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Girl Talk #40
Sabrina Wins Big
Sabrina and her family and friends are unprepared for what happens after she wins the grand prize in the Totally Teen Fantasy Sweepstakes.
112 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1993
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June 24, 2024Sabrina Wins Big
Sabrina is in a rush to get her Totally Teen Fantasy sweepstake to the post office. She has half and hour and has to have it turned in by five o clock today (Saturday). I’m not all that sure what kind of sweepstakes this is. It mentions Randy helping Sabrina scratching things off but then it mentions lining up stickers. So is this one sweepstake or a couple? This first chapter is just Sam fooling around hiding the stamps and the envelope that Sabs needs to mail off.
A few weeks later, Sabs hasn’t heard back yet from the sweepstake. Not that she’s really surprised about this (Nor should she be) because she’s never won anything (and because these sweepstakes are probably scams). Sabs thinks it's because she didn’t kiss the envelope before she mailed it. So she’s been carrying good luck charms and “imagining”. Which is imagining what you want to happen and making it reality. Doing this in class only brings Sabrina detention. Later at Fitz’s Randy tries to get Sabrina to see that the possibility (probability) of her winning that contest are very (VERY) SLIM! Stacey announces at Fitz’s that she, Eva, and Laura will be having a bake sale to raise money for the homeless. This gets no reaction from the others at Fitzes but the other girls think it’s strange and wonder what she’s up to. Al says she probably just wants to win the Citizenship Award. They wonder why she just can’t give money. She gets sixty dollars a month. Then they ask Katie what it’s like being rich and she says ask Michel. He’s been rich much longer. Randy says if she were rich she’d buy a studio, a leer jet, and a condo, and go back to NY. Al says she’d save the environment and buy a ton of books (and clothes). Katie says she’d buy a hockey rink and a team. Sabs said she’d buy expensive clothes, travel, and get a big house. She then daydreams the rest of the about what it would be like.
On the way home, Sabrina walks a little further not paying attention, and runs into a homeless mother and her daughter. She tries to forget about it can’t get it out of her mind. Mark has the mail when she gets home, and teases Sabrina about not checking the mail. But she says she’s not interested in the sweepstakes anymore. She’s just in it for the fun of it. But there’s an envelope there for Sabrina. Sabrina finally gets the letter from Mark and opens it. It says she’s won the five thousand dollars.
Sabrina calls Katie and tells her her news, but she tells Katie not to tell anyone. Katie promises she won’t. Sabrina then calls Randy and tells her she won. UMM! What was the point of? She makes Randy promise not to tell Al. OH KAAAY. Sabrina is already being frivolous talking about spending the money on clothes and jewelry and treating Randy to lunch the next two days. Then she calls Allison. Allison says don’t get to excited her parents will probably tell her to invest it or save most of it. She says she might also have to pay taxes on it. Allison says she has an article about CDL and she’ll bring it to school for Sabs to see.
That night, Sabs tries to listen to a show for the Moen Money about financial advice, but she can’t really understand it. She thinks CDLs are referring to compact discs and wonders why anyone would let them sit in the bank. Then she watching the home shopping work with a med Rhonda Ray. Sabs thinks about how she’d like Rhonda Ray’s job of making all the items should like you *HAVE* to have them. Sabs orders a kitchen center that’s supposed to be ninety-nine dollars but ends up being one hundred and thirteen. She sees a CD player next and orders it (thinking of how she’ll be rich if she invest in CDS). The CD player doesn’t come up but she does order a radar detector, a toboggan, a wooden bowl, and an electric back scratcher. All her friends tease her the next day about telling each of them she’s telling them a secret that no one but them knows. Sabs says she just couldn’t hold it in. Sam and Mark have been telling everyone and by now the whole school probably knows. Mark and Brian come down the hall at that moment and Brain asks Mark how it feels to have a millionaire for a sister.
All morning, kids are either looking at Sabs or going out of their way to speak to her. It makes Sabs feel “better than everyone else.” But all the students are coming up to Sabs ASKING FOR MONEY for their organizations. Sabs tells them she’ll get back. Sabs invites all her friends to eat at the Fortune Cookie and then she’ll treat them to a shopping spree at DARE. Randy says she wants leather pants, Katie wants a green jacket, and Allison wants earrings. Sabs says it’s all good. They can have what they want. Sabs considers for a minute she’s going overboard but then just tells herself she’ ’ll put the stuff on her mother’s credit card and then pay her back. They go over to Stacey and buy some cookies and this makes Sabs feel a little better. Then Sabs tells them about all the junk she bought and they said the toboggan sounds fun, but they don’t know about the bowl with the wooden fruit. They also like the CD player. Allison tells her she brought the article about the CD’. Al explains it’s like a savings account and then explains how it works.
