SVH Super Edition #1: Perfect Summer (Revisited)

Elizabeth felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. She suspected that Mr. Cooper’s roly-poly nephew had come all the way from Ohio for a whopping big dose of trouble.

The updated cover – the original had the image in a circle.

Details: Originally published by Bantam Books in July 1985. Paperback, 249 pages

Summary: It’s (inexplicably) summer vacation, and a group of Sweet Valley high students are taking a four-week bicycle trip up the coast of California. The group consists of Jessica, Elizabeth, Todd, Charlie Markus, Bruce Patman, Olivia Davidson, Roger Barrett Patman, Annie Whitman, Lila Fowler, and Barry Cooper, the nephew of Chrome Dome Cooper who (inexplicably) decided to tag along with a group of kids he’s never met before. The group is being chaperoned by Mr. Collins and Ms. Dalton, who are on the outs again.

There’s a 3-day stopover in Los Angeles, where the group stays on the grounds of the Patman’s friend, Steve Thomas. His daughter Courtney is the same age as the teens and while she offers them a chilly reception before hopping on the motorcycle of her boyfriend, Nolan Ruggers, her dad begs Mr. Collins and Ms. Dalton to let her join the trip, thinking it would be good for her. They reluctantly agree, and Courtney appears to undergo a complete personality change, suddenly treating everyone very sweetly. She particularly hones in on being sweet to Todd, who seems to love the attention. Courtney gives Todd the typical poor-little-rich-girl story, none of which is true – but Todd is wildly stupid and eats it up. This worries Elizabeth, who can’t help but feel that something is off with Courtney, and she and Todd butt heads about it to the point where they break up while on the trip.

The group keeps meeting up with two boys who are also on a bicycle trip of their own, and Jessica becomes obsessed with one of the boys, named Robbie October. He doesn’t seem that interested at first, but she keeps at it and he finally agrees to meet her one night after everyone else has gone to bed. When Jessica isn’t back the next morning, the group splits up to look for her, and it’s Barry Cooper who discovers that she and Robbie are trapped in a cave with a black bear. He distracts the bear but needs to be rescued by Mr. Collins, and Jessica and Robbie are saved (and she tells him she never wants to see him again).

Courtney convinces Todd to leave the trip early with her, and they kiss. He’s fallen for her shtick hook, line, and sinker, and doesn’t even mind when she throws her lit cigarette into some brush. When the group is awoken later by a raging forest fire all around them, they work quickly to put it out, because they’re all trained fire fighters or something. Elizabeth was in charge of putting out the campfire the night before and blames herself for the fire. She resolves to leave the next morning, but when Todd puts two and two together, he tells the group about Courtney’s cigarette and she flips out at him and the group, revealing her true colors. Mr. Collins sends her home and the rest of the group finishes the trip. Liz and Todd get back together, though he does not deserve this chance with Liz.

The B-Plot: The B-Plot is pretty woven into the fabric of the main story, but it mostly involves Lila being furious about the fact that her dad is dating Ms. Dalton (again), and then discovering that Ms. Dalton might not actually be who she says she is. When Lila meets a couple of guys at one of the youth hostels, they say that she looks a lot like a teacher they used to have named Beth Curtis, and Lila runs with this and blackmails Ms. Dalton into doing a lot of her chores on the trip. When the story comes out, Mr. Collins confronts Nora, who tells him that she was married to an abusive alcoholic, and when she finally left him, he begged her to come back before killing himself. His wealthy family blamed her, and the entire thing was a big old mess. Mr. Collins tells her that it wasn’t her fault and that he’s in love with her, and they get back together, I guess? There’s also this weird throwaway bit about the fact that George Fowler knows who she really is and has been using it as a coercive tactic to date her. It’s gross!

Also, Annie and Charlie Markus start dating, Bruce Patman shows a softer side of himself that surprises the group, and finally accepts Roger as his family.

Mr. Collins let out a long, heavy sigh. “If I weren’t living through this night, I’d say it wasn’t possible.”

Sweet Valley Social Calendar:
Estimated Elapsed Time: 4 weeks
– Bike trip up the California coast

Trivia:
– Enid is working at Casey’s Ice Cream Parlor over the summer; Cara is working as a camp counselor in Oregon
– Principal Cooper drives a Dodge Dart
– Annie and Ricky have broken up without notice
– Courtney smokes Marlboros

Pop Culture:
– The Twilight Zone
– The Jackson Five’s “ABC”
– The Brady Bunch
– Blowin’ in the Wind
– Sports Illustrated
– Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
– The Oscars

Does it hold up? (A totally unqualified critical analysis)
Look, I love the Super Editions, because they’re absolutely bonkers when it comes to plot. This is true here, though I will admit that this is not my favorite of the bunch (that is reserved for Special Christmas and Spring Break, which I can’t wait to revisit). A four-week bicycle trip where it’s clear that none of the characters have done any training to prepare for riding for hours a day? A trip that includes a near-death by drowning (Nora Dalton), a bear attack, a forest fire, and an absolute sociopath? I am IN.

