Sweet Valley Kids #75: Little Drummer Girls
First of all, when I found this book (and one other, which I intend to recap soon),I was actually looking for a Sweet Valley Twins (?) book which I know must exist and which I didn't hallucinate, but which I've been completely unable to track down. Please, if any of you remember the existence of Lila's 'Octopus-Head' perm, please reassure me that I didn't just imagine that book!
Ahem. Anyway, back to the point.
This is the cover I've got for the book.
While the scene on the cover never actually happens (at no point do Jessica and Elizabeth actually play tug of war with the drum), at least the uniforms are pretty much correct.
The back of the book isn't clear in this picture, but the blurb reads, "Crash! Boom! Bang! There are two Wakefield twins in our marching band, but only one drum. Which one of us should play it? Me, of course. But my twin sister, Elizabeth, got picked instead! I want to play that drum more than anything. And I won't stop making noise until I do!
Jessica"
Below that is a four-leaf clover with the promise of "Fun Activities Inside!". These "fun activities" are a St. Patrick's Day pudding recipe, and a St. Patrick's Day themed word search. I must say, I feel a little ripped off.
Incidentally, before I move on with the recap, I just have to ask - was the fact that the twins are apparently in a marching band ever mentioned, before or after this book? I don't remember this factoid at all.
Chapter 1
Page one gives us a standard "long blond hair with bands and blue-green eyes" description, with page two assuring us that they look so much alike that other kids have to look at their name bracelets to tell them apart. (Name bracelets? Really?)
Anyway, at the time of book number 75, their second grade teacher is a gentleman by the name of Mr. Crane. I only read a handful of the Sweet Valley kids books, but I thought their second grade teacher in the other ones was a woman? Did she actually leave in some book, or did she just spontaneously turn into a man at some point?
So, apparently, Mr. Crane brings animals to class a lot. Today, he has a big box and he wants them to guess what's inside. It bangs and clinks and rattles. The future Crunch McAllister jiggles it and it goes 'ding-a-ling'. Winston Egbert theorises that it's a monster, Charlie Cashman thinks it's a gorilla, while Lila thinks it's a leprechaun because St Patrick's Day is coming up.
At this point, we're told that Ellen Riteman and Lila Fowler are Jessica's best friends, while Amy Slutton and Todd Wilkins are Elizabeth's best friends (this is consistent with the other Kids books, but I can only imagine that the Kids books and the Twins books are in different universes, since they contradict each other on the Todd-front).
The box is full of musical instruments! Did anyone not see that coming? All the kids start cheering about the instruments in the box, and Ellen shouts about something called a 'flutophone'. I have no idea what this is, but a quick search tells me a 'flutaphone' is the same thing as a recorder. Apparent spelling errors aside, the fact that she calls it a flutaphone rather than the more normal name tells me that either a) Ellen is trying to look cool, or b) it's actually more commonly called a flutaphone in California. In the latter case, random kudos to Ellen, but in the former case, I'm not at all surprised.
It turns out they're being given a week of class time devoted to learning how to play musical instruments for a St. Patrick's Day marching band. This does explain why they never mentioned the marching band before and, also, if they're devoting a whole week of class to musical instruments, why Elizabeth is so cream of the crop with her writing talent in middle/high school. They never learn anything useful.
Lila scoffs at the teacher when he tells them what a triangle is (good on you, Lila). He then goes on to teach them about sandblocks and woodblocks, which apparently you scrape or hit together to make noise. They need a week to learn how to do that properly?
Crunch McAllister and Charlie Cashman make dumb jokes about wood blocks, and Jessica declares that while Elizabeth plays soccer and tag during recess, she (Jessica) thinks boys are 'yucky'. Oh, Jess.
The rest of the chapter is basically them learning about very basic musical instruments and how to play them, and making the occasional dumb comment about them. Any goodwill from me Lila earned by her scoffing at the triangle is lost at the line, "The finger cymbals are cute. They're so tiny. They'd fit right on my fingertips." Really, Lila?
Chapter 2
Chapter two starts with everyone practicing the various instruments and getting ready for the tryouts to find out who gets to play what instrument in the parade they'll be doing at the end of the week. All the boys are being loud, and Mr. Crane politely tells them to shut up and offers to teach them the difference between music and noise.
Jessica gives us the insight here that, "Music is pretty. Noise means boys."
