About book Claudia And The Phantom Phone Calls (1995)
The baby-sitters choose to fear a jewel thief.The babysitters are spooked by a news story about a jewel thief who calls homes and then hangs up without saying anything to make sure no one is there before he comes to rob them, especially after Claudia and Kristy receive “phantom phone calls” at their babysitting jobs. Various creepy sitting jobs follow, most of which are made more creepy by the girls’ expectations of disaster. Kristy is creeped out by the Brewers’ next-door neighboor, whom Karen is convinced is a witch. Stacey is freaked by weird noises from the Johanssen basement during a power failure (it’s just the dog). Mary Anne, with a plucky resourcefulness belied by her timidity, masterminds several homebrew burglar alarms at the Thomas house (which are, of course, all set off accidentally). Finally, while tag-team babysitting Jamie Newton and his cousins, Claudia and Kristy see prowlers and call the police, only to discover that their “phantom” stalkers all along were boys who were too shy to ask them out.A jewel thief story sets an early precedent for mysteries and seems a slightly odd choice for a second book in a baby-sitting girls series. But it’s a logical enough choice to follow a September school-starting story with October and a Halloween story. Claudia, the vice president (the initial stories are told in rank order, it seems), is a Nancy Drew fiend, so she seems like the right sitter to get a mystery story. Finally, the general moral is about safety on the job, not a bad lesson for baby-sitters. I’m pleased that the story has a mundane conclusion and that they don’t really capture the jewel thief, the way they would if this were in the Baby-sitters Club Mystery spinoff series.Highlights: The girls come up with a secret code to tell each other on the phone if they think they might be in danger on the job, but they don’t want to give away their concerns to the children (or to an intruder who might be listening in). Kristy makes the girls rehearse the code, which they never can get right.Lingering Questions: It’s explained how the boys knew where the girls would be baby-sitting, but why call them there instead of at home? Are the girls just always baby-sitting continuously until it’s too late to politely call their homes?What would Claudia wear? There are times when it's revealed you've gone a whole scene not realizing that the character you are supposed to identify with is dressed like Rita from MR. F storyline on Arrested Development, and in this book, that is the point where she describes her purple short pants with suspenders, clock tights, lobster earrings, and "plaid shirt with a matching hat." Is there any way this DOESN'T come off like insane, purple, clock/lobster leiderhosen?Signs of the Times: Stacey’s VCR is broken, so the girls read the newspaper for fun. And Charlotte can't watch MTV because she doesn't get cable. I had the misfortune of rereading this in the 2010 reprint, where both of these references are updated, Stacey saying that the "player" is broken (so they still... um... read the paper. Not look at Google News?) and Charlotte explaining that she can't watch MTV (it's still MTV) because "Mommy and Daddy block channels they don't want me to watch," which explanation makes Charlotte look out-of-character babyish and the Johansens look out-of-character restrictive. Cable still exists, you guys, and wouldn't Stacey just want to watch U4Me on Youtube anyway?
"Well, I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I'm not up to trigonomulus, or whatever it is she does. We can't all be scholars." - Claudia, expressing frustration with both math and her sister, who is an Android being, probably from the future, and possibly "related" to Data from Star Trek: The Next GenerationWas Claudia described as having almond-shaped eyes:Thankfully, she did not describe her own eyes this way.Was Mimi's accent described as rolling:Yes! Like a "ship at sea."How many times was the word incredulously used:Zero!WWCW:-Purple pants that stopped just below the knee, held up by suspenders, white tights with clocks on them, a purple plaid shirt with a matching hat, high-top sneakers, lobster earrings-Extremely anti-climactic outfit for the Halloween Hop: baggy jeans and a new bulky sweater. Really, Claudia? I am disappointed in you.What About Stacey?Stacey wore nothing that Claudia deemed cool enough to describe for us. Fail, Stacey, fail.Quit letting 12-Year Olds Watch Your Goddamn Kids"Boring!" said Stacey. "Let's put on MTV. At least we can listen to some good music."Kristy: "Now hear this! No running, no yelling, no jumping - and I mean it. One false move, and I'll punch your lights out."Mary Anne let out a sigh of relief. "It's just the wind, " she said. "I must not have closed the door all the way." [Ten minutes later, at the back door]: "The door wasn't latched properly! Some baby-sitter I am. Leaving doors open left and right for anybody to walk through."The Phantom: "It was that baby-sitting book you started bring to school everyday. I checked it each morning. It had all kinds of information in it: times, names, addresses, phone numbers..." Kristy slapped the heel of her hand against her forehead. Ah, yeah, Kristy...WTF!Hilarious!"I decided I would try to paint a picture of embarrassment. The main color would be red."Awwwwwwwwwkward"I don't know whether I was born early or late or on time," said Mary Anne softly. "Dad hardly ever talks about stuff like that. Its times like these I wish I had a mother."...No one said anything.Bitch!"Janine?""Hmm?""Remember when we used to crawl under Mom and Dad's bed during thunderstorms - ""But, we were really just hiding?""Yeah," I said fondly."Very interesting, psychologically." said Janine. "The fear process - ""Janine?""What?""Shut up."Kristy: "How did you know I was going to be baby-sitting at all those places?"Police Officer: "And, why were you harassing this young lady?"Phantom: "Which question should I answer first?"Kristy: "Mine."Police Officer: [raises eyebrow]Srsly. Kill Yrselfs!"Us baby-sitters have to stick together! Through thick and thin.""Through Phantoms and power failures.""Through fires and floods."We put our arms around eachother and headed into the school," [where, hopefully, someone beat you up for being so f*cking cheesy.]That two-star rating? It has nothing to do w/ the fact that this was a Claudia book. I like Claudia. The plot was f*cking asinine.