That night Sabs brothers drop hints on stuff they want. Mark wants a new car. Luke wants a new basketball, but Sabrina ignores them. Her mom and dad say they need to have a talk with her. Her brothers say how they’re supposed to share it with her poor brothers and she snaps at them that the money is *hers*. She doesn’t owe anyone anything and then she starts thinking about how Randy is always calling her rich and how her friends acted like they expected her to buy out the mall. Her mom and dad make her apologize to her brothers. After dinner, they tell her they’ve filled out the papers but she’ll have to pay taxes. She gives an amount but they say the government decides how much they’ll get. Sabrina thinks this is unfair. It’s HER money, but her dad says that’s just life. Sabrina figures how much could it be, but she finds out she’ll have to pay one thousand dollars. Then she’ll have to pay state tax which will be eight percent which will be four hundred dollars. Now Sabrina will have three thousand and fifty dollars and her mom and dad don’t think she’s old enough to have this much money. They tell her that she might want to put some of it in the bank to use for college.
They’ll let her have three hundred of it to do with whatever she wants. The Home Shopping Network stuff came to four hundred so she’s already in debt. Sabrina then calls and cancels her order. She realizes she didn’t need any of that stuff. She does keep the toboggan tho. Now she only has two hundred and forty-eight dollars. Sab's mom and dad will advance her the 300.00 and, pay the taxes, when the check came get the three hundred back, then talk about how they’d invest the rest. Sabs decides to make a budget. Sabs tries to use the computer, accidentally presses PRINT, and gets her hair tangled up in the computer. Sam frees her Luckily the computer comes back on and Luke has backed his programs up. Sam surprisingly doesn't seem to want anything for helping Sabs out. He just says forget about it.
Sabs decides to spend one hundred dollars on her friends on the shopping trip. Her father gives her the money and Sabrina finally has it in her hands, but she doesn’t feel like she thought it would. She feels like she’s just “pretending” to be happy when her friends come, but she really isn’t. At the Fortune Cookie, Sabrina feels like they don’t belong there. The waitress is giving them funny looks for coming in jeans. Then there are two waiters. Sabrina is starting to feel like this is out of her league. They all start ordering the most expensive things on the menu. Randy keeps saying Sabs can afford it. She’s rich! The pressure gets to Sabs and she breaks down and tells them the truth. They all decide to compromise and buy combination plates for five dollars, They all convince Sabs to splurge on a jacket that’s one hundred and eighty dollars that’s tan and suede. Sabs starts to trip about the coat. She doesn’t want to stay in the ice cream shop because a kid has a lollipop and outside she freaks out because it’s coming down and she doesn’t want her coat getting wet. She even particular about where she puts it when she gets home because she doesn’t want to get it wrinkled.
Later she sees the mother and daughter that she ran into on the news and the mom talks about how they lost everything in a fire. The next day Sabs takes the coat back. She calls a meeting with her friends and family and tells them she’s returning the toboggan and giving a hundred dollars to the homeless family. With the rest, she decides to throw a special BBQ. She realizes that giving the money away has made her happier than spending (and having) it.
On the day of the BBQ, Sabrina gives it a red, white, and pink thene. When they tease her about it she says it’s just her way of showing them she loves them as an explanation. Sam gets a softball game going and the girls win. Ducks invade the cookout. Then they have a relay race. They dance and lip-synch to rap music. Then they have a talent contest (Jason wins). After this, there’s a shower and they have a sing long. There’s a tug of war and the boys win. Her dad suggests they have an egg toss. Surprisingly her parents are good at this. It gets a little rowdy and they start dropping eggs all over the place (I bet the park clean-up crew just LOVED that). Sabs notices Sam is missing then she spots him talking to a man in a suit. Sabs tries sneak up on Sam and hit him with the egg. But it lands on the man. The man looks familiar and it turns out he’s the mayor. When Sabrina donated her money to the homeless, Sam called the mayor and nominated her for the Citizen’s Award and she won, Since everyone was going to be there he thought it would be the perfect place to present her with the medallion. Then he places it around her neck. Sabs presents Sam with a deluxe baseball mitt.
