. stevenson realize that they need to spend more time together. they decide to take a whole day & do things as a family. they visit a wildlife preserve & swim in the ocean & make dinner together. mrs. stevenson confesses that she & mr. stevenson had a lot of big plans for family togetherness & traditions while she was pregnant with the twins, & it was easy to realize those plans when mr. stevenson was live to help. but since he died, mrs. stevenson feels too sad to keep doing some of the things they used to do together. abby & anna suggest that they can create their own traditions with their new, smaller family. then abby sees a shooting star & thinks maybe it's her dad, endorsing this idea. awww. that's sad & sweet. i'm sorry, i just can't snark on a kid dealing with death.
four years after mr. stevenson died, mrs. stevenson decides that she needs a change of scenery. there are just too many memories in their town & it's making it difficult for her to work through her grief & move on with her life. she decides to sell the house & all the furniture. she buys a new house in stoneybrook & hires a decorator to furnish & decorate it. abby & anna get to help choose furnishings & wallpaper & everything. anna is really sad about leaving her friends, her music teacher, & her home. abby kind of oscillates between being excited to try something new, & being sad about leaving long island. mrs. stevenson is just full steam ahead. can i just say that their is a drawing of their new stoneybrook house in this chapter & it is fucking HUGE? they're a family of three! why the fuck do they need five bathrooms, a den, a library, an office, a dining room, a living room, a family room, & i could go on? i always figured their house was huge, because it's in kristy's posh neighborhood, but jesus. wish i had those kind of duckets.
the rest of the chapter is basically just kristy & the dirty diapers from abby's perspective. she is far more cordial to kristy than kristy was to her, that's for sure. but it's not like we didn't know that kristy sucks.
abby earns an A- & her teacher writes something about how the autobiography was "a wonderful introduction to you & your family--including your father." does that seem like kind of a fucked up thing to say to anyone but me? i don't know.
so this is another one of those eighth grade autobiography books. somehow abby whips this together over the course of a weekend. i wonder if the ghostwriter only took two days in writing it. it opens with abby's recollections of her baby- & toddlerhood, which are mostly about how she felt a special connection with her sister, anna, because they are twins. there is the obligatory reference to them developing a secret twin language (she also mentions that both she & anna were delayed in learning how to speak real words because they were able to communicate with each other, which was interesting), & how they liked to dress alike & have the same toys & stuff. when their dad takes them to buy new backpacks for school, abby chooses a backpack covered with images of soccer balls & baseballs & sports stuff, while anna chooses a backpack in the shape of a piano. the girls proceed to freak out because they chose different backpacks & together they choose plain purple packs.
but this kind of comes back to bite them on the ass when they start elementary school. no one really makes any effort to tell them apart. all the other kids, even their friends, call them "abby-anna". their teacher sends a note home to their parents, recommending that one of them dress in red while the other dresses in blue, so that both she & the kids can tell them apart. the twins are not pumped about this idea, but they give it a whirl. all that happens is that the kids start calling them "red" & "blue" instead. abby hates it, while anna would prefer not to make a fuss. abby convinces anna that they should pull a twin switch, & then anna will see that no one can tell them apart. they trade t-shirts in the bathroom before school one day, & abby sits in anna's chair while anna sits in abby's. sure enough, no one suspects a thing. their dad swings by the school at recess for some reason, & even he calls them by the wrong names. abby & anna are crushed by the thought that their own father can't even tell them apart. they are both quiet & sad that evening at home & mr. stevenson asks them what's wrong. they refuse to say. he asks them how the twin switch went. the girls are shocked that he knew all along. he explains that if they had switched t-shirts, they must have had a good reason for impersonating each other & he was just playing along. they admit that they thought he couldn't tell them apart & he apologizes profusely. they explain that wearing different colors isn't really getting them anywhere in school, & he suggests that maybe one of them could cut their hair. abby & anna are scared about the idea of not looking alike, but eventually they decide they will still look enough alike to feel their special twin bond even if one of them has short hair. anna has her hair cut & the girls go back to wearing whatever they want to school. the teacher is satisfied that anna's new haircut will help her tell the twins apart, & oon the other kids are actually using their correct names. problem? solved.
though i have to say, i think it's kind of fucked up of the teacher to make such a big fuss about having to deal with twins. color coding their outfits? that seems weirdly oppressive. i went to elementary school with twins & it was never any big deal, though i think the school did make an effort to assign them to different classrooms. i don't know. i'm not a twin, so i guess i can't speak with authority on this issue, but it seems weird.
