Stacey’s Mistake

Stacey's Mistake by Ann M. Martin is a big-city friendship story for 9 year olds about one very busy weekend in New York. It's the eighteenth Baby-Sitters Club book.

What happens

Stacey McGill is thirteen and living in New York again, and she hasn't seen her Connecticut friends in ages. The grown-ups in her building are holding a Saturday meeting about how to help the homeless people on their block. Five families want Stacey to sit that afternoon.

So she has a brilliant plan. Why not invite Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne and Dawn down for the weekend to help? There's a party so her two sets of friends can meet, and ten kids to take to see the dinosaurs.

It all starts with a cockroach running across her bedroom rug. Looking back, Stacey wonders if she should have taken it as a sign.

Things wobble from the moment the girls arrive. They miss the meeting point at the station. Claudia's suitcase is so enormous Stacey calls it a boxcar. Mary Anne recites her guidebook out loud, and Kristy orders the "fill-it mig-nun" in a very cool restaurant (Stacey wants to crawl under the table and die).

It's very funny being inside Stacey's head for all this. She loves her friends and she's mortified by them, often in the same minute. Who hasn't felt that when old friends meet new ones? Postcards from the other girls pop up between the scenes too, and Claudia spells everything her own way.

There's lots of the city in it. Bloomingdale's is crowded and boiling hot, the doormen hold the door, and every family in the building has its own list of rules (one little girl must wear a jacket at ALL times).

Something to be aware of before you hand it over. The book is honest about homelessness. Judy lives on the street outside Stacey's building, and her sores and her hunger are described plainly. Some of the words used for her are dated ("bag lady" is one). A man asks the girls for money and Stacey snaps at Kristy to keep her purse shut. Dawn spends the trip scared of pickpockets and rats, and Mary Anne gets stopped by a store detective over eye shadow she thought was a free sample.

A sensitive child might find Judy's life sad to read about. Plenty of others will want to talk it through, and it's a good way in.

What to read next

If this is your reader's first visit to the club, it's worth going back to where it began. Kristy's Great Idea has Kristy dreaming up the whole thing over a cold pizza, with Stacey as the new girl in town.