My Thoughts:
There have been times in this series when Sabrina has slightly rubbed me the wrong way. And interestingly just her. Katie’s books do slightly but it’s not Katie’s character itself. It’s that the books for me aren’t interesting because I’m not a sports fan at all. This was one where Sabrina bugged me because she got five thousand dollars and thought she was better than everyone. For FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS now. Snorts. RIGHT! I don’t know this probably did seem like a lot of money when these books were written. But Sabrina QUICKLY learned that five thousand dollars is here today and gone tomorrow. It bugged me that just the *sight* of the homeless lady and her kid just completely freaked her out and it just made her seem sheltered because did she not know that there were other parts of Acorn Falls that weren’t as nice. Or was she living in the shallow little bubble Sabrina often lives in with absolutely nothing in her head but clothes and what boy she’s going to be into in the next book? Sometimes this series makes her such an airhead that it makes you roll your eyes in annoyance. Actually, do you know who Sabrina reminded me of? Again, I thought of a relative which I do not want to speak ill on because they passed on this year. BUT this relative had an affinity to buy things on eBay. He was AdDICTRED to bidding. He’d buy all this stuff,, boxes and boxes. He has two blenders… a donut maker.. two air conditioners.. stereo equipment on and on and on. He never even OPENED the boxes. So his house is now full of all these stuff that he continued to buy and never even used and it just sat and sat. A wooden bowl with fruit? A radar. I thought that was what cops used.. A toboggan? This just goes to show that if Sabrina ever does get any REAL money. Yeah, it looks like the chances are high that she’ll be a hoarder. But I guess it was good that she learned that sometimes it's not about material things. It’s about helping people who don’t have. So by her helping the lady and her daughter, it made her a little less shallow. Even Stacey showed some depth. I’m just gonna take it that she was sincere since the book didn’t tell her motives this time. But I do wonder what brought the change in her.
Rating: 6 The message was good! I do admit tho this is something that has been on my mind a lot if things ever take off for me and I find myself with a lot of money and what would it go towards and how could I help other people out (in my family and other people facing the same struggles I do)
Sabrina is in a rush to get her Totally Teen Fantasy sweepstake to the post office. She has half and hour and has to have it turned in by five o clock today (Saturday). I’m not all that sure what kind of sweepstakes this is. It mentions Randy helping Sabrina scratching things off but then it mentions lining up stickers. So is this one sweepstake or a couple? This first chapter is just Sam fooling around hiding the stamps and the envelope that Sabs needs to mail off.
A few weeks later, Sabs hasn’t heard back yet from the sweepstake. Not that she’s really surprised about this (Nor should she be) because she’s never won anything (and because these sweepstakes are probably scams). Sabs thinks it's because she didn’t kiss the envelope before she mailed it. So she’s been carrying good luck charms and “imagining”. Which is imagining what you want to happen and making it reality. Doing this in class only brings Sabrina detention. Later at Fitz’s Randy tries to get Sabrina to see that the possibility (probability) of her winning that contest are very (VERY) SLIM! Stacey announces at Fitz’s that she, Eva, and Laura will be having a bake sale to raise money for the homeless. This gets no reaction from the others at Fitzes but the other girls think it’s strange and wonder what she’s up to. Al says she probably just wants to win the Citizenship Award. They wonder why she just can’t give money. She gets sixty dollars a month. Then they ask Katie what it’s like being rich and she says ask Michel. He’s been rich much longer. Randy says if she were rich she’d buy a studio, a leer jet, and a condo, and go back to NY. Al says she’d save the environment and buy a ton of books (and clothes). Katie says she’d buy a hockey rink and a team. Sabs said she’d buy expensive clothes, travel, and get a big house. She then daydreams the rest of the about what it would be like.
On the way home, Sabrina walks a little further not paying attention, and runs into a homeless mother and her daughter. She tries to forget about it can’t get it out of her mind. Mark has the mail when she gets home, and teases Sabrina about not checking the mail. But she says she’s not interested in the sweepstakes anymore. She’s just in it for the fun of it. But there’s an envelope there for Sabrina. Sabrina finally gets the letter from Mark and opens it. It says she’s won the five thousand dollars.
