The hit series returns to charm and inspire another generation of baby-sitters!Kristy’s mom is getting married, and everyone is coming to town to help, bringing their kids with them. Fourteen kids! Kristy is sure she and Stacey, Claudia, Mary Anne, and Dawn can handle it–they’re professional baby-sitters, after all, and Kristy’s mom has offered them a lot of money to take on such a big job.But … job.But will a week of changing diapers, stopping fights, solving mix-ups, and keeping fourteen children entertained prove to be too much for the BSC? Can they keep things under control for Kristy’s big day?
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Before I get to my actual review, a quick disclaimer: Ever since I learned that Netflix was reimagining one of my favorite childhood book series, I had decided that I would be embarking on a re-read of this series, reliving a series of books that helped to shape me into a voracious reader. I am so excited to embark on this travel back in time. I don’t expect to be mentally stimulated — I mean, I’m not exactly a pre-teen middle-schooler these days — but I make no apology for choosing to enjoy this series from the perspective of adulthood. Don’t expect me to have any sort of psychoanalyst or feminist sermonizing on the appropriateness of the situations or the effects on a young girl reading these books; there’s plenty of that to go around already. I’m here for the nostalgia and the meander down memory lane.
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Back in the day, when I was the target audience of this series, I was obsessed with Book Six. It was jam-packed with all the sorts of things that appealed to me most. (Most of those things haven’t changed, if we’re being honest.) Each time I would do a series re-read (typically while waiting for the newest book to be released), I would start getting excited as I was wrapping up with Dawn and the Barrett disaster, knowing what was coming next.
What I liked about “Kristy’s Big Day”:
THE WEDDING!! – I mean, duh. It’s a wedding. I’m not sure how someone doesn’t get caught up in that sort of happy event. We even had Kristy getting uncharacteristically excited about dresses and heels; Kristy of the turtlenecks and t-shirts and sneakers. And I felt like it captured exactly the right sort of details girls that age would notice. Truly though, at forty-five years old, I still sighed a happy sigh as the book culminated in the big event. Weddings just have that effect on me to this day, whether real life, on the screen, or in print.
Lists and color-coding – When the BSC started organizing the wedding week kids’ camp, that was my other happy-place sigh. Are you kidding me? Lists and color-coding are part of my love language. Yes, I get a giddy high just reading about them. No, I don’t care that you’re probably judging me at this very moment. I know what I like and I make zero apologies.
Plenty of laughable moments – The descriptions of the scene at the barber still have me in stitches. Add to that Emma’s prank — naughty but entertaining to read about, especially the parents’ reaction in the aftermath — and the scene where Karen’s imagination reaches a peak moment at the end of the ceremony, and I was snickering fairly regularly. (Makes up for almost nothing chuckle-worthy in Book Five.)
The sheer brilliance of the pretend wedding – The dress-up outfits, the “holy moly”, the vows, the “kiss” moment. That scene was so entertaining that I feel like it deserves its own bullet point, apart from the other moments of hilarity.
What I didn’t care for:
Not a single thing.
Worth noting:
When Kristy describes her Uncle Neal, all I can pictures is Kevin McAllister’s Uncle Frank from Home Alone.
Forget about the adult logistics of planning a wedding, much less in two weeks’ time. The BSC got to have what would have been my dream week as a middle schooler. If you’re familiar with my ratings and reviews, you know that I am stingy with my five-stars, but this one retains its original five-star rating because everything I remembered feeling when I was a child reading “Kristy’s Big Day” came rushing right back as I read it now. This book was a pivotal one in a series that itself was pivotal in my becoming the reader I am today, and for that, anything less than five stars would not suffice.