Review by Frank Plowright

During a regular meeting of the Baby-Sitters Club there’s a call asking if someone can look after a houseful of pets for a week. Jessi had just been talking with her sister about having a pet, so the situation seems ideal and she volunteers, but she doesn’t expect quite the number of different pets the Mancusi household contains. Ellen T. Crenshaw’s cover manages to show nearly all of them. Readers might like to take a guess before beginning as to which of the creatures pictured on the cover escapes.

That’s not the only problem Ann M. Martin’s story poses for Jessi, with the sheer quantity of animals and their different needs very testing, and that’s before any concerns about health. Fortunately Jessi is allowed to being friends along to help.

Martin almost always has two plots running alongside each other, and here there’s a crisis developing among members of the Baby-Sitters Club. They feel Kristy’s becoming too bossy and perhaps it’s time to change the club President, and once that subject’s raised it seems not all other officers are happy with their jobs either. There needs to be an election.

Picking out one nice touch, it’s nice to see a core member of the club making a mistake. While the girls have their individual problems book by book, they’re generally well behaved and sensible beyond their years, so this surprises. Also, Jessi and her friend Mallory, star of the previous Mallory and the Problem with Twins, are a year younger than other club members, which makes a difference at their age. Their uncertainties about voting for a new club President are well aired.

The adaptations of Martin’s 1980s children’s novels are a hallmark of quality and this offers the same character-based suspense, page-turning plot and excellent cartooning as the others in the series. Dawn on the Coast follows.