Sabrina calls Katie and tells her her news, but she tells Katie not to tell anyone. Katie promises she won’t. Sabrina then calls Randy and tells her she won. UMM! What was the point of? She makes Randy promise not to tell Al. OH KAAAY. Sabrina is already being frivolous talking about spending the money on clothes and jewelry and treating Randy to lunch the next two days. Then she calls Allison. Allison says don’t get to excited her parents will probably tell her to invest it or save most of it. She says she might also have to pay taxes on it. Allison says she has an article about CDL and she’ll bring it to school for Sabs to see.
That night, Sabs tries to listen to a show for the Moen Money about financial advice, but she can’t really understand it. She thinks CDLs are referring to compact discs and wonders why anyone would let them sit in the bank. Then she watching the home shopping work with a med Rhonda Ray. Sabs thinks about how she’d like Rhonda Ray’s job of making all the items should like you *HAVE* to have them. Sabs orders a kitchen center that’s supposed to be ninety-nine dollars but ends up being one hundred and thirteen. She sees a CD player next and orders it (thinking of how she’ll be rich if she invest in CDS). The CD player doesn’t come up but she does order a radar detector, a toboggan, a wooden bowl, and an electric back scratcher. All her friends tease her the next day about telling each of them she’s telling them a secret that no one but them knows. Sabs says she just couldn’t hold it in. Sam and Mark have been telling everyone and by now the whole school probably knows. Mark and Brian come down the hall at that moment and Brain asks Mark how it feels to have a millionaire for a sister.
All morning, kids are either looking at Sabs or going out of their way to speak to her. It makes Sabs feel “better than everyone else.” But all the students are coming up to Sabs ASKING FOR MONEY for their organizations. Sabs tells them she’ll get back. Sabs invites all her friends to eat at the Fortune Cookie and then she’ll treat them to a shopping spree at DARE. Randy says she wants leather pants, Katie wants a green jacket, and Allison wants earrings. Sabs says it’s all good. They can have what they want. Sabs considers for a minute she’s going overboard but then just tells herself she’ ’ll put the stuff on her mother’s credit card and then pay her back. They go over to Stacey and buy some cookies and this makes Sabs feel a little better. Then Sabs tells them about all the junk she bought and they said the toboggan sounds fun, but they don’t know about the bowl with the wooden fruit. They also like the CD player. Allison tells her she brought the article about the CD’. Al explains it’s like a savings account and then explains how it works.
That night Sabs brothers drop hints on stuff they want. Mark wants a new car. Luke wants a new basketball, but Sabrina ignores them. Her mom and dad say they need to have a talk with her. Her brothers say how they’re supposed to share it with her poor brothers and she snaps at them that the money is *hers*. She doesn’t owe anyone anything and then she starts thinking about how Randy is always calling her rich and how her friends acted like they expected her to buy out the mall. Her mom and dad make her apologize to her brothers. After dinner, they tell her they’ve filled out the papers but she’ll have to pay taxes. She gives an amount but they say the government decides how much they’ll get. Sabrina thinks this is unfair. It’s HER money, but her dad says that’s just life. Sabrina figures how much could it be, but she finds out she’ll have to pay one thousand dollars. Then she’ll have to pay state tax which will be eight percent which will be four hundred dollars. Now Sabrina will have three thousand and fifty dollars and her mom and dad don’t think she’s old enough to have this much money. They tell her that she might want to put some of it in the bank to use for college.
They’ll let her have three hundred of it to do with whatever she wants. The Home Shopping Network stuff came to four hundred so she’s already in debt. Sabrina then calls and cancels her order. She realizes she didn’t need any of that stuff. She does keep the toboggan tho. Now she only has two hundred and forty-eight dollars. Sab's mom and dad will advance her the 300.00 and, pay the taxes, when the check came get the three hundred back, then talk about how they’d invest the rest. Sabs decides to make a budget. Sabs tries to use the computer, accidentally presses PRINT, and gets her hair tangled up in the computer. Sam frees her Luckily the computer comes back on and Luke has backed his programs up. Sam surprisingly doesn't seem to want anything for helping Sabs out. He just says forget about it.
