42 pages • 1 hour read
Kristy's Great Idea
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Chapters 12-15Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 12 Summary
The club plans their pizza party for Saturday, but during the week, all sorts of things start to go wrong. Stacey doesn’t know if she’ll be back from New York City in time, and Mary Anne calls Kristy in tears to say that her father isn’t allowing her to spend her earnings on pizza. She doesn’t want to attend if she can’t contribute, so she decides to forego it.
Kristy calls Claudia next, who tells her that her parents want her to focus harder on schoolwork, including all weekend. When Kristy calls Stacey, her mom picks up and tells Kristy that she’s still in New York with friends. Mary Anne calls back to tell Kristy that she saw Stacey in her car that morning, and Kristy knows that Stacey and her mother are lying. Afterward, Watson calls with an urgent babysitting request, and Kristy is the only one available.
Chapter 13 Summary
Watson comes to pick up Kristy with Karen and Andrew in tow. He’s panicked because his ex-wife broke her ankle and needs him to take her home from the hospital. Kristy wonders how her mother feels about it all. She gets as much information as is needed from Watson before he darts off and leaves Kristy with Karen and Andrew at their house.
Kristy meets Boo-Boo and makes lunch for the kids. She finds that Karen and Andrew are both fun to be around, and Watson’s house is nice as well. Over lunch, Karen reveals that Watson says he’s in love with Kristy’s mom, and Karen and Kristy talk about what their future might look like. Kristy would be Karen and Andrew’s older stepsister, and Karen likes that idea, but Andrew gets upset when he hears about all the changes. Kristy offers him some ice cream, which cheers him up again.
Watson comes home while Kristy is reading stories to the kids. She reports that everything went well, and Karen confesses that she wouldn’t mind having Kristy as a stepsister. While everyone waits for Andrew to wake up from his nap, they play checkers together, and Kristy realizes that Watson isn’t so bad. On the way home, she tells Karen she can be her babysitter until they can be stepsisters.
Later that night, Kristy tells her mom that the night went well and asks again about the future. Her mother reveals that they will probably move into Watson’s house since it’s bigger, but that is all they know right now.
Chapter 14 Summary
At the next club meeting, everyone has news to share. Mary Anne negotiated with her father to allow her to spend half her earnings freely, and Claudia managed to pull her grades up to a B and catch up on previous work. When Kristy asks Stacey about her trip to New York, she can’t resist revealing that Mary Anne saw her during the weekend and accuses Stacey and her mother of lying. This upsets Stacey, and Claudia defends her, which Kristy predicted. Mary Anne starts to cry, and Kristy accuses Stacey and Claudia of seeing her and Mary Anne as babies.
When Claudia’s grandmother comes in to see what’s going on, everyone suddenly feels embarrassed and quiets down. The phone rings, and all four girls try to answer it, but Kristy wins the tussle. She takes the job even though all four girls are free, and she and Mary Anne leave without saying much more. On the way home, Kristy assures Mary Anne that they’ll be friends again before long.
That night, Kristy’s mother and Watson announce that they’ve decided to go through with the engagement. All Kristy can say is, “When will the wedding be?” (143).
Chapter 15 Summary
At school, Kristy gets up the nerve to ask Claudia if the next meeting is still taking place, and Claudia agrees. That evening, Kristy’s family goes over to Watson’s for dinner, and everyone has a chance to get to know each other better. Kristy enjoys the fondue that Watson serves for dinner, and the family has fun making silly rules about what happens when bread drops or gets knocked off the fork. One such rule, created by Watson, is that anyone who drops their bread into the cheese has to kiss the person seated next to them. When Kristy drops hers and has to kiss Watson, she gives him a quick peck on the cheek. Later, she writes Watson a note thanking him for the dinner and telling him that she’s fine with him marrying her mom.
At the club meeting, Claudia apologizes for yelling and losing her temper, but she explains that she doesn’t like seeing her friends act rudely toward one another. She cares about Kristy and wants to see her improve in this way. Kristy concedes but admits that she still doesn’t like being lied to. She lets it go, however, understanding that she doesn’t need to know everything about Stacey. The girls decide to hold the party the following weekend.