Lila brags about how much she knows about music, what with knowing how to read music, play the piano and dance, and declares that Mr. Crane will probably ask her to help teach. There's a picture in my book, here, of Lila in a tutu standing en pointe while playing a piano. Jessica decides that she's in love with the drum and it would really show Lila if she could be the star of the parade and get to play the drum, only everyone else wants it - including Todd, Winston and Elizabeth.
Chapter 3
That night, Jessica doesn't sleep at all because she's repeating 'one, two' over in her head all night - apparently this will make sure she gets to play the drum, because drummers need rhythm. By morning, she's so tired she starts chanting 'two, one' instead. Oh, Jess.
All the way to school, she practices drumming on the bus seat, only she keeps screwing up when the bus bounces. We are treated to a rant about how much she hates the colour green when Elizabeth brings up the fact that, it being St. Patrick's Day, they'll probably wear green uniforms. Apparently, the only thing worse than not being able to play the drum would be having to do it in a green uniform.
When they get to school, they have to actually do schoolwork instead of playing music right away. Jessica has to fight the urge to write 'one, two' for all the answers. Maybe this is where all her future trouble with math stems - breaking her brain with the numbers 'one' and 'two' in second grade.
After math, they start the tryout. Ellen makes a big deal over wanting to play a "flutophone", and now I think she really is just trying to show off by knowing the word 'flutophone'. Winston is the only one who wants to play the cymbals, so he gets to march around the room and crash them like the dork that he is.
When it comes time for the drum tryouts, Elizabeth is predictably perfect. Jessica gets up and tries her 'one-two one-two' schtick, only the song they're playing to doesn't even have a one-two beat. Mr. Crane gives her a second go, and she misses the drum altogether and breaks the strap. She's stuck with the flutophone (is the correct spelling 'flutophone' or 'flutaphone'? Forget it, from now on, she's playing recorder), which is boring.
Chapter 4
When they practice, Jessica is still so bummed about not getting the drum that she doesn't put any energy into her recorder playing and it's drowned out by everyone else. When they take the instruments home, Elizabeth is told she can't take the drum home because it's too big; Jessica has to say goodbye to her plans to steal it.
I have to ask, what exactly was she going to do if she stole the drum? Hide it so Elizabeth couldn't play it? Hold it for ransom?
That night, they're having dinner and Elizabeth gushes about her great news. Steven decides the great news must be that the twins are going to Mars and never coming back (this is accompanied by an illustration of the angry twins in a space shuttle, for whatever reason). When Elizabeth starts the story about the pageant, Steven jokes that the twins will turn into leprechauns and disappear forever. Elizabeth eventually tells them that she's playing the drum, and Steven makes fun of Jess's lack of rhythm (understandable, I suppose; how do you miss and hit the drum strap hard enough to break it?) and skill, and then kicks her under the table.
Steven's actually kind of an ass in this book.
The Wakefield parents, in a stunning moment of parenting, tell him to shut up and just eat his food. We get another lovely illustration here, only this time it's of Steven with worms coming out of his head.
After dinner, Jessica drags Elizabeth out to their secrets tree and tries to convince her to swap places so she can play the drum. Elizabeth manages to argue for a whole page before she tells Jessica to get stuffed and to go away.
What am I saying? Of course she doesn't. It's doormat Elizabeth. A page of Jessica's whining later, Elizabeth agrees to swap places so that Jess can have the drum and she is stuck with the recorder.
That night, Jessica dreams about being a famous musician, and gets up and to the bus before Elizabeth does the following morning. Shocking!
Chapter 5
For the twin switch, Jessica is wearing a blue shirt, and Elizabeth is wearing a pink shirt, which is allegedly Jess's favourite colour. The Unicorns would be devastated, Jess.
Apparently they forgot to swap over their name bracelets, so Jessica makes Elizabeth do that now. I'm not entirely sure what the point of that moment was.
When they get to class, instead of playing musical instruments they're doing schoolwork making decorations. (Doing schoolwork? Bah, they did that yesterday!) Winston makes a hat that looks like a green chicken. Oh, Winston.
After they're done making decorations and hats, they start playing their instruments again, only this time they start marching and playing. Predictably, Jessica still sucks at playing the drum, and first she hits it too hard, then starts playing out of time and makes everyone walk at different speeds, run into each other, and fall down.
