Good-bye Stacey, Good-bye

Ann M. Martin's Good-bye Stacey, Good-bye is a friendship story for 9 year olds about a girl who has barely a month to say goodbye to everyone she loves in Stoneybrook.

What happens

It's the thirteenth Baby-Sitters Club book, and Stacey McGill tells it herself. She's the club's treasurer, Claudia Kishi's best friend and little Charlotte Johanssen's favourite sitter. Life in Connecticut is going pretty well.

Then her mum rings club headquarters at five past six and tells her to come home. Stacey runs all the way, imagining the worst. Her parents are calmly folding napkins.

Dad's company is sending him back to New York. Not at the end of the school year, either. In four or five weeks!

Stacey's first reaction is to start listing her favourite shops. Then she rings Claudia and bursts into tears. Claudia admits something she's never said out loud (Stacey is the only best friend she's ever had).

Their rescue plan is very them. Stacey could just move into the Kishis' guest bedroom! It takes all four parents about five minutes to say no.

What's lovely is how Stacey swings between excited and heartbroken, sometimes in the same phone call. One minute she's dreaming of city lights from her bedroom window. The next she's dreading telling Charlotte she's leaving. Who hasn't felt both at once about a big change?

Meanwhile the others are plotting without her. They want to throw her a really special going-away party, and between them they've scraped together sixteen dollars fifty. Then Stacey's mum hands the club a houseful of old stuff for a yard sale (and says they can keep whatever it makes).

Alongside all this, Mary Anne sits for Dawn's brother Jeff. He's been cross and moody for weeks and wants to go and live with his dad in California.

Something to know before you hand it over. There are a LOT of tears in this one. Jeff's unhappiness about his parents' divorce feels quite raw, and he slams doors and announces that he hates girls. A child facing a move or a split at home might find it close to the bone (or very comforting). The odd description feels dated too, like Claudia being called "exotic".

What to read next

If your reader loves friendships with hugs, tears and secret plotting all mixed together, this should go down well. The club makes most sense from the start, though, and that's Kristy's Great Idea, where Kristy dreams the whole thing up on a boiling hot Tuesday in seventh grade.