In Little Sister: Karen’s School Trip she mentions that kids who have just been absent can’t take P.E. It’s a school rule. But why is it a rule? Does it even exist as a rule in real life?
It would be weird if it's for any type of absence, but it makes a certain amount of sense if the rule is specifically for absences due to illness (which is the cause of pretty much every mentioned absence in that book, since the flu is going around); the school might just want to make sure that kids who have recently been sick (and might still not be 100%) aren't overdoing it. It's not a punishment, it's a safety measure.
Alternatively, it's to make sure they're not still contagious, considering how the flu spreads. You can be contagious even if the initial signs of illness are gone.
Yes, but if contagion was the issue, they'd presumably not be allowed to come back to school at all, or would be under extra precautions in all their classes. The fact that they're held out of PE only while everything else is normal suggests the concern is about physical activity specifically.
David Michael Thomas, the kid with three first names
Isn't "David Michael" a ridiculously long name to say every time? Why not just call him "D.M." or something like that? Or even just David?
Especially since the family's last name is Thomas. The poor kid has three first names!
No sillier than Mary Anne; it just hasn't become common. And at the time there was a very popular soap opera character named Alan-Michael. There are any number of reasons to use two names: for two, to have a different name than other Davids in his class or to honor two different relatives.
Petty Girls
One for the 1990 TV show: Dawn has a crush on a boy named Jamie, who turns out to be interested in Mary Anne instead; after he learns that they're stepsisters, he asks Dawn for their phone number, which she (not unreasonably) takes as a sign that he wants to call her. But when he calls, he mistakes Dawn for Mary Anne on the phone and invites her on a date, only for Dawn to be humiliated when he shows up and realizes he asked out the wrong stepsister. Dawn spends the rest of the episode feverishly resenting Mary Anne for the mix-up. This makes no sense, because not only does Mary Anne never once display even the slightest interest in Jamie, but she's involved with Logan the whole time. Why did Dawn get mad at her stepsister for something she didn't do?
This question could be asked multiple times in the books. Take New York New York when Claudia and Mallory take art classes. The teacher tells Claudia she's working too fast and to do the drawing over more slowly, and compliments Mallory, despite her showing less talent. Claudia responds by treating Mallory cruelly for the rest of the trip. Mallory actually makes several attempts to make up, but Claudia responds with mean comments every time. It's not Mallory's fault, but Claudia treats her like it is. WHY?
In short, the question is more like "Why do all the girls get mad at each other for something they had no control over?"
Adolescents can be petty, though Claudia is shown to be insecure about her talents and efforts, so she's probably projecting that onto Mallory.
Claudia and her grade
Why on earth was Claudia promoted back to eighth grade? She was doing poorly in eighth, gets demoted to seventh and starts doing better, so the obvious move is to... take her out of the environment in which she's thriving and put her back in the situation where she was struggling? (In a meta sense, it's probably that the author didn't want to have the rest of the older girls graduate without Claudia, and/or that Claudia being in seventh grade in some way became a hindrance to the stories, but the decision makes absolutely no sense in-universe.)
Claudia being in the 7th grade sets those stories in the past, while her being in 8th grade sets more so in the present.
But it's not in the past. Claudia is repeating 7th grade while the others are in 8th, so it's contemporary to the rest of the series.
The Roommate Sitch
In The All-New Mallory Pike, it's mentioned that Jen was moved to a single room because she couldn't deal with Alexis, who then became Mallory's roommate. But the school knew at that point that Alexis was an objectively difficult roommate (rather than the issue being a mutual personality conflict between her and Jen) and Jen didn't even particularly want a single, she just wanted to not be stuck with Alexis. So why did the school move Jen to a single, creating a situation where another roommate (i.e. Mallory) would have to deal with Alexis, rather than just move Alexis to the single right off the bat so that no one would have to be her roommate?
Limited number of rooms? Though, Jen probably asked first or Mallory can put up with Alexis' antics.
Mallory didn't have any choice over rooming with Alexis - it was just the only room available for her. She was desperate to be away from Alexis after she trashed their room in a fit of anger.