This whole book basically weaves it's plot out of Jessica not having an ounce of rhythm. You'd think with all the plots about dancing and so on she'd have at least some concept of rhythm. But, no. Everything comes down to 'one-two' at varying speeds, and she has no idea which is which.
Chapter 6
Even though apparently, her bad drumming just made everyone fall over and look like idiots, the teacher just tells her to try again. She apologises, "just like [her] twin would", and starts playing again.
Right, left, right left, boom, boom, boom-boom, boom-boom-boom...
There's an almost surreal description of the ensuing march.
"The drum seemed to get heavier with each step. So I banged louder and marched quicker, really geting into the rhythm of the song. I even started singing along.
'When Irish eyes are smiling . . .'
I sped up, getting more and more excited. Then I looked over my shoulder and saw that everyone else was marching faster too.
They were going to run over me!
I hurried forward and banged harder and faster, harder and faster, until everyone was running!
Really. It sounds like some kind of crazy nightmare. I remember liking this book as a kid, and now I'm actually laughing at how absurd and serious-business a lot of the descriptions sound.
This time, Mr. Crane stops it and starts clapping along with them. So worried about making an idiot of herself again, Jessica accidentally walks into a wall.
Finally, Mr. Crane suggests that just maybe, 'Elizabeth' isn't very good at playing the drum. I don't know, you think so? He tells her she can have another chance, but that there's only two days left until the parade, so she has to learn fast. I'm not entirely sure why he's entrusting the 'star' role of the parade to someone who is so obviously incompetent, especially with only two days left to teach her how to do it well, but alright.
Incidentally, how do you not get it? Twin A plays too fast and off-beat, while Twin B plays perfectly. The following day, Twin B plays too fast and off-beat. How do you not clue into the twin switch?
Chapter 7
Because Jessica sucks so bad at the drum, but Mr. Crane can't just tell her to give it up to someone else, he tells 'Elizabeth' to take the drum home and practice with it. At the same time, he tells 'Jessica' that she's just so fantastic at the recorder that he wants her to do a solo in the parade.
A recorder solo. In a parade.
Alright, Mr. Crane.
Jessica, rather than just swapping back and accepting the solo as good enough to be the 'star' when she's clearly at least alright at the recorder and terrible at the drums, decides that this is proof that her twin will always outshine her at every turn. She gets distracted from this 'woe is me' train of thought, though, by the fact that their uniforms have come in and they all get to see them.
This is another bit that really gets me. Mr. Crane tells them to come up one by one and pick up their uniform, when he calls their name. How does he know what size they all are? How did the uniforms come in so quickly? Why am I thinking so much about this?
The uniforms aren't, in fact, green, but white and blue, with big fuzzy hats that make Winston look like 'a human Q-tip'.
They go home, and Jessica and Elizabeth practice their instruments. Elizabeth does 'Jessica's' solo perfectly first try, and Jessica still can't play the drum to save her life. Their mother is confused by the twin switch, but they assure her that they traded duties.
Steven starts complaining that it sounds like there's an elephant stampeding through the living room, and starts to walk around with socks on his ears. There's an illustration of him with what looks like pigtails, but which I assume is actually supposed to be the socks. It's a pity, since he looks so very cute in pigtails.
Eventually, Ned sneaks out so he doesn't have to listen to the drum, and Alice decides she has to go run errands, and Jessica finally realises that she couldn't carry a beat if it had handles. There's a skip to the night before the parade, and she still has no idea what she's doing. She marches up and down the hallway beating the drum, and then goes into their shared room to ask Elizabeth how she's doing.
Elizabeth can't hear her, because she's wearing earplugs. Buuurn.
When she finally pulls out her earplugs, it's to flop down onto the bed and groan, declaring that she's sick. This is about the most obvious ploy I've ever seen. No, really. Jessica panics about the fact that Elizabeth is sick and just wants to sleep, because that means Mr. Crane will be disappointed at the lack of a recorder solo.
Hang on a moment --
It finally dawns on Jessica that SHE could play the recorder in Elizabeth's place, which is actually her own place. However, it occurs to her that while she knows how to play the recorder better than she knows how to play the drum, she doesn't actually know the solo because she wasn't taught that part before the twin switch, so she has to go seek out Mr. Crane and come clean about the twin switch.
Chapter 8
Apparently, the band uniforms are really itchy. We get two pages, first of Jessica complaining about how itchy it is, then of Winston teasing her about there being bugs in the costume, before the writer finally realises that we get the idea; the uniforms are itchy.
