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“For the next couple of hours, Beth’s bedroom resembled a beauty parlor. Hair dryers hummed. Curling irons were passed around. And the sweet, soft scent of cologne filled the air.” (37) Spray-on soft cologne, that is. Fellas, from the land of cooties, I bring back an adorable treasure. Just For Girls, featuring two New Year’s stories, “Happy Horse Day” in the Saddle Club series, by Bonnie Bryant, and “Friends Forever” in the Fabulous Five series, by Betsy Haynes, came out in the holiday shopping season of 1990, but not on the shelves with other new books! At only 40 pages, this peripheral (so called by Wikipedia, so I guess that’s the right term) was only available if you bought it in a package which included Petite Naté Spray-On Soft Cologne! You can see the ad in a post about Fabulous Five book twenty, The Witches of Wakeman. https://gab .com/CharlesSynyard/posts/116517903960742762 I couldn’t find any pictures of an unopened Just For Girls pack, as it would’ve appeared on the shelves in that bygone holiday season. Where does the extra story fall in the Fabulous Fives series I have been reading? The girls saving all the animals at the shelter in The Christmas Countdown (book thirteen) is mentioned, as is Taffy Sinclair going to Hollywood to star in Nobody Likes Tiffany Stafford. The last books mentioned in the list in the back are The Witches of Wakeman and The Fabulous Five in Trouble, the first Super Edition. Yet I read it a little later, after book twenty-one, Jana to the Rescue, and Caribbean Adventure, the second Super Edition, because the latter was released in December 1990, and many young fans would have opened Just For Girls at Christmas. Plus, like Caribbean Adventure, “Friends Forever“ covers what the girls were up to on New Year’s Eve! So… were the Fabulous Five at the The Caribbean Sands Village hotel in Barbados, or at a slumber party at Beth‘s, and doing makeovers with Petite Naté products? Maybe these are different universes, and they did both as 1990 became 1991 (the year is given in this volume). So, how are the stories? “Happy Horse Day!” was my introduction to the Saddle Club, and while horses aren’t my thing, and I’m not about to start the series, it was a nice episode. Lisa Atwood, Stevie Lake, and Carole Hanson of the pony club at Pine Hollow stables are bored, but get this brilliant idea: registered horses apparently go by a (traditional East Asian-style) age system, where the horse gets a year older on the first of the year, whenever it was born, so they can have a birthday party for all the horses on January 1! However, Lisa’s favorite horse, Pepper, is acting erratically, and she’s not sure what to make of it. After returning from the day’s ride, going home, and a nice fragrant bubble bath—it’s time to head back to the stable and save Pepper, as Stevie and Carole recognize her symptoms as colic (4-7). Saving a horse from colic was also a plot in Third Year at Malory Towers, by Enid Blyton, as I covered here https://gab .com/CharlesSynyard/posts/114713012685663953 . Pine Hollow veterinarian Judy Barker’s treatment of Pepper sounds familiar, much like what Bill (short for Wilhelmina) and Miss Peters do to save Bill’s beloved horse Thunder, mostly before the vet arrives, in Blyton’s work. The bath products aren’t as natural a fit here, but by the end, the Saddle Club girls are thinking of giving Pepper a makeover! Meanwhile, in “Friends Forever”, the Fabulous Five want to have a big sleepover party for the New Year, but everyone they try and invite already has plans, and appeals to parents to drive them to see the ball drop in Times Square are in vain. Just the five of them hang out so much, that they alone doing it might not feel special. Goodness, don’t they ever just spend time alone? They could watch the ball drop on TV with their boyfriends, but that wouldn’t be Just For Girls, would it? Well, actually there will be one boy, err male, over: Igor, Shane Arrington’s pet iguana! Shane is one of the guys Melanie juggles, and he needs her to watch the lizard while he’s in Times Square himself. Over at Beth‘s, there is the usual hubbub: Beth is one of five siblings after all. The Fabulous Five are bored, and take out Igor to play with—and just then the family dog Agatha and little sister Alicia barge in, and Agatha chases Igor under the bed! Alicia tells Agatha Igor’s gone outside, then shuts the dog out. As thanks for saving Igor, the Fabulous Five let Alicia take part in their big makeover: they’ve all brought different (recognizably Petite Naté products), including spray-on and dab-on cologne, bath bubbles, after-bath splash, and talc (what is talc exactly? For that matter, what is after-bath splash? Ah well, check out a book entitled Just For Girls, and naturally, only girls can read it) (34-37). They have such a blast, four hours fly by, and they make it downstairs just in time to cheer in the New Year! In the middle of the book, as you can see, is a cute color section with a few tips on how to use and enjoy the Petite Naté products. Search the Scent sounds like it would be a fun game, but the cologne or the girls’ noses would need to be really strong. You can tell the books, and the personal care products, were marketed mainly to White girls. Also, on the page showing the seven products, you get one of the interesting conceits of these books: the Petite Naté goods boast they are “especially formulated for girls from 6-11” (what, would an 18-year-old look ugly is she used a cologne with sparkles, or a powder that leaves skin with a pearly glow?) but, in both the Saddle Club and the Fabulous Five, the girls are 13. The target audience want to think of themselves as ready to be big girls, ready for classy horseback riding adventures, or better yet, going steady with boys, and queening it up at school… but they’re excited about playing games with bubbles in the bath, or jamming out in front of the mirror! I think this is the instinct behind feminism in microcosm: women are always kind of silly and playful at heart, but have to hide it. Hide that they haven’t changed much from being girls, are now playing pretend as much as when they played 101 Disguises. The stories aren’t exceptional, save as openly commercial tie-ins that would put “Averil’s Atonement” to shame. But this is an exceptionally girly book, and that, I count as nice. Back in the day, there must have been a few brave boys who openly (at least to Mom) liked the Fabulous Five books, and read them. But I wonder if even one was brave enough to ask for this for Chrismas 1990 (even helpfully adding “Sis can have the cologne”). Ah, how nice it is to just be able to order it used, and enjoy reading about cute girls doing cute things! The Petite Naté goods this volume promoted? Checked, it looks like some of them are still being made, so buy them for the adult girl on your list. As for the book, there are almost no reviews or ratings, and are few copies for sale, so this has to be the scarcest Fabulous Five book of them all, the “key“ to a complete collection. Once you have it in hand, revel in the girlishness. As the only eBay seller now vending a copy says, “Take a retro journey back to the 1990's and smack your lip gloss over this unique find!” #BonnieBryant #BetsyHaynes #JustForGirls #HappyHorseDay #FriendsForever #NewYearsEve #NewYearsDay #NewYears #horses #horsebackriding #riding #stable #sleepover #PetiteNate #bubblebath #talc #makeover #cosmetics #personalcare #bath #games #beauty #cute #adorable #girls #women #childrensliterature #childrensbooks #literature #books

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