Babysitter's #31: Dawn's Wicked Stepsister

Dawn and Mary Anne are best friends... So they're SURE that being stepsisters will be fun. They were wrong. For one thing, Dawn and her mother are vegetarians, and Mary Anne and her father eat meat a lot. For another, before Mary Anne and her father moved in, it was common to find towels carefully put away... in the silverware drawer. And at Mary Anne's house, her father put his shirts in the closet alphabetically by color: Blue, brown, gray, red, white; like that. As a side plot, Dawn and Mary Anne's friend Mallory Pike, who has SEVEN brothers and sisters, gets her SECOND case of chicken pox... Then three of her brothers get pnemonia... Then her other brother breaks his finger... Then one of her sisters sprains an ankle... Then her other sisters get bronchitis (I think)... Finally, her parents get injuries when they're playing tennis. Will Dawn and Mary Anne ever speak to each other again? Will the Pike Plauque end? Read this book and find out!

I really liked this book. It was funny and well-written and all those things that you like in a book. However, all of the reviews I read of this book said that Mary Anne was to blame, but I think Dawn was a little, too. What I mean is, she wasn't very sympathetic to Mary Anne. Poor Mary Anne was moving into a brand-new house with a new family-a whole new lifestyle. And even though she had wanted to live with Dawn and wanted their parents to marry, any big change is hard. I wish Dawn had seen that. Oh, well. GREAT book! Perfect for a funny read.

I liked the book a lot! Since I don't like Mary Anne, it was nice to see her get tricked the way she did. She was a tad bit too touchy and got what she deserved.Besides that it really showed when two opposite families merging can be like a train wreck!

This is a nicely written story about the differences in personalities and reinforces that old adage about not knowing someone until you live with them. Mary-Anne's dad marries creepy Dawn's mother. They are polar opposites -- he's fastidious and fussy, like Felix Unger whereas she is casual and cavalier, like Oscar Madison. I thought some of her misplaced items were actually funny, e.g. socks in the refrigerator and the like.Mary-Anne has to contend with the pushy, overbearing Dawn. (Poor kid)! She is a gentle, somewhat naive girl who has a good heart and would not even so much as swat a mosquito. Dawn, on the other hand would walk over her own brother and mother in a second. She is brash and inconsiderate and in general is a brat. The parents each support the step child in the interest of furthering family harmony and luckily it all gets resolved in the end. Each girl gets her own room and luckily the house was big enough to provide this nice solution.

I liked this! It was a very real portrayal of the struggles to adjust to life in a stepfamily. Dawn discovers that being friends with someone & LIVING with that person are two different things. Dawn & Mary Anne each have different habits, like Dawn is a vegetarian & Mary Anne is a junk-food & meat lover. They discover that the CAN'T share a room & nearly drive each other to the brink of insanity when Dawn wants the radio on & Mary Anne needs complete silence to study. I thought it was funny & creative how Dawn thinks up a way to scare Mary Anne, who still believes in ghosts, into a near-faint! Poor Mary Anne! All in all...realistic.