I'm getting itchy reading about how itchy these uniforms are supposed to be!
Mr. Crane is dressed up as a leprechaun, which as it turns out, doesn't make it any easier to come clean about a twin switch. Jessica comes up to tell him, and he doesn't get it at first, because he knows it's Jessica and he thinks she's just nervous about the solo. Then she tells him about the twin switch and the drums, and he accepts her apology and commends her for telling the truth.
However, he then tells her that since she decided to make the switch, she's not allowed to play the recorder solo and she has to play the drum. While it's sensible to stop her from being able to play the solo as a punishment for her deception, forcing her to play a drum that she's rubbish at? That's not punishing her, that's punishing everyone in the parade! Do you not remember the walls and the falling over and the running, Mr. Crane?
Jessica gets depressed because Lila will probably get picked to play the solo instead, and that means she'll "still brag about that when we're ninety years old". However, just as the parade is about to begin, who shows up, but Elizabeth! And she's not sick! And she's in uniform!
Chapter 9
Elizabeth asks how everything went with Mr. Crane, and Jessica admits that she told the truth but that he's making her play the drum. Elizabeth admits that she was faking being sick.
Oh, REALLY? I'm glad you told me that. I never would have known otherwise.
Then Elizabeth lets on another secret. Mr. Crane knew about the twin switch from the start! That whole plot was about teamwork and knowing where your special talent is. Mr. Crane comes over to reinforce the message, that Jessica has a 'special talent' for the recorder and that the marching band needs both drummers and recorder players in order to "sound pretty".
I have to say, a more accurate message would be 'you're not good at everything', but that just can't work for a Wakefield twin. You have to be spectacularly good at something if you're bad at something else, you can't just suck at everything musical.
And so they march. Elizabeth jumps to the head of the parade and Jessica slips in with the recorder players.
Chapter 10
This is called 'Jessica's Solo Surprise', so I admit, I was really expecting her to goof up and make a fool of herself. The chapter builds up much like her first drum lesson, with the nerves and everything but no - she plays it perfectly and everyone cheers. "Even Steven gave me a thumbs-up". Good on you, Steven.
And, that's the end. It turns out, Jessica can't play the drum for the life of her, but is some kind of recorder prodigy, so it's okay that she can't play the drum at all.
Ahem. Anyway, back to the point.
This is the cover I've got for the book.
While the scene on the cover never actually happens (at no point do Jessica and Elizabeth actually play tug of war with the drum), at least the uniforms are pretty much correct.
The back of the book isn't clear in this picture, but the blurb reads, "Crash! Boom! Bang! There are two Wakefield twins in our marching band, but only one drum. Which one of us should play it? Me, of course. But my twin sister, Elizabeth, got picked instead! I want to play that drum more than anything. And I won't stop making noise until I do!
Jessica"
Below that is a four-leaf clover with the promise of "Fun Activities Inside!". These "fun activities" are a St. Patrick's Day pudding recipe, and a St. Patrick's Day themed word search. I must say, I feel a little ripped off.
Incidentally, before I move on with the recap, I just have to ask - was the fact that the twins are apparently in a marching band ever mentioned, before or after this book? I don't remember this factoid at all.
Chapter 1
Page one gives us a standard "long blond hair with bands and blue-green eyes" description, with page two assuring us that they look so much alike that other kids have to look at their name bracelets to tell them apart. (Name bracelets? Really?)
Anyway, at the time of book number 75, their second grade teacher is a gentleman by the name of Mr. Crane. I only read a handful of the Sweet Valley kids books, but I thought their second grade teacher in the other ones was a woman? Did she actually leave in some book, or did she just spontaneously turn into a man at some point?
So, apparently, Mr. Crane brings animals to class a lot. Today, he has a big box and he wants them to guess what's inside. It bangs and clinks and rattles. The future Crunch McAllister jiggles it and it goes 'ding-a-ling'. Winston Egbert theorises that it's a monster, Charlie Cashman thinks it's a gorilla, while Lila thinks it's a leprechaun because St Patrick's Day is coming up.
At this point, we're told that Ellen Riteman and Lila Fowler are Jessica's best friends, while Amy Slutton and Todd Wilkins are Elizabeth's best friends (this is consistent with the other Kids books, but I can only imagine that the Kids books and the Twins books are in different universes, since they contradict each other on the Todd-front).