The pizza party is held at Kristy’s house on Saturday night. She and her mom talk about the club and how happy they are that it was formed. It seems to have helped everyone grow and has even brought Kristy closer to Watson. The girls come over and enjoy pizza and popcorn together. Stacey finally feels ready to admit her secret and tells everyone that she has diabetes. Her visits to New York are usually to see her doctor, and the family left the city because Stacey was teased at school. Kristy, Claudia, and Mary Anne assure Stacey that having diabetes doesn’t make them like her any less and remind her that they care about her. Stacey feels glad to have found friends that she can finally be herself around.
Kristy then admits that her mom and Watson are getting married, and everyone is excited about the news. The girls stay up late into the night telling ghost stories, and Kristy is happy to have such great friends and a great new club and to have settled the tension between her and Watson.
Chapters 12-15 Analysis
The Importance of Friendship and Teamwork comes to the fore in these chapters as the club members encounter some difficulties. Although the girls hope to celebrate their early successes with a pizza party, several roadblocks appear to complicate their plans: Mary Anne’s father starts controlling her spending, Claudia is grounded and has to study, and Stacey lies about being gone all weekend. The tensions at the heart of the group also reach a climax as Kirsty’s confrontation with Stacey causes a fight. The girls soon realize that they have differences that must be addressed. They must all adjust to each other’s diverse needs, attitudes, and ways of doing things.
Kristy experiences an important moment of growth through her fight with Stacey. In calling Stacey and her mother liars, Kristy once again demonstrates the impulsive and insensitive streak that she has been wrestling with throughout the narrative. However, Kristy is open to hearing criticism and now realizes that she is capable of maturing and changing her behavior to accommodate other people’s feelings and needs when necessary. She admits that she does not need to pressure Stacey for information and that her accusations have had an impact on Claudia and Mary Anne as well by causing tensions within the club. In listening to what Claudia says and learning from her mistakes, Kristy shows the extent of her emotional development. This emotional maturity enables her to strengthen her ties of friendship with the other three girls, including Stacey.
Kristy’s most significant personal changes come through Navigating Family Changes, as she accepts the possibility of becoming a blended family with Watson and his two children. When she is put in a tough position of choosing between her pride and the business, she chooses the business and shows her growing maturity. Her willingness to babysit Watson’s kids contrasts with her refusal earlier in the novel, revealing that she is now willing to meet them at last. In meeting Andrew and Karen, she learns that she actually shares common experiences and feelings with them, particularly regarding divorce and remarriage. When Karen decides that she would love to have Kristy as a stepsister, Kristy is flattered, and her softer side comes out. Instead of regarding Watson and his family as a threat to her own, Kristy begins envisioning them as a welcome new addition to her family dynamic.
Having met Watson’s children, Kristy comes to terms with her mother’s engagement and demonstrates immense growth as a person by putting her mother’s wishes before her own. Her act of writing a thank-you note to Watson echoes her earlier act of writing an apology note to her mother, further demonstrating her growing awareness of other people’s feelings. In doing so, she lets go of the isolation she felt at the beginning of the novel in exchange for accepting her place within a wider group dynamic—both within the club and her family—rather than wanting everyone to do things her way.
Kristy is not the only one whose character improves as a result of the club. Mary Anne also displays Self-Growth Through Responsibility and Agency, as she stands up for herself with her father, which gives her a greater sense of agency since she can now spend some of her money as she wishes. Claudia discovers skills that give her more confidence, which implies that she will no longer live in her sister’s shadow. Stacey finds the courage to share her secrets instead of lying; her honesty allows her to become part of a friend group that knows and accepts her as she truly is. Each character thus moves forward into adolescence with more security and confidence than they had before. Although not all their problems are solved, they can now confront the future with bravery and a firm foundation: As Kristy reflects, “I felt deliciously scared—and happy. We were friends again” (156). The story’s conclusion sees the girls having their first club party and celebrating their business’s success, their solidified friendship, and the growth they have all experienced.
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By Ann M. Martin
