Reviews

Abby in Wonderland by Ann M. Martin

bibliotequeish's review against another edition

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As a kid my best friends sister had the whole BSC series on a book shelf in her room. I thought she was so grown up. And I envied this bookshelf. And would often poke my head into that room just to look at it.
And when I read BSC, I felt like such a grown up.
And while I might have still been a little too young to understand some of the issues dealt with in these books, I do appreciated that Ann M. Martin tackled age appropriate issues, some being deeper than others, but still important.

peachani's review against another edition

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fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.5

finesilkflower's review against another edition

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1.0

Abby worries her grandmother is sick.

Abby and her family go to her grandparents’ summer home in the Hamptons. Abby’s grandmother is planning a ludicrously complex Alice in Wonderland themed party, and she seems overly upset that some friends and relatives can’t make it. After various anvilicious she’s-sick hints, Abby finds pamphlets on breast cancer. Fearing, as her grandmother apparently does, that this is secretly Gram’s last healthy summer, Abby calls the RSVP no’s and convinces them to come. In a weird turn of anticlimax, possibly brought about by equally heated writer’s room debates about whether to make the ending happy or not, it turns out that Gram doesn’t have her biopsy results back yet. She has Schrodinger's cancer! We never hear about this again.

Meanwhile, the Pike family doesn’t have enough money to go to Sea City this year because their dad’s car needs an expensive repair. Mary Anne and Dawn (visiting for the summer) come up with the idea for a beach-themed staycation; the kids make a backyard beach with kiddie pools and sand castle sand and camp out overnight. (There is also a trip to meet the mayor, for some reason.) I can see kids really digging this, but not ones who were expecting to go to the real beach.

This book contains some of the clunkiest prose I’ve ever read in a kids’ book. "And the absurd Wonderland setting magnified the unreal nature of Gram’s situation." Show don’t tell, dude.

Timing: Late August

Revised Timeline: I’m having trouble figuring out what to do now that the girls are graduated from college. Luckily, there’s nothing in this book that particularly requires anybody to be at any particular stage of life (well, the Pikes not being kids anymore would be a problem I guess, but we can sub in any number of new kid-families). As a working adult, Abby could just as easily visit her grandparents and have the sobering realization that they are mortal; in fact this is a storyline that becomes even more likely if she is older.

sammah's review against another edition

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2.0

After this I only have one more regular series Abby book to go! YEAH! This one was...not so entertaining. Abby and her family go to Long Island to stay with her grandparents in the Hamptons for 8 days. They're throwing a big anniversary party, something the grandparents do for themselves every year, but gram is acting shady. Abby finds out that gram has a lump in her breast and is waiting on the results of a biopsy.

That's it. We never find out the results of the biopsy. We never see how the rest of the time in the Hamptons went. I...what? Where are there never enough answers in the BSC-verse?!

xtinamorse's review against another edition

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Read my recap at A Year with the BSC via Stoneybrook Forever: www.livethemovies.com/bsc-blog/abby-in-wonderland

ssshira's review against another edition

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2.0

this is my first time reading this book.

in this book by ghostwriter [a:Suzanne Weyn|99836|Suzanne Weyn|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1225668404p2/99836.jpg] abby goes to stay with her grandparents on long island during their annual anniversary party. gram elsie always goes all out, and this year is no different: she’s planning an alice in wonderland-themed party with elaborate decorations and costumes from her friend molly, a set designer. gram elsie seems bummed that some of the family members aren’t coming to the party, and when abby finds a breast cancer info pamphlet among her things, she suspects that elsie is seriously ill with breast cancer and believes this will be her last anniversary party ever. so abby uses the jewish weapon (guilt) and manipulates her family members, including elsie’s sister leah who she hasn’t talked to in ages (because leah blew up her spot that elsie was on weight watchers). eventually, at the party, abby freaks out and tells elsie that she knows she has breast cancer. elsie is like, "yeah, they saw a little something in my mammogram and I got a biopsy, but abby, did you know that the survival rate for breast cancer (especially when caught this early) for white ladies is over 80% and it’s even likelier that I’ll survive since they caught it early and also even if I don’t survive I’m not gonna let the possibility that I might die from cancer one day ruin my life right now. I don’t even know if it’s cancer yet. chill out, my granddaughter." man, my dialogue is way better than anything the ghostwriters could’ve written. anyway, the subplot is that the pikes can’t afford to go on their annual trip to sea city, so the bsc makes their own sea city for the pikes. over the span of a week, they create a "beach" with sand and kiddie pools, have water fights, etc.

highlights:
-driving on long island abby sees her old neighborhood and feels weird about it, since she's lost touch with all her old friends. she’s very wistful. she reflects on the fact that stoneybrook is her home now and long island doesn't seem like home anymore.
-mrs. pike accidentally gets a water balloon to the face during the pikes’ water fight. she comes downstairs, stone-faced, like she's about to yell at the kids, but turns out she was hiding a super soaker behind her back and soaks all her kids.
-abby does breast cancer research and finds that ashkenazi jewish women are likelier to develop it (they don't call the gene BRCA by name, and they don't say you can get the genetic test done for it, but still I appreciate that they go into this at all)
-anna her friend corley dress as tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum. I like that they don't do the obvious twin thing and have anna and abby dress as them

lowlights/nitpicks:
-the bsc making sea city for an entire effing week for the pikes. SERIOUSLY? do they not have anything better to do with their time than spend a freakin’ week catering to the bratty whims of kids who can’t deal with not getting to go on a trip?
-apparently abby's great-grandmother came to the us in the 1920s and most of her siblings stayed in europe and all died in the holocaust. what jews came to the us in the 1920s? they came to ellis island around the turn of the 20th century and worked in LES factories. have these people never seen hester street?
-how conveeeenient that gram elsie’s best friend is a set designer who has all the set pieces and costumes you could ever need for your whimsical parties.
-they serve crabs legs at the party. the ghostwriters need to decide how jewish abby and anna’s family is and stick with it, because they are so inconsistent. I would’ve thought they wouldn’t eat shellfish.

claud outfit:
-"Today she had on orange leggings and a long yellow tunic on which she'd sewn wild zigzag patterns of tiny beads. Her dangle earrings were also handmade, from a combination of clay beads and the same small sparkly beads she used on her tunic. Her shoes were a deep aqua."

molly (gram elsie's best friend) outfit:
-"That day she was wearing a red-and-orange tie-dyed outfit with flowing sleeves."

snacks in claudia's room:
-potato chips (n.s.)

liannakiwi's review against another edition

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2.0

(LL)
This one was so boring. There isn’t really a nicer way to put it. The subplot of the Pike kids having their summer vacation in the backyard was annoying. Kristy randomly showing up for Abby’s grandparents’ party was really weird and unnecessary.

It also suffered from the same issue that Claudia did in the book she thought she was adopted: Abby gets upset and focuses all week on something that isn’t true because she refused to talk to her Grandma about it.
Don’t get me wrong, I love these books, but I’m starting to see why they stopped writing books so shortly after this one!
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