The box is full of musical instruments! Did anyone not see that coming? All the kids start cheering about the instruments in the box, and Ellen shouts about something called a 'flutophone'. I have no idea what this is, but a quick search tells me a 'flutaphone' is the same thing as a recorder. Apparent spelling errors aside, the fact that she calls it a flutaphone rather than the more normal name tells me that either a) Ellen is trying to look cool, or b) it's actually more commonly called a flutaphone in California. In the latter case, random kudos to Ellen, but in the former case, I'm not at all surprised.
It turns out they're being given a week of class time devoted to learning how to play musical instruments for a St. Patrick's Day marching band. This does explain why they never mentioned the marching band before and, also, if they're devoting a whole week of class to musical instruments, why Elizabeth is so cream of the crop with her writing talent in middle/high school. They never learn anything useful.
Lila scoffs at the teacher when he tells them what a triangle is (good on you, Lila). He then goes on to teach them about sandblocks and woodblocks, which apparently you scrape or hit together to make noise. They need a week to learn how to do that properly?
Crunch McAllister and Charlie Cashman make dumb jokes about wood blocks, and Jessica declares that while Elizabeth plays soccer and tag during recess, she (Jessica) thinks boys are 'yucky'. Oh, Jess.
The rest of the chapter is basically them learning about very basic musical instruments and how to play them, and making the occasional dumb comment about them. Any goodwill from me Lila earned by her scoffing at the triangle is lost at the line, "The finger cymbals are cute. They're so tiny. They'd fit right on my fingertips." Really, Lila?
Chapter 2
Chapter two starts with everyone practicing the various instruments and getting ready for the tryouts to find out who gets to play what instrument in the parade they'll be doing at the end of the week. All the boys are being loud, and Mr. Crane politely tells them to shut up and offers to teach them the difference between music and noise.
Jessica gives us the insight here that, "Music is pretty. Noise means boys."
Lila brags about how much she knows about music, what with knowing how to read music, play the piano and dance, and declares that Mr. Crane will probably ask her to help teach. There's a picture in my book, here, of Lila in a tutu standing en pointe while playing a piano. Jessica decides that she's in love with the drum and it would really show Lila if she could be the star of the parade and get to play the drum, only everyone else wants it - including Todd, Winston and Elizabeth.
Chapter 3
That night, Jessica doesn't sleep at all because she's repeating 'one, two' over in her head all night - apparently this will make sure she gets to play the drum, because drummers need rhythm. By morning, she's so tired she starts chanting 'two, one' instead. Oh, Jess.
All the way to school, she practices drumming on the bus seat, only she keeps screwing up when the bus bounces. We are treated to a rant about how much she hates the colour green when Elizabeth brings up the fact that, it being St. Patrick's Day, they'll probably wear green uniforms. Apparently, the only thing worse than not being able to play the drum would be having to do it in a green uniform.
When they get to school, they have to actually do schoolwork instead of playing music right away. Jessica has to fight the urge to write 'one, two' for all the answers. Maybe this is where all her future trouble with math stems - breaking her brain with the numbers 'one' and 'two' in second grade.
After math, they start the tryout. Ellen makes a big deal over wanting to play a "flutophone", and now I think she really is just trying to show off by knowing the word 'flutophone'. Winston is the only one who wants to play the cymbals, so he gets to march around the room and crash them like the dork that he is.
When it comes time for the drum tryouts, Elizabeth is predictably perfect. Jessica gets up and tries her 'one-two one-two' schtick, only the song they're playing to doesn't even have a one-two beat. Mr. Crane gives her a second go, and she misses the drum altogether and breaks the strap. She's stuck with the flutophone (is the correct spelling 'flutophone' or 'flutaphone'? Forget it, from now on, she's playing recorder), which is boring.
Chapter 4
When they practice, Jessica is still so bummed about not getting the drum that she doesn't put any energy into her recorder playing and it's drowned out by everyone else. When they take the instruments home, Elizabeth is told she can't take the drum home because it's too big; Jessica has to say goodbye to her plans to steal it.
I have to ask, what exactly was she going to do if she stole the drum? Hide it so Elizabeth couldn't play it? Hold it for ransom?
