#97: Claudia and the World's Cutest Baby
There are two main things going on in this book. The first is that Claudia’s aunt Peaches (remember Crazy Peaches?) gives birth to a baby girl. Peaches and Russ’s daughter is named Lynn (after Claudia’s middle name) and they ask Claudia to be the godmother. Claudia is thrilled and is immediately obsessed with her baby cousin — unfortunately, this leads her to spend every spare minute at Peaches and Russ’s house “helping” them. What she doesn’t realize is that she’s wearing out her welcome; the new parents need some downtime with each other and with their baby. When Peaches finally — gently — expresses this to Claudia, Claud feels angry and sad.
Luckily for everyone, the second thing going on in this book is that Claudia is going on a weekend trip to Philadelphia with her social studies class. Stacey and Abby are on the trip as well, along with a girl named Melissa who seems to really want to be friends with Claudia. She’s nice enough and means well, but she’s kind of annoying. (Hmm, sound familiar?)
Melissa tags along with the BSC-ers all weekend, and at one point convinces Claudia to sneak away from their tour group and go see the Rodin Museum. Claudia is torn because she wants to see Rodin’s work really badly, but on the other hand she knows it’s risky to sneak off. In the end, she sneaks off and then she and Melissa are late and get lost. They eventually get back in touch with their teacher and are reunited (right after she’d called the police) and later Melissa apologizes to Claudia. It makes Claudia realize how Peaches must have felt, having her around “just trying to help” but really never leaving her alone. When Claudia gets back to Stoneybrook, she calls Peaches and apologizes and all is good. Lynn is baptized with Claudia as her godmother. <3
Side note: one of my favorite things that happened in this book is that, at midnight on the very same day that Claudia got in trouble for going missing, Claudia, Stacey, and Abby sneak out of the Philadelphia hotel to go around the corner and eat greasy diner food. It’s stupid and also perfect. It brought me — and them — joy. Diners 4ever.