It's not a number of rooms issue because it's the same number of rooms either way (one double and one single), the question is just who has the single. And at the end of the story, Alexis does end up in the single; it could've saved everyone a lot of trouble if they just started it off that way. (As with some of the other examples, the Meta reason is probably "because if there was no trouble, there'd be no plot", but it doesn't make sense in-universe.) The school staff do say that they thought Mallory could deal with Alexis due to her experience of learning to get along with a large number of siblings, but if they're at the point where they have to think along those lines, it should have already been a red flag that Alexis was a potential problem roommate and they should have addressed that directly rather than just pair her with another roommate that they hoped could handle it.
The one possible explanation is that maybe Jen thought she wanted a single, and therefore asked for one, after getting totally fed up with Alexis and just wanting nothing to do with roommates as a result, but then after actually experiencing it for a while, she found that having a single was actually pretty lonely (particularly if she's an extrovert and finds alone time draining or unpleasant), while also realizing from what she was hearing from her classmates that her roommate experience was an outlier, and that was when she started to think that having a nice, non-crazy roommate actually sounded appealing. But even if moving Alexis to a single wasn't an option, the school really should have handled her issues much more directly rather than just hoping they could find her a roommate with a thick enough skin to put up with her.
The locker combo
In Claudia and the Middle-School Mystery, the whole thing with Dawn knowing Shawna's locker combination makes no sense. Even if they did mix up the locker assignments so that Dawn got the locker Shawna was meant to have and vice versa, it's not like there's an actual difference, so why would they bother to switch them rather than just have them stick with the "wrong" lockers for the year? And to switch the lockers without even changing the combinations seems especially shortsighted; snooping for evidence is the least of ways that could go wrong.
A slight one but the fact that Gabbie Perkins, at two and a half, is pretty much miles ahead of her peers (fully toilet trained, speaking complete sentences, playing softball on a team with kids about three times her age) but the BSC uses her to compare other toddlers. In Claudia and the Great Search, there's concerns about Emily Michelle falling behind her peers not because of the understandable reasons for her speech and language difficulties (being born in another country and chronic ear infections leading to surgery for draining tubes) but because Emily Michelle isn't "normal" like Gabbie.
Emily Michelle is also compared to other two-year-old clients Marnie Barrett and Sari Papadakis, who are both ahead of Emily. This is one of the reasons they show Hannie teaching both girls the same song/game and the difference. Sari learns and joins in with more of the song each time they do it, and Emily doesn't. And during the "all fall down" part, Emily rarely remembers to "fall".
This is true, but it still doesn't explain why they'd make the comparison with Gabbie. If anything, having other points of comparison that are more typical gives them even less reason to compare Emily to an exceptional case like Gabbie.
Seventh Grade Royalty?
Seems to be heavily in use for Claudia, Queen of the Seventh Grade. Claudia is demoted to seventh grade, and her new classmates elect her their queen - seriously, this is an actual titled position, and is apparently a Stoneybrook Middle School tradition. Setting aside the fact that it was never mentioned in the earliest books in the series, when the club members were all in seventh grade, it's hard to understand how the school officials would be okay with giving the title to someone who is repeating the year. Many schools would consider this as unfair to the students who are going through that grade for the first time.
As a note, Claudia mentions that most of the seventh-grade kids looked up to her in her last book, all copying her style, and her friends campaigned heavily for her to be Queen, so it's understandable why she would win. However, it is still unfair for someone taking seventh grade for the second time to be able to contend for the title in the first place.
Maybe they didn't think to put a rule in place because it never occurred to them that the situation would come up, and then when Claudia decided to run they didn't feel they had grounds to stop her. Claudia does make a reasonable point about how she's generally treated like any other seventh grader (like that she's not allowed to participate in eighth grade-specific activities), so if there's no specific rule about students repeating the year being ineligible, there is an argument to be made that they should fall back on the same standard — that Claudia is considered to be just like any other seventh grader — for this purpose as well.
Just Use Headphones!