For the most part, this one is entertaining. The kinds of food this group prepared while on their camping trip was honestly so wild (they’re making, like, chicken parmigiana over a campfire), and I have a lot of questions about how this trip was funded, but the book is also 100 pages longer than the average SVH book, and it allowed for a lot more plot and a lot more characters (though not much more in the way of character development, which is on brand for the series).

Something that absolutely doesn’t hold up, though? Todd’s treatment of Elizabeth. For a boy who is supposedly so in love with his girlfriend, he’s awfully quick to ignore her needs and concerns for the perceived needs of a girl who is giving off incredibly obvious manipulation vibes. I get that Todd prides himself on being a ~nice~ guy who thinks he’s giving Courtney the attention she needs, but his complete dismissal of Elizabeth’s concerns feels really gross and worrying to me? The wool is fully pulled over his eyes when it comes to Courtney until the last 10 pages of the book, when it conveniently is not, and while a lot of this is lazy plotting and writing, it’s also infuriating as a reader to see his treatment of Elizabeth. There’s plenty of other drama happening in this one, and I don’t think we needed this irritating and honestly kind of abusive treatment of Elizabeth by a character we’re ultimately supposed to support.

This is the couple that we’re supposed to be rooting for?

SVH #56: Lost at Sea

Estimated Elapsed Time: One week?

Summary/Overview:

Mr. Russo is taking some students on a field trip to Anacapa Island as part of an extra credit assignment.  Over the course of the Sunday afternoon, students study the plant and wildlife on the island.  It must be super-extra credit, because last I remember, Mr. Russo taught chemistry, not biology.  Anyway, the kids all pile onto a boat and sail out to the island.  Once they’re there, they get split into teams and start studying tide pools.  Jessica’s pissed because she gets put into a group with Lois Waller, Winston Egbert, and Randy Mason.  She wanted to work with Ken Matthews because apparently she’s interested in him again.

A storm suddenly appears, so they cut the field trip short.  On the way back, though, the waves are so big that the boat almost capsizes.  The captain orders an evacuation into the life rafts, and Jessica and Winston get placed in one together.  When Winston tries to give Liz and Aaron an extra oar, their raft capsizes for real and they’re washed away from the group.  The storm ends and the rest of the group is saved, but Jessica and Winston are nowhere to be found.  Liz cries a lot.

Jessica and Winston both wash up on an island some time later.  Jessica sleeps through the night on the beach and then wakes up furious, blaming Winston for their predicament.  He manages to temper some of her fury by offering her a breakfast of freshly caught fish and fruit.  The two of them eat and then start building a shelter on the island.  Later, the two of them explore further up the island, where they run into a bear.  TERROR!  Winston freezes up, and Jessica saves the day by throwing blueberries at it.  This actually happens.

Meanwhile, Liz and Steven can’t just sit at home while the coast guard looks for Jessica and Winston.  They ask Nicholas Morrow to take them out in his boat.  They don’t get very far before it starts to rain again, though, so they head home.  Alice gets upset because she thought she was going to lose her other two children to the sea as well.  Much melodrama ensues.

Jessica and Winston wait out the second storm in their shelter.  Then they are rescued by the coast guard in the most anticlimactic way possible.  When they arrive home, Jessica is interviewed by reporters.  She takes credit for all of Winston’s ideas and basks in the spotlight.  The world makes sense again!

Memorable Quotes:

• “But talk about romantic!  She and Ken Matthews, soaking wet and clinging to each other in a tiny lifeboat in the middle of a raging sea…” (34)
• “There’s no such thing as an uncharted isle, no matter what they say.” (112)

Trivia/Fun Facts:

• Jessica and Ken went to Homecoming together their sophomore year.
• The name of the boat the field trip group rides on is Maverick.  The name of Nicholas Morrow’s boat is Nighthawk.  I wish I were joking.

(Totally Unqualified) Critical Analysis:

We’re talking about a book where Jessica and Winston go on a field trip only to get stranded on a deserted island.  They build shelter and cook fish and Jessica entertains ideas of wearing a palm frond skirt.  The entire plot of the book is far-fetched at best, but I couldn’t help but get tripped up on one detail: the weird response of the Wakefield family in general.