That night, they're having dinner and Elizabeth gushes about her great news. Steven decides the great news must be that the twins are going to Mars and never coming back (this is accompanied by an illustration of the angry twins in a space shuttle, for whatever reason). When Elizabeth starts the story about the pageant, Steven jokes that the twins will turn into leprechauns and disappear forever. Elizabeth eventually tells them that she's playing the drum, and Steven makes fun of Jess's lack of rhythm (understandable, I suppose; how do you miss and hit the drum strap hard enough to break it?) and skill, and then kicks her under the table.
Steven's actually kind of an ass in this book.
The Wakefield parents, in a stunning moment of parenting, tell him to shut up and just eat his food. We get another lovely illustration here, only this time it's of Steven with worms coming out of his head.
After dinner, Jessica drags Elizabeth out to their secrets tree and tries to convince her to swap places so she can play the drum. Elizabeth manages to argue for a whole page before she tells Jessica to get stuffed and to go away.
What am I saying? Of course she doesn't. It's doormat Elizabeth. A page of Jessica's whining later, Elizabeth agrees to swap places so that Jess can have the drum and she is stuck with the recorder.
That night, Jessica dreams about being a famous musician, and gets up and to the bus before Elizabeth does the following morning. Shocking!
Chapter 5
For the twin switch, Jessica is wearing a blue shirt, and Elizabeth is wearing a pink shirt, which is allegedly Jess's favourite colour. The Unicorns would be devastated, Jess.
Apparently they forgot to swap over their name bracelets, so Jessica makes Elizabeth do that now. I'm not entirely sure what the point of that moment was.
When they get to class, instead of playing musical instruments they're doing schoolwork making decorations. (Doing schoolwork? Bah, they did that yesterday!) Winston makes a hat that looks like a green chicken. Oh, Winston.
After they're done making decorations and hats, they start playing their instruments again, only this time they start marching and playing. Predictably, Jessica still sucks at playing the drum, and first she hits it too hard, then starts playing out of time and makes everyone walk at different speeds, run into each other, and fall down.
This whole book basically weaves it's plot out of Jessica not having an ounce of rhythm. You'd think with all the plots about dancing and so on she'd have at least some concept of rhythm. But, no. Everything comes down to 'one-two' at varying speeds, and she has no idea which is which.
Chapter 6
Even though apparently, her bad drumming just made everyone fall over and look like idiots, the teacher just tells her to try again. She apologises, "just like [her] twin would", and starts playing again.
Right, left, right left, boom, boom, boom-boom, boom-boom-boom...
There's an almost surreal description of the ensuing march.
"The drum seemed to get heavier with each step. So I banged louder and marched quicker, really geting into the rhythm of the song. I even started singing along.
'When Irish eyes are smiling . . .'
I sped up, getting more and more excited. Then I looked over my shoulder and saw that everyone else was marching faster too.
They were going to run over me!
I hurried forward and banged harder and faster, harder and faster, until everyone was running!
Really. It sounds like some kind of crazy nightmare. I remember liking this book as a kid, and now I'm actually laughing at how absurd and serious-business a lot of the descriptions sound.
This time, Mr. Crane stops it and starts clapping along with them. So worried about making an idiot of herself again, Jessica accidentally walks into a wall.
Finally, Mr. Crane suggests that just maybe, 'Elizabeth' isn't very good at playing the drum. I don't know, you think so? He tells her she can have another chance, but that there's only two days left until the parade, so she has to learn fast. I'm not entirely sure why he's entrusting the 'star' role of the parade to someone who is so obviously incompetent, especially with only two days left to teach her how to do it well, but alright.
Incidentally, how do you not get it? Twin A plays too fast and off-beat, while Twin B plays perfectly. The following day, Twin B plays too fast and off-beat. How do you not clue into the twin switch?
Chapter 7
Because Jessica sucks so bad at the drum, but Mr. Crane can't just tell her to give it up to someone else, he tells 'Elizabeth' to take the drum home and practice with it. At the same time, he tells 'Jessica' that she's just so fantastic at the recorder that he wants her to do a solo in the parade.
A recorder solo. In a parade.
Alright, Mr. Crane.
Jessica, rather than just swapping back and accepting the solo as good enough to be the 'star' when she's clearly at least alright at the recorder and terrible at the drums, decides that this is proof that her twin will always outshine her at every turn. She gets distracted from this 'woe is me' train of thought, though, by the fact that their uniforms have come in and they all get to see them.