In Dawn's Wicked Stepsister, the first real sign of conflict between Dawn and Mary Anne comes when Dawn puts on a radio while she's doing math homework; this distresses Mary Anne, who prefers to work in silence. Neither is necessarily wrong for having different study habits, but each girl's parent tries to get their daughter to compromise and let the other have her way. One has to wonder why not a single one of the four ever thought to have Dawn use headphones.
To be fair, the book was written, and presumably set, at a time when headphones — and devices that use them — weren't as ubiquitous as they are today, so what seems obvious to a reader in the 2010s and beyond might not have occurred to characters living around 1990. Even if they did think of it, there's no guarantee they would have had a pair of headphones in the house, and while buying a pair could be a long-term solution, it wouldn't help in the immediate moment.
Besides, the solution they do come up with (having Dawn and Mary Anne do their homework in separate rooms) is a reasonable one too; it's just that it becomes unnecessarily emotionally charged because Dawn and Mary Anne are already pretty much at a breaking point with each other.
Jessi's Ear Piercing
Many Black readers found it unusual and somewhat unrealistic that black Jessi had to wait until she was eleven to finally get her ears pierced and her parents wouldn't let her until she negotiated with them like Mallory. Even if she didn't get her ears pieced when much younger (including soon after birth), many black people and other PoC tend to agree more easily with children's ears getting pierced (without much argument) when the child asks to, without considering it exotic or strange (or something to negotiate about). It only makes sense when you realize that the author, who is white and was born in 1955, was from an era where white American children rarely got their ears pierced before they were adults (and this is a forbidden thing that carries through to today, with many parents forbidding ear piercings for their girls until as late as adulthood). This is averted in the graphic novels, where Jessi—even if she's not shown with her ears pierced in books—is shown with them in her character portrait. The same is true with Dawn and Claudia, who already have piercings as well and are always drawn with them in.
It's possible that Jessi's parents just had a bad experience in their past (like, maybe the mom, or someone one of the parents knew, had pierced ears young and got a bad infection or something) leading them to be overprotective despite this being out of the ordinary for their community. Eleven is right around the age where a parent might start to consider a child old enough to care for their own piercings, particularly since Jessi has shown herself to be responsible in other ways (i.e. baby-sitting), so if it was a concern about the practical side of things, it would make sense that this is the point where they agreed she was ready.
Mallory's Boarding School
After being horribly bullied at SMS, Mallory gets herself into boarding school, including earning a scholarship, just to get away from SMS. But it's already been established that Stoneybrook has at least two local private schools (Stoneybook Academy and Stoneybrook Day School), and it doesn't seem like Mallory was having any difficulties in Stoneybrook outside of school, but she skips right to applying to the boarding school. Why not at least try to see if she can get a scholarship to one of the local private schools before taking such a drastic step of leaving Stoneybrook completely? (Even if it's that the writers really wanted a boarding school plot, they could at least give a reason why the local schools wouldn't work — have Mallory say she tried to apply to those first but there were no open spaces or no scholarships available or something — rather than have her skip straight to going to boarding school.)
The thing is, Mallory just wants to get away. Yes, there’s other schools in Stoneybrook, but Mallory has other reasons as well. She’s treated like a third parent at home by her siblings. Her parents drop a ton of responsibilities on her. She’s just another BSC member without an official duty, who wants to feel useful and important. Boarding school was a way for Mallory to explore her options and grow as a person that she couldn’t at home. The bullying was just adding to the rest of her stressful life. Something had to give eventually.
For that matter, isn't there supposed to be a second public middle school in Stoneybook? Yes, there'd be a fee for not going to the closest school, but it's probably a heck of a lot less than private school tuition, and they might even be able to make a case to have it waived since the situation at SMS has become untenable for Mallory due to the extent of the bullying. note In general, it seems like the writers periodically forget that this school exists, which creates some continuity glitches.
Per the wiki the other public school is Kelsey Middle School, which is in Kristy (and later Abby’s) neighborhood.
Right, but Kristy still goes to SMS (and it's explicitly mentioned that this is in spite of being zoned for Kelsey, as opposed to Abby's situation which is just an apparent continuity glitch), so presumably Mallory could go to Kelsey under the same exception.