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Claudia, Stacey, Kristy, and Mary Anne formed the Baby-sitters Club a few weeks ago, and since then, things have been going well: they've had plenty of business, and no big trouble with the kids they're baby-sitting. Lately, though, there's been news of a thief, dubbed the Phantom Caller, who calls people, hangs up, and then later steals their jewelry. And he seems to be moving closer to Stoneybrook, where the girls live.On top of all this, the boy Claudia likes, Trevor Sandbourne, doesn't seem to know she exists, and the school dance, the Halloween Hop, is coming up. Claudia's sister, Janine, is as unbearable as usual, and although Claudia tries to work on their relationship, like her grandmother suggested, there's just not enough time!Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls is a middle-grade novel, the second in the Baby-Sitters Club series by Ann M. Martin. It's told from Claudia's point of view.The change from Kristy's point of view in Kristy's Great Idea to Claudia's in this book is good. Despite Claudia repeating a lot of events that happened in the previous book, it's still interesting, since we get to heat her perspective on the events and on her friends. It might get a little old if there's that much repetition in future books, but it's not too bad, this time.The story is great. There are several plotlines going at once. Primarily, the girls are trying to be brave and babysit while they're worried about the Phantom Caller, and this just intensifies when they start getting mysterious phone calls, with the caller hanging up without speaking. This plotline is great, and there's some real suspense when they're babysitting and they hear strange noises and receive phone calls like those from the Phantom Caller. You know that they're bound to be all right in the end, but could there be a thief, waiting to break into the homes, while they're babysitting?The second plotline, with Claudia hoping that Trevor will ask her to the dance, gives us plenty of opportunity to see how all the girls feel about the subject of boys, and is a good secondary plot for the novel.Finally, Claudia's desire to improve her relationship with her sister, though showing up rarely throughout the book, provides a good reminder that these characters have more going on in their lives than just the main events of the book, and gives a sense that they're real people with real relationships, rather than just characters in a story, serving only the purpose of furthering the plot.Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls is another great middle-grade novel, and a good followup to Kristy's Great Idea. It's definitely worth reading, and, like the previous book in the series, will be available as an ebook for the Kindle starting October 1, 2011.This review also appears on my blog.
—Tracy Poff
In this book we're introduced to our fashion expert, Claudia. Her outfits and antics were fun to read about--she was the artistic one, and it was refreshing to not have the Asian girl be the smart one. (Disappointingly, her older sister was a typical math nerd genius, though, which was handled mostly by making her speak unrealistically with shoehorned-in four-syllable words.) Claudia is also the one who has candy everywhere. She hides it. It's played as quirky, and I think the candy-hiding and ridiculously creative (though impractical) outfits made Claudia one of the more interesting girls to read about. However, then there's the plot of this mess. . . .I never did like "mystery" books with mystery that strains credibility, and a lot of the mystery in this one is created by people communicating in unnecessarily creepy ways and people being incredibly irresponsible. Okay, so everyone in the neighborhood is worried about being targeted by "the Phantom"--a criminal who supposedly checks the houses he's going to steal from by calling them first and hanging up, and only breaking in if he thinks it's a vulnerable house. Babysitters are especially anxious about this because they have to protect kids. And oh no! They start getting calls from someone who's hanging up on them whenever they're babysitting! But hey, no worries. It's just shy boys calling and chickening out of asking you to a dance! God knows why they would CALL YOU AT ANOTHER PERSON'S HOUSE, whose number they would have had to dig up to do so, not to mention that they basically would have had to stalk you to find out where you'd be if they wanted to call you while you were babysitting. It makes no sense at all. As a kid I hated reading stuff like this--where everything was just twisted around a trite revelation for the end, but it's so unnecessarily convoluted that what actually happened raises a lot more questions than it answers. Holy crap, if you're getting harassed on the phone, TELL AN ADULT! Who cares if you might lose business for your babysitting club? TELL GROWN-UPS if you think criminals are targeting you, for the love of cheese!
—Julie Decker
Oh, the BSC. After getting back into the Baby-sitter's Club books with the new prequel, The Summer Before, and the first BSC book, Kristy's Great Idea, I thought, what the heck, I'll keep on going! So I read the second BSC installment, Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls. I still maintain that these are great books, especially for pre-teens. But they even hold up pretty well after you've gotten older and more cynical. My heart actually quickened a little when the phone rang and no one was there, or when one of the girls thought she heard/saw something. I will probably continue to read these, interspersed with "grown-up" books.
—Dawn
