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A review by finesilkflower
Logan Likes Mary Anne! by Ann M. Martin
3.0
Like its source text, [b:Logan Likes Mary Anne!|233724|Logan Likes Mary Anne! (The Baby-Sitters Club, #10)|Ann M. Martin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389063745l/233724._SX50_.jpg|995924], the plot here is simple and low-conflict: Mary Anne and Logan like each other and begin to go to dances and parties together, but Mary Anne is very shy and constantly thinks she has ruined the relationship by doing something embarrassing. Logan is sweet and tries to reassure her. They begin a sweet puppy-love type relationship.
This is a hard one to translate to a visual medium because it's so introspective, but Gale Galligan's adaptation hits the right emotional beats and includes some memorable details, like Mary Anne's Famous Cities skirt, Richard's awkward but kind dad-ing, and the club coming together to show they appreciate Mary Anne even if they don't fully understand her.
Jessi is added in this book - to my immense relief since I was afraid they were going to drop her entirely - though she feels shoehorned in. With that said, I like her character design and her scenes with Mallory are sweet. (I will forever renounce anything negative I ever said about how Mallory and Jessi's introductions were handled in the series if they're brave enough to make them a couple.)
Stray Observations
Kristy wears a burgundy hat and looks more than ever like her TV counterpart in this, the first graphic novel released since the TV show!
I'll be the first to declare that the way the experience of race and racism were depicted in the BSC books was problematic (it very much doubled down on the "racists = bad people" simplistic narrative that makes white people feel good about themselves for not being like those cartoonishly bad racists in the book, case closed, no need to look at my own thoughts or actions any further). However, I'm also uneasy with the adaptations simply... dropping any story or dialogue about race. More characters are depicted as being POC (including Logan in this book), but it's never discussed and never seems to have any impact on anything.
This adaptation drops a key component of the Logan storyline, namely his refusal to go to meetings because there is too much "girl talk" and because being in a group of all girls makes him uncomfortable (and he can tell that his presence is making them uncomfortable). Instead, they replace it with a weak excuse about how he has to baby-sit his siblings during the meeting times and was, for some reason, too embarrassed to say (as if Kristy would have a problem with that - an unrelated conflict would have made more sense to me). I'm curious as to why this element was dropped; I wonder if it felt to Gale and the Scholastic editors as if young people today wouldn't relate to these problems because they're more accustomed to mixed-gender friendships? I have a sneaking suspicion that there's an element at play similar to the race thing, where they'd rather pretend that "identity politics" don't exist and that people of different demographics (gender, race, etc.) don't have different experiences of the world than address it in even the mildest of ways.
This is a hard one to translate to a visual medium because it's so introspective, but Gale Galligan's adaptation hits the right emotional beats and includes some memorable details, like Mary Anne's Famous Cities skirt, Richard's awkward but kind dad-ing, and the club coming together to show they appreciate Mary Anne even if they don't fully understand her.
Jessi is added in this book - to my immense relief since I was afraid they were going to drop her entirely - though she feels shoehorned in. With that said, I like her character design and her scenes with Mallory are sweet. (I will forever renounce anything negative I ever said about how Mallory and Jessi's introductions were handled in the series if they're brave enough to make them a couple.)
Stray Observations
Kristy wears a burgundy hat and looks more than ever like her TV counterpart in this, the first graphic novel released since the TV show!
I'll be the first to declare that the way the experience of race and racism were depicted in the BSC books was problematic (it very much doubled down on the "racists = bad people" simplistic narrative that makes white people feel good about themselves for not being like those cartoonishly bad racists in the book, case closed, no need to look at my own thoughts or actions any further). However, I'm also uneasy with the adaptations simply... dropping any story or dialogue about race. More characters are depicted as being POC (including Logan in this book), but it's never discussed and never seems to have any impact on anything.
This adaptation drops a key component of the Logan storyline, namely his refusal to go to meetings because there is too much "girl talk" and because being in a group of all girls makes him uncomfortable (and he can tell that his presence is making them uncomfortable). Instead, they replace it with a weak excuse about how he has to baby-sit his siblings during the meeting times and was, for some reason, too embarrassed to say (as if Kristy would have a problem with that - an unrelated conflict would have made more sense to me). I'm curious as to why this element was dropped; I wonder if it felt to Gale and the Scholastic editors as if young people today wouldn't relate to these problems because they're more accustomed to mixed-gender friendships? I have a sneaking suspicion that there's an element at play similar to the race thing, where they'd rather pretend that "identity politics" don't exist and that people of different demographics (gender, race, etc.) don't have different experiences of the world than address it in even the mildest of ways.