Sabs decides to spend one hundred dollars on her friends on the shopping trip. Her father gives her the money and Sabrina finally has it in her hands, but she doesn’t feel like she thought it would. She feels like she’s just “pretending” to be happy when her friends come, but she really isn’t. At the Fortune Cookie, Sabrina feels like they don’t belong there. The waitress is giving them funny looks for coming in jeans. Then there are two waiters. Sabrina is starting to feel like this is out of her league. They all start ordering the most expensive things on the menu. Randy keeps saying Sabs can afford it. She’s rich! The pressure gets to Sabs and she breaks down and tells them the truth. They all decide to compromise and buy combination plates for five dollars, They all convince Sabs to splurge on a jacket that’s one hundred and eighty dollars that’s tan and suede. Sabs starts to trip about the coat. She doesn’t want to stay in the ice cream shop because a kid has a lollipop and outside she freaks out because it’s coming down and she doesn’t want her coat getting wet. She even particular about where she puts it when she gets home because she doesn’t want to get it wrinkled.
Later she sees the mother and daughter that she ran into on the news and the mom talks about how they lost everything in a fire. The next day Sabs takes the coat back. She calls a meeting with her friends and family and tells them she’s returning the toboggan and giving a hundred dollars to the homeless family. With the rest, she decides to throw a special BBQ. She realizes that giving the money away has made her happier than spending (and having) it.
On the day of the BBQ, Sabrina gives it a red, white, and pink thene. When they tease her about it she says it’s just her way of showing them she loves them as an explanation. Sam gets a softball game going and the girls win. Ducks invade the cookout. Then they have a relay race. They dance and lip-synch to rap music. Then they have a talent contest (Jason wins). After this, there’s a shower and they have a sing long. There’s a tug of war and the boys win. Her dad suggests they have an egg toss. Surprisingly her parents are good at this. It gets a little rowdy and they start dropping eggs all over the place (I bet the park clean-up crew just LOVED that). Sabs notices Sam is missing then she spots him talking to a man in a suit. Sabs tries sneak up on Sam and hit him with the egg. But it lands on the man. The man looks familiar and it turns out he’s the mayor. When Sabrina donated her money to the homeless, Sam called the mayor and nominated her for the Citizen’s Award and she won, Since everyone was going to be there he thought it would be the perfect place to present her with the medallion. Then he places it around her neck. Sabs presents Sam with a deluxe baseball mitt.
My Thoughts:
There have been times in this series when Sabrina has slightly rubbed me the wrong way. And interestingly just her. Katie’s books do slightly but it’s not Katie’s character itself. It’s that the books for me aren’t interesting because I’m not a sports fan at all. This was one where Sabrina bugged me because she got five thousand dollars and thought she was better than everyone. For FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS now. Snorts. RIGHT! I don’t know this probably did seem like a lot of money when these books were written. But Sabrina QUICKLY learned that five thousand dollars is here today and gone tomorrow. It bugged me that just the *sight* of the homeless lady and her kid just completely freaked her out and it just made her seem sheltered because did she not know that there were other parts of Acorn Falls that weren’t as nice. Or was she living in the shallow little bubble Sabrina often lives in with absolutely nothing in her head but clothes and what boy she’s going to be into in the next book? Sometimes this series makes her such an airhead that it makes you roll your eyes in annoyance. Actually, do you know who Sabrina reminded me of? Again, I thought of a relative which I do not want to speak ill on because they passed on this year. BUT this relative had an affinity to buy things on eBay. He was AdDICTRED to bidding. He’d buy all this stuff,, boxes and boxes. He has two blenders… a donut maker.. two air conditioners.. stereo equipment on and on and on. He never even OPENED the boxes. So his house is now full of all these stuff that he continued to buy and never even used and it just sat and sat. A wooden bowl with fruit? A radar. I thought that was what cops used.. A toboggan? This just goes to show that if Sabrina ever does get any REAL money. Yeah, it looks like the chances are high that she’ll be a hoarder. But I guess it was good that she learned that sometimes it's not about material things. It’s about helping people who don’t have. So by her helping the lady and her daughter, it made her a little less shallow. Even Stacey showed some depth. I’m just gonna take it that she was sincere since the book didn’t tell her motives this time. But I do wonder what brought the change in her.
Rating: 6 The message was good! I do admit tho this is something that has been on my mind a lot if things ever take off for me and I find myself with a lot of money and what would it go towards and how could I help other people out (in my family and other people facing the same struggles I do)
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 9, 2013
these books were like reading a diary each book was different though it was like you were in school again.
June 24, 2016
all books from this serial were with me in my childhood and puberty-time ;) and in that time it was great. One time...I will read it with my daughters
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews