Review: Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls by Ann M Martin (BSC 2)


After having such a great time reading and reviewing Kristy's Great Idea, I just couldn't resist picking up the second book in the Baby-Sitters Club series, Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls. Then, just as I found myself opening the book, I hesitated. Was this really such a good idea? Was it even really a good idea of Scholastic to reprint and reissue the book? After all, there is a good reason the title was skipped when the series was reimagined as graphic novels.

The concept is awfully dated.

In this volume, there is a burglar targeting houses in neighbouring towns, who the police have dubbed The Phantom. (I wonder if Lee Falk considered suing over this?) The Phantom's MO is simple, they phone the house they plan to burgle. If someone answers the phone, The Phantom knows that they are home. If no one answers the phone, The Phantom knows that they can break inside the home without being caught. It's a crude technique, but it was one that was indeed quite effective in the days before caller ID and when every house had a landline. It's also an easy concept to explain in a children's book. Anyway, the Baby-Sitters are worried that the Phantom may consider targeting a home where this a babysitter present. Their fears aren't exactly unwarranted--both Claudia and Kristy have received calls similar to the ones made by The Phantom while they've been on various babysitting jobs. Anyway, as the story goes on, various strategies are put into place. And then two very scary things happen. First, Claudia's neighbours, the Goldmans, are targeted by a burglar who uses a similar strategy to The Phantom. And then, while Claudia and Kristy are babysitting in the evening, they start to get an alarming number of calls. And then, they hear someone outside ...

Obviously, this one was written in the 1980s, when phone technology was a little different, though that could easily be explained away by The Phantom blocking his or her number. However, that's not the only part of the book that dates. Badly. It turns out [[[spoiler alert]]] that in the cases of Claudia and Kristy, the callers are two boys from their school who have crushes. One, the chronically annoying Alan Gray, also happens to be the prowler outside. You see, it turns out that he didn't know how else to get Kristy's attention so he took to stalking her. And then he asks her to go with him to the Halloween Hop and Kristy, an otherwise strong and feisty, feminist, smiles and says yes. The moral to the story? The meaner a guy is to a girl, the more he likes her. And the baby-sitters are cool with this, and that being a jerk and stalking people is basically considered a good thing. And okay, I know this was written over thirty-five years ago, but bloody hell Ann M Martin. You inspired and empowered generations of girls. And then it turns out you did this. I'm disappointed.

Although I enjoyed some of the ways the baby-sitters worked to keep themselves safe (Mary-Anne's home burglar alarm system was a real highlight,) this one is let down by a silly, sexist message. Let's home the TV series reimagines this one in a more positive light.   

Random Trivia: The toddler on the front cover is none other than Hollywood actor Kirsten Dunst. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean...
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu...
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A...
Read more