#2 Claudia and the phantom phone calls

Ok. Here's the second installment of the babysitter club series, and the first one that is in Claudia's perspective. The book starts with Claudia doing her homework. Claudia does not like school very much, and so she does not get good grades. I can relate to that because I did not like school and so I did not get good grades either. She also has an older sister named Janine that Claudia describes as a certified genius. This also makes Claudia feel inferior, and I can also relate to this. Although during school, the person I felt inferior to was my younger brother Nick, but it was for the same reason. While rereading this book, I was reading what Janine was saying in her genius state, and now I can understand what she is saying. I did not when I first read it. An example of her genius talk is this exert from the book. "Yesterday morning, all I did was go, "Janine, it's cold out. Mone wants you to close your window before you leave for school,' and you know what she said? She said, 'I find it fascinating that in our society we attempt to regulate the temperature of the environment rather than our bodies. It's so much more difficult and it's highly inefficient. Primitive peoples and peoples in various other societies existing today tend toward the mere addition or removal of clothing, while we invite the use of heating units and air conditioners.' See. Kind of difficult the first time you read it, but all she is saying is that people should put more layers on or take more layers off instead of running the heater or air conditioner.
The babysitters hear about the serial burglar known as the phantom phone caller that is commiting crimes in nearby towns. This person calls a home, and does not say anything when the person answers the phone. then, when the family goes out for the evening, the person robs their house. This causes the babysitters to , in my opinion, unnecessarily panic because they think that just because this person is in nearby towns, that he or she will come to their town of Stoneybrook. They are so freaked out that Kristy decided to call an emergency babysitters club meeting. In this meeting, they come up with ideas to protect themselves. The weirdest and possibly stupidest one is this code system that if one babysitter thinks there someone prowling around, they will call another member and ask if they have found some ribbons or something like that. They practice, but they keep screwing up, which would probably mean that they are going to screw up when they do this in real life. Kristy also decides to bring the record book to school to find out who has babysitting jobs everyday. They also decide to not tell their parents anything about the phantom phone caller because after all, they are twelve year olds, and they can handle burglars on their own.
the other important thing in this book according to Claudia is that she has a huge crush on Trevor Sandbourne, who she is convinced doesn't know she exists. While she is at school, she sees Trevor in the hallway, and crashes into a boy named Alan Gray, who is an enemy of Kristy's.
Claudia babysits for Jamie Newton and proves herself irresponsible by letting her fears of the phantom caller overrun her by not answering the phone when it rings and putting her and Jamie in danger by investigating a noise. Claudia then babysits for Nina and Elenor Marshall, and she receives a phone call where she answered and no one was there. This makes her scared and jumps at every little sound, but nothing big happens.
Kristy babysits for Karen and Andrew Brewer and she also gets one of those calls, and she is scared, but nothing happens.
Mary Anne babysits for Kristy's brother David Michael, but the phone does not ring. Stacey babysits for Charlotte Johannsen, and the phone does not ring when Stacey is there. There were two things worth mentioning that happened when Stacey babysat. The first one is she and Charlotte are watching tv, and Stacey mentions checking out MTV, which I thought was funny. I would hope that in 1986 when this book was written, that MTV would still be playing music videos, and not mostly idiotic tv shows. The second thing that happened is that there is a thunderstorm going on outside, and Stacey and Charlotte finally settle on watching something on tv called spook theatre. My question is if you were thinking about a phantom caller burglar and there's a thunderstorm outside, why would you choose to watch spook theatre? That would make me more scared.
Mary Anne finally tells her father about the phantom phone caller, and he does not allow her to babysit anymore until the phantom is caught. Why hasn't he, or any other adults for that matter, ever heard of the phantom phone caller? Don't they watch the news or read the paper?
Claudia is still determined to get Trevor to notice her, but bad luck is in her favor because as she is walking past him a lunch, someone bumps her, and part of her lunch lands on his lap. She is completely embarrassed, but at least he knows who she is.
Claudia and Kristy babysit for Janie and his wild cousins, and they get two no answer phone calls, then they hear noises and see a shadow outside. Claudia calls the police. The police arrive with the prowler, and it turns out to be Alan Gray! Alan was calling Krity to ask her to a dance that was coming up and she happily accepted. Claudia began to realize that Alan was the one that was calling Kristy, so who was calling her.
While she was on a babysitting job, she got her answer. It turned out the be Trevor Sandbourne that was calling to ask her to the same dance.
At the end, it is discovered that the phantom was captured, so it turns out to be a happy ending for everyone and everything.