Elizabeth is understandably distraught at the idea of losing Jessica in the middle of the ocean.  It’s fair to say that the entire family is pretty upset, actually, but what’s weird is how their actions don’t seem to match up to their emotions.  The night Jessica goes missing, Alice has Jeffrey, Steven, Cara, and Liz sitting in her kitchen, waiting for word from the coast guard.  She serves them coffee and lemon bars.  It just feels…oddly formal.  Then she allows Steven and Liz to go off and search for Jessica in Nicholas Morrow’s boat.  This doesn’t really make sense, either.

Of course, one could make the argument that you shouldn’t judge another’s actions until you’ve been in their situation, but since I don’t foresee that happening, we’re going to have to assume that sending your remaining children to school the day after their sister is lost at sea is a little strange.

SVH Super Edition: Perfect Summer

Estimated Elapsed Time: 1 month

Summary/Overview

Jessica and Elizabeth are on summer vacation, and they’re going on a 1-month-long bicycle trip with a bunch of their classmates and chaperones in the form of Ms. Nora Dalton and Mr. Roger Collins.  Apparently the two teachers signed on for the trip back when they were hot and heavy but have since broken up.  Scandal!  The rest of the teens going on the trip are: Todd Wilkins, Bruce Patman and Roger (Barrett) Patman, Olivia Davidson, Lila Fowler, Charlie Markus, Annie Whitman, and Principal Cooper’s nephew from Ohio Barry Cooper, who has never met any of the SVH kids and yet wants to spend four weeks bicycling and camping with them.  Barry is chubby and awkward, and the author reminds the reader of this at every turn.  He’s slovenly and slow and has a thing for Jessica, who’s downright rude to him at every chance she gets.  This is a recipe for disaster.

The twelve of them depart and start heading up the coast.  Their itinerary is kind of weird, but they make stops in Newport Bay, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Pismo Beach, Big Sur, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco.  The group makes a 3-day stopover in Los Angeles to stay with a very rich family-friend of the Patman’s.  Steve Thomas and his daughter, Courtney live in a huge mansion in Hollywood, and while Mr. Thomas is pretty nice, his daughter Courtney is a raging bitch.  Within minutes of meeting the group, she hops on her boyfriend Nolan Ruggers’s (best name ever?) dirt bike and takes off with him, clad only in a bikini, which is just bad sense.

That night, when the teens head out for an unsupervised night on the town (really?), Mr. Thomas invites Ms. Dalton and Mr. Collins up to the main house for a drink.  He and Dalton have champagne, but Collins has a glass of Perrier with lime, which makes me think HE IS AN ALCOHOLIC.  Over drinks, Mr. Thomas begs the two teachers to take Courtney with them on the rest of the trip.  He needs to get her away from her bad-news boyfriend and is at his wit’s end.  Mr. Collins is angry and privately thinks Mr. Thomas is abandoning his own bad parenting and pushing Courtney off on someone else, but he reluctantly agrees to the arrangement.

Once on the trip with the group, Courtney does a complete turn-around, behavior wise.  She kills with kindness, sweetness, and light.  But she’s also pretty helpless, and requires the near-constant attention of Todd.  This bothers Elizabeth, who doesn’t trust Courtney and the stories she’s spinning (her dad’s an alcoholic, she’s worried sick about him).  Todd begs Elizabeth to give her a fair chance, and this becomes a thorn in the side of their relationship, and it pushes them to the breaking point.

Lila is pissed that Ms. Dalton is dating her father and taking up even more of his time.  She is nasty to her whenever she can, and when she runs into a few boys at a hostel who recognize Dalton from a few years back and tell her that Dalton used to be called Beth Curtis, Lila blackmails her into bending to her every whim.

This secret that Ms. Dalton is carrying around causes problems between her and Mr. Collins.  When swimming one day, Dalton sees a stingray and panics, nearly drowning.  Mr. Collins saves her, and she shivers in his arms and they have a nice little moment before she pulls away.  When Lila finally spills the beans about Ms. Dalton’s former life (and marriage), the whole story comes out.  Ms. Dalton, formerly known as Beth Curtis, was a French teacher in Arizona, married to a man named John.  John was a mean drunk, and he beat her.  When she finally got the courage to leave, he begged her to return, and when she refused, he shot himself.  His family blamed her and wouldn’t leave it be, so she changed her name and moved away.  Somehow, George Fowler knew the Curtises and pseudo-blackmailed her into dating him.  Mr. Collins and Ms. Dalton make up and make with the love-promises.

Meanwhile, Jessica becomes obsessed with a boy named Robbie October, who is riding up the coast with his brother.  After a few encounters where she kind of blows it, she meets up with him in Big Sur, where they sneak off in the middle of the night to take a hike.  When she’s not back in the morning, everyone goes looking for her and they discover that Robbie and Jessica (who now hate each other) are trapped in a bear cave with a very angry mama bear.  Barry Cooper distracts the bear long enough for them to escape, and thus he saves the day.

That night, Courtney asks Todd to meet her in the woods.  She smokes a cigarette while waiting for him, and flicks it into the brush when he arrives.  She asks him to go back with her to L.A., and he agrees and kisses her.

The next morning, a forest fire is raging near the group’s campsite.  Bruce, Roger, Mr. Collins, and Charlie courageously put it out, with Bruce finally acknowledging that Roger is his blood-kin.  Elizabeth blames herself for the fire starting, assuming that she didn’t put the campfire out properly the night before.  She tries to run away but Mr. Collins intercedes and tells her about Courtney’s problems.  Liz goes to confront her and the whole truth comes out, including the fact that Courtney set the fire accidentally.  Mr. Collins ships Courtney off the next morning, and the group continues on to San Francisco.  All is well in the world.

Oh, and Annie Whitman and Charlie Markus start dating.

Memorable Quotes

• “As the bike got closer, leaving churned-up bits of grass and dirt in its wake, Elizabeth could make out its rider–dressed from head to toe in black leather.  He was wearing spike-studded wristbands and calf-high, black, lace-up army boots he had decorated with heavy chains.  His hair was shorn almost to his skull, except for a narrow strip that ran from the middle of his forehead to his neck and stood straight up in stiff bristles.” (25)
• “‘Somebody ought to give both Todd and Courtney a sound spanking!’ Jessica wrote in bold letters.” (116)
• “‘Honestly,’ she said when they were out of Bruce’s earshot, ‘he’s as bad in the kitchen as you are.  What do you people do on the servant’s night off, anyway?’  Lila looked Jessica straight in the eye. ‘Cold lobster and caviar,’ she said earnestly.” (119)

Trivia and Pop Culture

• Enid is working at Casey’s Ice Cream Parlor over the summer, while Cara is a junior counselor at a camp in Oregon.
• Courtney favors Marlboro cigarettes.
• Sweet Valley High apparently has campus gates.  This blows my mind.
• References to The Twilight Zone, the Jackson 5’s “ABC,” The Brady Bunch, and Munchkins are made.

(Totally Unqualified) Critical Analysis

The first thing I’d like to focus on is the food the group consumes on this trip.  By far, the list of items they eat is the most extensive we’ve seen.  Over the course of the trip, the group consumes: chicken parmesan, blueberry muffins, cheese fondue, chocolate fondue, trout almondine, asparagus, shredded carrot salad, flaky fruit pastries, fudgy brownies, cider, paella, hot-and-sour soup, burgers, salad, cookies, seafood (a clambake), melon, prosciutto, cream of tomato soup, rootbeer and other sodas, pizza, and chocolate cake.  Much of this food is consumed while camping, which boggles the mind.  True, some of these items are eaten at restaurants, which brings me to my actual point.

Who is funding this trip?  I mean, is it organized through the school?  I’m assuming it is, since there are teachers chaperoning the event (I’m not even going to get into the details of the fact that the teachers were sharing tents with students).  But like, did families pay for their children to go on the trip?  How much would a trip like this cost?  What would the insurance liabilities be for a trip like this?  Why is none of this even explained?

The theme of Mr. Collins-as-savior is explored in this book again, with him rescuing Nora from drowning, carrying Barry after he is chased by the bear, and interceding before Elizabeth runs away after the forest fire.  He is presented as a man of morals (and yet no mention of what kind of child care he had arranged for his six-year-old son while he was on the trip is made), a man who loves Nora in a pure, mostly non-sexual way, a man who doesn’t indulge in alcohol and who remains true to the well-being of his students, no matter what.

Which is mostly boring, although he does have one moment of almost-real insight when standing in Mr. Thomas’s house:

Roger Collins weighed the pros and cons of taking Courtney along.  He found himself thinking that perhaps Steve Thomas had given up on disciplining his daughter and that he was now turning to someone else for a solution.  What’s more, there were certainly more pleasant prospects than suddenly becoming responsible for a girl like Courtney (31).

But despite showing a rare moment of good sense, he agrees to the half-assed plan and that’s where all the trouble begins.  Oh, Mr. Collins.  So close, and yet so far.

I will give a shout-out to the SVH crowd for going green way before it was trendy.