Mary Anne's Bad Luck Mystery

Book #17, Graphix #13

Original Book - Writer: Ann M.Martin

Graphix Book - Illustrator: Cynthia Yuan Cheng

Basic plot

As Halloween approaches, Mary Anne receives a chain-letter which she throws away. Then her and the BSC all start having bad luck.Then another letter arrives with a bad-luck necklace that Mary Anne must wear or else...

Things that are kept the same

• Mary Anne and the BSC, sometimes including Logan now usually have lunch together at school. Some others not been happy with this dynamic including Cokie and Grace.
• Mary Anne receives a chain letter that threatens bad luck unless she sends it on. She opens it at BSC meeting, Mal & Jessi think she should listen to the letter, but Mary Anne throws it away.
• The next day Mary Anne has a bad day, starting with a bad dream and falling out of bed. Then she spills juice on herself, her school locker gets stuck, she drops her lunch and has a small fight with Logan.
• Dawn has a particularly difficult babysitting job with Jackie Rodowsky, who is known to be accident prone but seems worse than normal.
• Mary Anne then receives a note with a necklace, telling her to wear the bad luck charm or else...
• The BSC are now nervous and start to believe there is some bad luck curse. They go to library to research ways to reverse curses.
• Jessi babysits Jamie Newton and helps him get over his fear of Halloween.
• Claudia and Mal have a difficult job with the Pikes.
• The older BSC members attend the Halloween Hop, Logan and Mary Anne dress up as Cats, as they had seen the musical Cats. They have a good time at dance, but then Mary Anne gets another letter after, telling her and the BSC to come to graveyard at midnight on Halloween night.
• Kristy calls an emergency meeting of the BSC and they plan a sleepover as cover so they can go to graveyard,with Charlie driving them.
  
• When talking to her dad, Mary Anne discovers her necklace is a symbol of faith not a bad luck charm and because of something Cokie said at the dance she figures out that she sent the necklace.
• The BSC come up with a plan to scare Cokie and her friends at the graveyard before they scare them. They find out Cokie had invited Logan in order to see them humiliate Mary Anne.
• They have a good time at the sleepover with the bad luck mystery solved, although Cokie didn't send the original chain letter, they think their luck is turning around.
  

Things from other books

• Nothing stood out as an addition from other books.

Things that are changed 

• In the original book, Mary Anne notices, Cokie and Grace whispering and looking over at the BSC at lunchtime She feels self conscious but doesn't do anything else. In the Graphix, Mary Anne overhears the girls calling them stuck up and babies and she confronts them, in front of everyone. The BSC think Mary Anne is very cool, but obviously Grace and Cokie are not happy. In general Mary Anne in the Graphix seems to bit more confident.
• When they go to library for research, they still use the library card catalogue, only minor change is Kristy mentioning she can't believe they still have one of them. I found it odd that they didn't change it to girls looking up books on computer catalogue, as there are other aspects of the books that have changed, seemed an odd thing to keep.
• In the original books Jessi reads Jamie a story about a shy ghost, to help him get over his fear of Halloween. The book was Georgie's Halloween, a real book written by Robert Bright published in 1958. In the Graphix the book Jessi reads is called "Ollie and the Halloween Costume" it has same basic story-line with some changes like Ollie the ghost friends being a bat and mouse rather than a cat and an owl. I wonder if the change was because there would be copyright issues for depicting the Georgie's Halloween in graphic novel.
• In the original book they mention this is 2nd Halloween mystery they have had, the first being the phantom caller (from book 2). This isn't mentioned in the graphix of course, because that book was skipped over and not adapted.
• The Graphix skips over the chapter where Kristy takes her siblings trick or treating but we do see the the kids costumes afterwards, when Mary Anne phones up Kristy and Karen answers.  A fun addition is David Micheal's costume is described in book as "some warrior from a Saturday morning adventure show" and the Graphix shows him dressed as Finn from Adventure Time,  a more recent show but fits in with the book's description.
• The reason for Cokie and friends playing prank in the Graphix, is no longer about Grace wanting to have a shot with dating Logan, but payback for Mary Anne embarrassing them in the cafeteria. Mary Anne does apologize for that, but also calls them out for the hurtful things they have said, and she hopes next time they can resolve things without tricks or pranks.
  

Final Thoughts

Again while on the face of it this is a straightforward adaption with not much changes, but the changes they have made are interesting. Mary Anne is much more willing to talk up for her self in this, the conflict with Cokie and Grace here it is more realistic for why they wanted revenge, whereas in the original book their motives are not as well set up. It is good to see Mary Anne try and talk things out at the end as well, and apologizing for her part while also not letting them off the hook. It's going to be a while to wait for the next book is not out until October, "Stacey's Mistake" I'm looking forward to seeing that adapted as it was one of my favourites growing up.