when abby was in the fourth grade, her father died in a car accident. this is just really sad. mr. stevenson seemed like a cool dude. & mrs. stevenson is a total mess after he dies. her parents move in for a little while to help out, but mrs. stevenson is just wrecked. one day abby points out that they have no clean dishes, no clean clothes, no food in the cupboards, & mr. stevenson never would have stood for such a thing. this compels mrs. stevenson to get her head screwed on straight for the sake of the girls. she makes them go back to their after-school activities, & she hires a housekeeper to help out while she's at work.
unfortunately, she kind of turns into a workaholic. before long, she's working 12-hour days, anna's off with her friends or at music lessons all the time, & abby is with her friends or playing sports everyday. abby starts to feel like they aren't even a family anymore. she breaks down & admits this one evening, & mrs. stevenson decides they need some family togetherness time. she books them a vacation on the floridian island of sanibel. everyone is excited, but the three don't take long to split off & start pursuing their own activities. anna makes friends with a girl in the next cabin over who is also a violinist, abby spends all her time on the beach playing volleyball, & mrs. stevenson alternates between golfing alone & catching up on work. a lot of nights, they don't even eat together.
abby finds out about an upcoming family new year's eve dance & asks if they can sign up for it. mrs. stevenson agrees, but the guy manning the sign-up sheet comments that he hadn't realized she was there with her family because he only ever saw her alone. then he sees abby & anna standing next to each other & says, "twins! i never saw you together so i thought you were the same person!" that makes mrs. stevenson realize that they need to spend more time together. they decide to take a whole day & do things as a family. they visit a wildlife preserve & swim in the ocean & make dinner together. mrs. stevenson confesses that she & mr. stevenson had a lot of big plans for family togetherness & traditions while she was pregnant with the twins, & it was easy to realize those plans when mr. stevenson was live to help. but since he died, mrs. stevenson feels too sad to keep doing some of the things they used to do together. abby & anna suggest that they can create their own traditions with their new, smaller family. then abby sees a shooting star & thinks maybe it's her dad, endorsing this idea. awww. that's sad & sweet. i'm sorry, i just can't snark on a kid dealing with death.
four years after mr. stevenson died, mrs. stevenson decides that she needs a change of scenery. there are just too many memories in their town & it's making it difficult for her to work through her grief & move on with her life. she decides to sell the house & all the furniture. she buys a new house in stoneybrook & hires a decorator to furnish & decorate it. abby & anna get to help choose furnishings & wallpaper & everything. anna is really sad about leaving her friends, her music teacher, & her home. abby kind of oscillates between being excited to try something new, & being sad about leaving long island. mrs. stevenson is just full steam ahead. can i just say that their is a drawing of their new stoneybrook house in this chapter & it is fucking HUGE? they're a family of three! why the fuck do they need five bathrooms, a den, a library, an office, a dining room, a living room, a family room, & i could go on? i always figured their house was huge, because it's in kristy's posh neighborhood, but jesus. wish i had those kind of duckets.
the rest of the chapter is basically just kristy & the dirty diapers from abby's perspective. she is far more cordial to kristy than kristy was to her, that's for sure. but it's not like we didn't know that kristy sucks.
abby earns an A- & her teacher writes something about how the autobiography was "a wonderful introduction to you & your family--including your father." does that seem like kind of a fucked up thing to say to anyone but me? i don't know.
May 27, 2009
I used to drive my parents crazy and take books into restraunts with me because I had to keep reading (not while we were eating.) I used to love all of Ann M. Martin's books, but I remember reading this specifically. We were at a family restraunt downtown, and it made me tear up. I think it's one of the better books out of the Portrait Collection.
June 23, 2019
Every time I think I’ve read all the babysitters club books, I find a new gem I haven’t read. Except this one wasn’t really a gem.
Abby marked the point around when the BSC jumped the shark, waltzing in with her personality traits summarized as being a twin, a dead dad, allergies, and... sports? Except Kristy already had sports so that one didn’t really count. And Mary Anne already has a dead mom, so there’s that. Abby. She’s funny? Or something.
Abby leads us through the most phoned in portrait collection book yet, maybe because I don’t really care about her, and maybe because allergies and parental death don’t lead to the same whimsical stories as, say, art or fashion.
