User:Propaniac/bsc/Mallory Hates Boys (and Gym)

Mallory Hates Boys (and Gym) is the fifty-ninth book in the original Baby-sitters Club series.

Mallory's brothers won't stop hassling her when Ben Hobart comes over to study. Then she's dismayed to find that the girls and boys will be integrated in their new volleyball unit for gym class. Just as she expects, the boys are aggressive, competitive, and totally mean to Mallory when she stinks at the game. After Jamie Newton gives her a rough time at a sitting job (and Jessi has a similar experience with her brother Squirt), Mallory decides that all boys are horrible. After conceding that Logan Bruno and the Hobarts are all okay, she limits her theory to boys who grew up in Stoneybrook. But after the younger Hobart boys spend the night at the Pike house and become just as awful, and the Pike boys show their sweet side, Mallory discards the theory altogether.

Mallory is a terrible volleyball player, and things only get worse for her when the other team starts exploiting her weaknesses. After yelling at her gym teacher, Ms. Walden, for her lacking sympathy when Mallory is hit in the head with a volleyball, Mallory gets benched for the remainder of class. In the next gym class, she refuses to play at all and receives detention, which she hides from her parents. She gets detention three more times (plus one afternoon of forced labor washing gym pinnies) before her parents find out. She starts playing again, and Ms. Walden gets the opposing team to stop targeting Mallory so the game is more bearable. Finally, the volleyball unit ends and an archery unit begins. Mallory turns out to have natural archery talent and joins the esteemed SMS archery team.

• Jessi helps Becca make a healthy drink for a school assignment.

• Claudia at the BSC meeting: "A pair of soft, balloony, purple pants; a neon green long-sleeve leotard top; a wide, red braided belt; and a pair of soft, red ballet shoes. From one ear dangled a long earring made up of small papier-mâché tropical fruit. In the other ear, where she had two holes, Claudia wore two small papier- mâché hoops."