the book opens with dawn sitting for the younger hobart boys while mrs. hobart is running errands & ben is on a hot library date with mallory. she's helping johnny with some puzzles in "highlights for children" magazine while the older boys play soccer with mel tucker & zach wolfson, the bullies from book #32. dawn overhears mel call the hobarts "crocs," & tells him to stop. he stops, but is not very apologetic. dawn decides she needs to say something to mrs. hobart.& on with the show! while dawn is sitting for the thomas-brewer clan, the kids let it slip that they are staging a sitter of the month contest. mrs. newton is helping them arrange the judging. dawn had been tired at this job & wasn't putting too much energy into keeping the kids entertained, but after she hears about the contest, she revamps karen's tedious game of let's all come in, adding new characters & making karen work the registration desk for once in her life. karen still makes the youngest child be some rich lady's dog. anyway, the kids have a great time & dawn thinks they may vote for her as sitter of the month.the other sitters also learn about the contest & start juicing up their sitting to curry favor with their charges. but several of the girls also start receiving creepy phone in which no one says anything, & they get weird notes on the doorstep while they're babysitting, with vague threats formed from cut out letters from magazines. dawn is the first to receive such a note, while she's sitting for the prezziosos. it says something to the effect of, "look out. i'm gonna get you," or something. dawn stuffs the note in her jeans pocket & doesn't tell the prezziosos anything about, because somehow she magically knows that the note is for her.um...if i'm thirteen years old, & i'm babysitting, & someone rings the bell & leaves a creeppy, threatening, anonymous note on the porch, i am telling the parents IMMEDIATELY. how does dawn know the note is for her, & isn't a threat to, like, kidnap the prezzioso children or anything? all of the sitters are keeping their notes to themselves because they don't want word to spread & jeopardize their chances in the sitter of the month contest, so they don't know that only the babysitters are being targeted by the notes. this strikes me as enormously irresponsible if it were real, & an extraordinarily problematic narrative device since it's fake.anyway, eventually someone lets something about the notes slip at a meeting. turns out all of the sitters have received them except for kristy. dawn starts to wonder if kristy is competitive enough to have sent the notes herself, to psych out the other sitters & win sitter of the month. but kristy seems invested in catching the culprit, so dawn goes along with her plans. but the girls don't really have any leads on what's going on. they even think maybe it's YET ANOTHER jewel thief. are there really that many jewel thieves in connecticut? for christ's sake.but finally jamie newton lets the cart partway out of the bag while dawn is watching him. dawn asks if he wants to go for a walk, & he says yes, & then says, "oh no, we have to be home if mel comes over." dawn presses for more information, & jamie confesses that mel has been doing "secret babysitting checks" as part of the sitter of the month contest. dawn realizes that mel is the creepy note-leaver. she hatches a plot to catch him in the act. she spreads the word that she's going to be sitting at home alone for an out-of-town cousin one night while sharon & richard are out. she speculates that mel will try to scare her by creeping into the secret passage. she says all the kids in town know about the passage & think it's awesome. spreading that around seems like a good way to get murdered in your bed--way to tell people a really easy way to break into your house, dawn. but whatever.the other babysitters come over & launch their sting operation. when mel starts making noise in the passage, half the sitters creep out to the garage to trap him at that entrance, while dawn & the rest ambush him from the bedroom entrance. they haul him back to the house to await confession. & confess he does.apparently he was upset with the club for telling on his tendency to bully the hobarts & call them crocs. he got into trouble & has been grounded. sounds like mr. & mrs. tucker are in the running for the shittiest parents in stoneybrook award, grounding their eight- or nine-year-old son & then not even noticing while he's creeping all over town leaving creepy notes at strangers' houses. what the fuck is that about? kristy & dawn fill them in on the details, & they say they're going to take mel to a psychologist. mel is displaying a lot of anger or sadness or both & they don't know where it comes from. kristy helps mel accept the idea of seeing the psychologist. mel tucker is a little bit scary. i would like to know more about what's wrong with that kid. do his parents lock him in the closet at night or what?an okay book. just a little pat.
I'm afraid that some bits in this book were just too unbelievable to ignore! The girls all get scary, intimidating notes left for them when they're babysitting but refrain from telling their parents - or even each other! - because they're all competing for a Sitter of the Month contest. I know that Kristy can be pretty competitive, but I'd think that people like Mary Anne and the younger sitters would be too concerned for the children's welfare to put a silly contest ahead of the children's safety. The contest was clearly just put into the story to stop them talking to each other. In the end, this book turns out to be another non-mystery where a kid was mucking about with the sitters because he was annoyed that they got him in trouble with his parents. Seems a bit long-winded (surely he'd just throw eggs or water balloons at them rather than creating threatening notes?) and unbelievable that his parents wouldn't notice him sneaking all over town. But kudos with the continuity as Mel has been featured in other books. Will be interesting to see if he shows up again. Overall, a decent story but I got annoyed at the ridiculous of it. 6/10
