There is an urban legend that goes the call is coming from inside the house while a babysitter is taking care of her charge asking if she has checked on the children from a creepy voice. The phone call startles her and she calls the cop and she is told the call is coming from inside the house.
Creepy phone calls are a staple of horror and they can be traced back (heh) to this infamous urban legend. My favorite slasher franchise is built around the killer calling their prey.
The second book in The Baby-Sitters Club book focuses on the idea of creepy phone calls while one of the girls is babysitting. What’s so fascinating is I first really got into the BSC via the Netflix series and while this book was adapted, it was a rather loose adaption that had to be updated for the modern audience and the graphic novel adaptions skipped this book entirely, perhaps finding it too difficult to update for the modern audience. This video goes into more detail about how Netflix’s BSC show couldn’t adapt this book.
Covers
I decided I wanted to look at both covers for this book as I read both the eBook and the reprint.
I find it fascinating how two different covers can take the same cover and come away with different feelings. The classic cover in my opinion does a better job of conveying Claudia’s fear standing in the kitchen. And something about the pitch black of night that can be seen from the window is eerie. The cover for the reprint is fine but nothing special and I think that comes from how safe the artwork for the reprints are. They have a more fun and vibrant look which works for some of the stories but the only thing that really expresses concern on the reprint’s cover is the scared look on the little girl’s face that Claudia is holding.
The Plot
The plot is a bit basic but that is something to be expected when this is only the second book in the series. While Halloween is used in this book, it’s a bit of a backdrop with Claudia worrying about being asked to a dance at her middle school by a boy she has a crush on. It’s cute but the main concern and worry comes from the so-called Phantom Phone Calls that happen to come when Claud or one of the BSC girls are babysitting. The phone would ring three times and there’d be dead silence on the air. Apparently, the girls got spooked one day after reading about the Phantom Phone Caller who is a known burglar making their way through various homes. The so-called Phantom Phone Caller targets rich homes a la Wet Bandits hoping to score a big steal.
Though this book treats the threat much more seriously than the buffoons that Harry and Marv were. There’s a fun moment where Mary Anne uses pots and pans to set up an alarm in case the Phantom Phone Caller returns. It’s fun and shows how a kid might think. But no, it turns out THe Phantom Phone Caller that had been calling the girls while they’d been babysitting was nuisance Alan Gray that BSC President Kristy Thomas couldn’t stand but he wanted to ask her to the Halloween Hop aka the dance I mentioned. It’s rather sweet but a bit weird and plays into the outdated trope of if he annoys you, he likes you. It seems like a cousin of boys will be boys, I don’t know how much of a fan I am of that. I’ve seen some people point out that this story wouldn’t work in the modern age due to the advent of caller ID and there is a lot of truth to that. Perhaps if you tweak it to be texts, it might work. After all, Ghostface is still able to taunt his victims over the phone so many years later.
Just a thought but I think it could work but that is just my thought but I can understand why so many feel it needed to be tweaked. I’ll perhaps look at the Netflix adaptation next year. In all this is a fine book that is cute.
My Final Thoughts
This is a cute book that I’m happy I looked at and you can see how the series would get better over time. This is a decent story two books into this franchise. Join me next time as we look at one of the Baby-Sitters Club Mysteries that seems to have pulled material from Carrie.
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