Chelsea and the Outrageous Phone Bill

Best Friends #1

by Hilda Stahl

Angry with her father for moving their family to another state, eleven-year-old Chelsea disobeys him by making long distance calls to her best friend back home, but having Jesus in her life helps improve the situation

Genres: Fiction, Childrens, Christian Fiction

159 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 1992

About the author

Hilda Stahl was an American author of middle grade and young adult novels, many of them in series. Most of her books are classified as Christian fiction.

Biography from one of her books: "Hilda Stahl was born and raised in the Nebraska sandhills. As a Young teen she attended Bible college, where she met her husband, Norman. They raised their seven children in Michigan, where she lived until her death in 1993. When Hilda was a young mother with three children, she saw an ad in a magazine for a correspondence course in writing. She took the test, passed it, and soon fell in love with writing. She wrote whenever she had free time, and eventually began to sell her work. The first Elizabeth Gail book, The Mystery at the Johnson Farm, was made into a movie in 1989. It was a real dream come true for Hilda. She wanted her books and their message of God's love and power to reach and help people all over the world.
— biography from Elizabeth Gail and the Mystery at the Johnson Farm

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

As ridiculous as these books are, my best friend Rachel and I absolutely loved them when we were kids. I haven't read one in probably 20 years, but Rachel brought me over several of them to re-read while I was recovering from surgery. This being the first one, I naturally had to start with it.

Man, I forgot how much Sid sucked and what a bad friend she was! I just wanted to slap some sense into Chelsea during this entire book and tell her to dump Sid as a friend.

This book was just as ridiculous as I remembered, but I had so much fun reading it.

[Christine · Rating 3 out of 5]

On page 22, Chelsea's dad says "you will obey". This is when I suspected it was religious fiction. Then I flipped the book over and saw it was published by Crossway Books. Looked up the publisher, then got back to reading and the Bible references came pouring in. I picked up this series for a Baby-sitters Club readalike and in one book, Best Friends does that well enough. In some ways, the drama and consequences are higher and as an atheist, I laughed my way through some of the churchy stuff, especially the super scripted things Chelsea's dad says. I'll still read more of this series. It's written well and the kids do seem like fleshed out people with distinct personalities.

[Danae · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5*

[Daltonehs · Rating 3 out of 5]

My book that I read was best friends by Hilda Stahl. I chose my book because I have a lot of good friends but I have best friends also. I started reading this book to see what it was like and I just started reading more and more and started to like this book. This book I thought was a fast pace book in the beginning and it had a happy setting. The main character’s name is Chelsea’s and I think she is a nice girl. She has some not nice friends and her parents are mean sometimes. She moves towards the middle of the book and I think she’s upset but deep down she’s a little happy because she doesn’t have to deal with her mean friend’s anymore. I also think her parents are glad that they are moving because they wanted to move and get to a different town to try something new .I also think that part of it was because of her dads job and he wanted to move to a closer town to his job so it wouldn’t be as far as a drive. She’s quiet at first when she gets to the new town and she acts mean towards her family members and, I think that’s her way of showing she’s sad, but she can’t really deal with it that good. She meets a new friend and they start to get along and, I think it’s because they have the same attitude in a way because she will calm her friend down and her friend will calm her down. I think she’s acting better at her new town because it seems like people care about her and, aren’t just using her and acting like she’s there friend. I think the only family member that she is close to is either her brother or her sister.

[Karine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book (and the rest of the series) several times when I was younger. I loved it then, but I'm probably too old for it now..