In this book: Abby’s teacher makes no effort to tell Abby and her sister apart, tells her parents to color-code them (seriously), Abby’s parents AGREE (SERIOUSLY), Abby and her sister loathe color coding (shocking!) and her parents are like, “well, you’re twins, you can’t expect people to bother to learn to tell you apart or get to know you as individuals but maybe one of you could cut your hair or something.” They’re six. The girls don’t like this for a few paragraphs — completely warranted — and then they decide that the only way anyone will ever tell them apart isn’t by getting to know them or their faces, so Abby’s sister agrees to cut her hair. Thus begins another personality trait for Abby, who is now The Twin With Long Hair.
Then her dad gets killed in a car accident and her grandparents show up and tell her right there in the school office. Her mom falls into a depression and stops doing housework. They take a depressing, isolating vacation. The family falls apart.
Eventually, the book culminates in a move to Stoneybrook, Connecticut, home of the Babysitters Club. Because both Abby and Kristy’s personalities are sports! (and allergies for the former), they end up as neighbors. This means Abby’s widowed, single mother of two buys a house in a wealthy part of town (Kristy lives in a mansion with like a hundred other people, including a ghost living on a floor of their house that the family doesn’t even use, remember?)
Abby’s mother got “a promotion and a bonus” and buys an enormous five-bedroom, three-bathroom house with a living room, family room, den, and office, and hires an interior decorator to furnish the house in entirely new furniture. I want to understand a world where this is possible or even desirable. Because as much as I’d love an extreme home makeover of my own, I don’t really want to deal with a five bedroom monstrosity of a house for three people.
Abby’s depressed, widowed mom does though.
I suppose it’s possible this whole book is a well executed exploration into Abby’s tendency to procrastinate on her homework, a fact she mentions no less than once a chapter. The thrown together, rushed nature of the book would lend itself to “a thirteen year old threw this together a day before it was due.” It’s middle school though, so Abby earns an A- on this “autobiography assignment,” something that feels remarkably familiar to me where it doesn’t matter if your work is any good as long as the sentences are grammatically correct.
(Abby’s twin, Anna, describes her own autobiography in this book and honestly it sounds way better than Abby’s and maybe should have been published in its place, but Anna isn’t in the Babysitters Club so nobody cares about her).
Abby marked the point around when the BSC jumped the shark, waltzing in with her personality traits summarized as being a twin, a dead dad, allergies, and... sports? Except Kristy already had sports so that one didn’t really count. And Mary Anne already has a dead mom, so there’s that. Abby. She’s funny? Or something.
Abby leads us through the most phoned in portrait collection book yet, maybe because I don’t really care about her, and maybe because allergies and parental death don’t lead to the same whimsical stories as, say, art or fashion.
In this book: Abby’s teacher makes no effort to tell Abby and her sister apart, tells her parents to color-code them (seriously), Abby’s parents AGREE (SERIOUSLY), Abby and her sister loathe color coding (shocking!) and her parents are like, “well, you’re twins, you can’t expect people to bother to learn to tell you apart or get to know you as individuals but maybe one of you could cut your hair or something.” They’re six. The girls don’t like this for a few paragraphs — completely warranted — and then they decide that the only way anyone will ever tell them apart isn’t by getting to know them or their faces, so Abby’s sister agrees to cut her hair. Thus begins another personality trait for Abby, who is now The Twin With Long Hair.
Then her dad gets killed in a car accident and her grandparents show up and tell her right there in the school office. Her mom falls into a depression and stops doing housework. They take a depressing, isolating vacation. The family falls apart.
Eventually, the book culminates in a move to Stoneybrook, Connecticut, home of the Babysitters Club. Because both Abby and Kristy’s personalities are sports! (and allergies for the former), they end up as neighbors. This means Abby’s widowed, single mother of two buys a house in a wealthy part of town (Kristy lives in a mansion with like a hundred other people, including a ghost living on a floor of their house that the family doesn’t even use, remember?)
Abby’s mother got “a promotion and a bonus” and buys an enormous five-bedroom, three-bathroom house with a living room, family room, den, and office, and hires an interior decorator to furnish the house in entirely new furniture. I want to understand a world where this is possible or even desirable. Because as much as I’d love an extreme home makeover of my own, I don’t really want to deal with a five bedroom monstrosity of a house for three people.
Abby’s depressed, widowed mom does though.
