Review: Karen's Sleepover (Baby-Sitters Little Sister Graphix 8) by Katy Farina and Ann M Martin

The top selling Baby-Sitters Little Sister graphix series is back with another excellent adaption. This time Katy Farina turns her attention to one of the classic titles of the series, Karen's Sleepover. And Little Sister fans know what that means. We meet the graphic novel version of Pamela Harding, who becomes a big part of the original Little Sister series and the eventual spin-off The Kids in Miss Coleman's Class. (I wonder if they will ever get a graphic novel adaption?)

This one begins with Karen realising that she has never had a sleepover with her friends, though her beloved older stepsister Kristy has them at the 'Big House' with her friends. Karen decides to rectify this important matter. Fortunately her father and stepmother agree to this and Karen soon starts making plans, including mailing out invitations. What could possibly go wrong?

Two things.

First, everyone receives their invitations except for Karen's neighbour and bestie, Nancy. This leads to confusion and an argument between the girls, and one that probably could have been sorted out by good communication between their parents, or even their teacher offering a five minute mediation session, but a big part of the appeal of the BSC books and their spin-offs is that there is always a focus on the kids sorting out problems for themselves. And so, Karen and Nancy deal with the problem in the way that girls their age might. By fighting and excluding one another. A second plot twist occurs when a new and very glamorous girl transfers to their class. Pamela Harding seems very sophisticated, wears fashionable clothing and, unlike the other kids in their class, is temporarily allowed to sit at the teachers desk. (A very big deal at that age.)

As is, and should be, common with kids that age, Karen wants to extend the hand of friendship to Pamela. She invites Pamela to the sleepover, and Pamela accepts. The only difficulty is once the party is underway, Pamela soon becomes dismissive of the planned activities and behaves rudely toward Karen and the other girls. Karen soon realises that Nancy would be having fun if only she were here ... and so she decides to rectify the situation and learns a huge lesson about true friendship. The plot also sets Pamela up as Karen's adversary for the rest of the series. I'm a bit disappointed that this will be the last in the series to be adapted by Katy Farina, but the good news is there are at least five more books in this series in the works being adapted by DK Yingst and Shauna J Grant and they include classic titles such as Karen's New Year. And this one was a high note for Farina to go out on. 

Karen's Sleepover is a fun and entertaining read, the kind of thing that will take grown up readers straight back to their childhoods in the best kind of way. The original was one of my favourite Little Sister books and this one is probably now my favourite of the Little sister graphix novels. 

Highly recommended.

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