This is another bit that really gets me. Mr. Crane tells them to come up one by one and pick up their uniform, when he calls their name. How does he know what size they all are? How did the uniforms come in so quickly? Why am I thinking so much about this?
The uniforms aren't, in fact, green, but white and blue, with big fuzzy hats that make Winston look like 'a human Q-tip'.
They go home, and Jessica and Elizabeth practice their instruments. Elizabeth does 'Jessica's' solo perfectly first try, and Jessica still can't play the drum to save her life. Their mother is confused by the twin switch, but they assure her that they traded duties.
Steven starts complaining that it sounds like there's an elephant stampeding through the living room, and starts to walk around with socks on his ears. There's an illustration of him with what looks like pigtails, but which I assume is actually supposed to be the socks. It's a pity, since he looks so very cute in pigtails.
Eventually, Ned sneaks out so he doesn't have to listen to the drum, and Alice decides she has to go run errands, and Jessica finally realises that she couldn't carry a beat if it had handles. There's a skip to the night before the parade, and she still has no idea what she's doing. She marches up and down the hallway beating the drum, and then goes into their shared room to ask Elizabeth how she's doing.
Elizabeth can't hear her, because she's wearing earplugs. Buuurn.
When she finally pulls out her earplugs, it's to flop down onto the bed and groan, declaring that she's sick. This is about the most obvious ploy I've ever seen. No, really. Jessica panics about the fact that Elizabeth is sick and just wants to sleep, because that means Mr. Crane will be disappointed at the lack of a recorder solo.
Hang on a moment --
It finally dawns on Jessica that SHE could play the recorder in Elizabeth's place, which is actually her own place. However, it occurs to her that while she knows how to play the recorder better than she knows how to play the drum, she doesn't actually know the solo because she wasn't taught that part before the twin switch, so she has to go seek out Mr. Crane and come clean about the twin switch.
Chapter 8
Apparently, the band uniforms are really itchy. We get two pages, first of Jessica complaining about how itchy it is, then of Winston teasing her about there being bugs in the costume, before the writer finally realises that we get the idea; the uniforms are itchy.
I'm getting itchy reading about how itchy these uniforms are supposed to be!
Mr. Crane is dressed up as a leprechaun, which as it turns out, doesn't make it any easier to come clean about a twin switch. Jessica comes up to tell him, and he doesn't get it at first, because he knows it's Jessica and he thinks she's just nervous about the solo. Then she tells him about the twin switch and the drums, and he accepts her apology and commends her for telling the truth.
However, he then tells her that since she decided to make the switch, she's not allowed to play the recorder solo and she has to play the drum. While it's sensible to stop her from being able to play the solo as a punishment for her deception, forcing her to play a drum that she's rubbish at? That's not punishing her, that's punishing everyone in the parade! Do you not remember the walls and the falling over and the running, Mr. Crane?
Jessica gets depressed because Lila will probably get picked to play the solo instead, and that means she'll "still brag about that when we're ninety years old". However, just as the parade is about to begin, who shows up, but Elizabeth! And she's not sick! And she's in uniform!
Chapter 9
Elizabeth asks how everything went with Mr. Crane, and Jessica admits that she told the truth but that he's making her play the drum. Elizabeth admits that she was faking being sick.
Oh, REALLY? I'm glad you told me that. I never would have known otherwise.
Then Elizabeth lets on another secret. Mr. Crane knew about the twin switch from the start! That whole plot was about teamwork and knowing where your special talent is. Mr. Crane comes over to reinforce the message, that Jessica has a 'special talent' for the recorder and that the marching band needs both drummers and recorder players in order to "sound pretty".
I have to say, a more accurate message would be 'you're not good at everything', but that just can't work for a Wakefield twin. You have to be spectacularly good at something if you're bad at something else, you can't just suck at everything musical.
And so they march. Elizabeth jumps to the head of the parade and Jessica slips in with the recorder players.
Chapter 10
This is called 'Jessica's Solo Surprise', so I admit, I was really expecting her to goof up and make a fool of herself. The chapter builds up much like her first drum lesson, with the nerves and everything but no - she plays it perfectly and everyone cheers. "Even Steven gave me a thumbs-up". Good on you, Steven.
And, that's the end. It turns out, Jessica can't play the drum for the life of her, but is some kind of recorder prodigy, so it's okay that she can't play the drum at all.