I suppose it’s possible this whole book is a well executed exploration into Abby’s tendency to procrastinate on her homework, a fact she mentions no less than once a chapter. The thrown together, rushed nature of the book would lend itself to “a thirteen year old threw this together a day before it was due.” It’s middle school though, so Abby earns an A- on this “autobiography assignment,” something that feels remarkably familiar to me where it doesn’t matter if your work is any good as long as the sentences are grammatically correct.
(Abby’s twin, Anna, describes her own autobiography in this book and honestly it sounds way better than Abby’s and maybe should have been published in its place, but Anna isn’t in the Babysitters Club so nobody cares about her).
February 3, 2023
Abby Stevenson had a very busy start to 1997.
Abby's Twin
in January,
Abby and the Mystery Baby
in February, and her Portrait Collection in March. If, like me, you're reading all the BSC series in order by publication date, that's a lot of Abby almost right after each other. Luckily, she's one of my faves.
I really enjoyed Abby's autobiography, it was nice to get to know our newest Sitter a little better. At this point in the series, we've had over a decade with the Baby-sitters Club. And though we got some new stories about the girls' childhoods, loyal readers know Stacey, Claudia, Dawn, Mary Anne, and Kristy like old friends. But Abby's only been with us for a year and a half, so we don't really know her, her family, or her background all that well. Everyone always mentions how she doesn't really talk about her dad, so I loved reading about him. I wish we got to read Anna's autobiography, too.
And speaking of that, I hate that it's an eighth-grade project, because I would kill for the Junior Officers' stories. Give me Jessi's Book! Tell me about her growing up in New Jersey with Keisha! I want to know how she got into ballet! I NEED MORE BSC!!!!!
I really enjoyed Abby's autobiography, it was nice to get to know our newest Sitter a little better. At this point in the series, we've had over a decade with the Baby-sitters Club. And though we got some new stories about the girls' childhoods, loyal readers know Stacey, Claudia, Dawn, Mary Anne, and Kristy like old friends. But Abby's only been with us for a year and a half, so we don't really know her, her family, or her background all that well. Everyone always mentions how she doesn't really talk about her dad, so I loved reading about him. I wish we got to read Anna's autobiography, too.
And speaking of that, I hate that it's an eighth-grade project, because I would kill for the Junior Officers' stories. Give me Jessi's Book! Tell me about her growing up in New Jersey with Keisha! I want to know how she got into ballet! I NEED MORE BSC!!!!!
June 3, 2020
I know that most BSC fans did not like Abby, or think of her as the “Cousin Oliver” of the Baby-sitters Club, but I’ve always loved her character. I think that is mainly because this book was my first introduction to her, and I absolutely loved it. (This was also the first Portrait Collection book that I read!) I knew nothing about her character at this point, but I completely adored her and Anna’s story here. And I STILL cried a few times reading this now, even though I knew what to expect!
Abby can definitely grate on the nerves at times in other baby-sitter’s books, but books narrated “by her” show such a different side. (The Grand Canyon plot in the “BSC In the USA” super special immediately comes to mind, and it still makes me sad.) I love how she is portrayed in this book, and I loved getting to “know” her dad. I know these are fictional characters and all, but I still get choked up.
This gets 5 stars for pure nostalgic love, and also because I loved all of the Portrait Collection books and think they were incredibly well-done. And now I think I will re-read them all, because why not.
Abby can definitely grate on the nerves at times in other baby-sitter’s books, but books narrated “by her” show such a different side. (The Grand Canyon plot in the “BSC In the USA” super special immediately comes to mind, and it still makes me sad.) I love how she is portrayed in this book, and I loved getting to “know” her dad. I know these are fictional characters and all, but I still get choked up.
This gets 5 stars for pure nostalgic love, and also because I loved all of the Portrait Collection books and think they were incredibly well-done. And now I think I will re-read them all, because why not.
July 26, 2017
This was perhaps my favorite Portrait Collection Book when I was a kid. I think because we hadn't spent 100+ books reading about Abby, so she felt new and different somehow. In retrospect parts of this book were just rehashed from other BSC books. Some of the identical twin stuff seemed gleaned right out of Mallory and the Trouble with Twins, to be perfectly honest. Ah, well.
The chapter about her father's death was actually super depressing. It did make me feel for her as a character, and for her poor mom. It was interesting at least to read about how they all fell apart, but ultimately worked to become a new kind of family.
Then the last bit was just a rehash of Kristy and the Dirty Diapers but from Abby's POV. Welcome to the BSC, ya poor sod.
The chapter about her father's death was actually super depressing. It did make me feel for her as a character, and for her poor mom. It was interesting at least to read about how they all fell apart, but ultimately worked to become a new kind of family.
Then the last bit was just a rehash of Kristy and the Dirty Diapers but from Abby's POV. Welcome to the BSC, ya poor sod.
August 18, 2023
I love Abby, and I loved reading about her life and family. It was nice meeting her dad. I thought the bit about red twin/blue twin was relatable, and yikes on the teacher for suggesting it in the first place. And I found the chapter on Sanibel island after the dad passed to be very moving.
June 13, 2024
I liked reading this book. It was very sad when Abby and Anna’s dad died and how there was continuity after that. It was nice read and I also liked reading about Anna being musical from an early age, as I was one of those kids too with the piano
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February 19, 2021Read my recap at A Year with the BSC via Stoneybrook Forever: www.livethemovies.com/bsc-blog/portra...
March 25, 2023
I love the portrait book series, but Abby's was my least favorite (maybe because there were less anecdotes and it felt more like necessary backstory for her character that we just hadn't gotten yet).
May 17, 2024
Abby is my favorite and deserved better. This book shows why.
September 11, 2024
I was long done with BSC books when Abby came along. I am about ten books away from her debut in the original series, but I have read about her in the super mysteries and the friends forever series so this was a nice introduction to Abby. Abby is a procrastinator and has put off her autobiography project until the last minute. When her alarm wakes her on Saturday (who sets an alarm for Saturday? I mean we quickly learn she has no where to go. It's a bit odd but whatever. Hurriedly canceling her weekend plans she gets to work. She starts off with her and twin sister Anna's birth and how like a lot of twins they share a special bond, feeling pain when the other one is hurt, and having their own language so that they don't learn to talk until older than most kids. They attend day care which helps them with talking. While at the mall they meet a set of twins who are elderly. They dress alike and do everything the same a both girls are slightly afraid they will become like them. When they attend school the kids call them Anna-Abby and the teaches basically forces them to wear the same colour everyday. One in red one in blue and surprisingly their parents are okay with that. The kids then call them red or blue. One day they switch and no one can tell including their dad or so they think until their dad reveals he was just playing along. Then Anna cuts her hair and the girls begin to live their own separate lives. Abby playing sports and Anna with music and books. Then comes the tough part of the story. I usually read these on my kindle on breaks during work, but I saved this until after work cause I knew how it would hit me. Abby is having a wonderful time life is perfect, when suddenly her dad is killed in a car accident. I lost a parent in a semi unexpected way so I could get the pain. But at least I had over thirty years with my mom. To lose your dad as a child is the most heartbreaking thing I can imagine. Their mother falls into a deep depression wearing their dad's bathrobe and staying in her room all the time. She eventually comes out but nothing changes, the laundry is piling up, there's no food in the cupboards and mom never seems to be home. Despite promising to do better all three of them begin to live separately. Mom is a workaholic, Anna and Abby drop their after school programs and hang out with friends, a housekeeper is hired for the week but not the weekend. Finally a year after the dad's death they go on a Christmas vacation to Sanibel an island off Florida. For me I was excited to see it's around Captiva where Anbe Morrow Lindbergh wrote Gift From the Sea. Again they start doing separate things until finally Abby gets annoyed and the begin to heal as s family, start new traditions and get used to their new normal, a thing my family is sadly all too familiar with. It sucks losing a parent, every new event, milestone, birth, death, feels just a bit empty knowing there's someone missing from the celebration/moment. The book closes with the family moving to a huge mansion down the road from Kristy's. Their mom literally sells everything which I both understand and also find sort of sad. I mean my aunt and uncle did something similar but they were moving from a house to an apartment to start their retirement, I would've kept something of my husband, his chair maybe. I mean I know my dad and I usually avoid sitting in my mom's favourite chair unless we have a reason to. It's become my brother's chair now which is nice since before her death he didn't spend as much time with us as he does now which would make her happy. But they move to Stoneybrook meet Kristy and the rest is BSC history. I like Abby. I was a little unsure of her when I first read about her but with each book I've learned to like her more and wish she'd been there longer, but Dawn and her annoying self righteousness kept clinging on and on. Oh well. This was a good introduction to the BSC's last new member and I like Abby even more after reading this. Like Mary Anne and even Sunny from California Diaries I can relate to her just a little bit and I'm excited to start reading her books in the regular series in the next few months.
January 2, 2015
This one made me tear up!
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February 3, 2017This one was really instering! The twins in kindergarden was my fav.
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