Books like Dawn and the Impossible Three

this is the first dawn book of the series, in which she becomes the regular sitter for the barrett family. buddy, suzi, & marnie are being raised by a single mom who recently went through a pretty acrimonious divorce. the kids seem to be coping well enough, but their mom is struggling to find steady employment & isn't managing the demands of childrearing, job seeking, & housework very well. dawn often comes by to babysit, only to find the kids still in their pajamas, without breakfast, in a disaster area of a house. mrs. barrett rushes off to job interviews & temp positions without leaving proper instructions & emergency contact info. dawn invents a game to get the kids excited about cleaning up the house, & mrs. barrett starts to rely on dawn too much. the kids also start to over-rely on dawn--when buddy does well on a class assignment, he stops by dawn's house to tell her about it, instead of sharing the news with his mom. one day while dawn is sitting, buddy disappears from the front yard while dawn is getting the girls dressed to go outside. jordan pike saw buddy get into a car. dawn panics & calls the police. the neighbors fan out to search the neighborhood. dawn can't read mrs. barrett, who is in the next town over, running errands. finally buddy calls & says he's on his way home. it turned out that the man who picked him up was his dad, & it was his regular day to have the kids, but flaky mrs. barrett forgot (though it seems like if she wanted a personal day to shop & run errands, she'd be counting down the moments until her ex had visitation so she wouldn't have to pay a sitter...anyway). when hamilton came by to pick the kids up & found only buddy, he decided to just take him to freak mrs. barrett out. considering the prevalence of exes kidnapping their own children, & how the courts can be pretty strict about visitation & custody issues, this seems like a pretty bad idea if hamilton wants to hang on to his partial custody rights, but there were no consequences for him here aside from a talking-to from the cops. after this goes down, dawn has a talk with mrs. barrett & says she can't sit for her anymore unless mrs. barrett makes more of an effort to keep dawn in the loop, leave contact phone numbers, etc. mrs. barrett is understanding & agreeable & everyone lives happily ever after. i liked the fact that this book showcased a less-than-perfect family. with the stepford perkinses on their way in just a couple of books, it's nice to be reminded that sometimes teenage babysitters end up biting off more than they can chew in dealing with familial dramas in real life. i didn't like the egregious continuity error on the book: at one point while dawn is teaching the kids how to clean the house, marnie sits on the floor & eats M&Ms (she's really too young to understand or help with housework). maybe twenty pages later, the barretts are at a picnic at the pikes' house & dawn gives marnie a brownie. mallory pike snatches the brownie away & tells dawn that marnie is allergic to chocolate. the allergy reveal is supposed to illustrate the dangerousness of mrs. barrett leaving dawn in charge without giving her proper instructions. but why was she just eating M&Ms two seconds ago with no ill effects? plus, as early as book two, the babysitters make a big fuss about asking about things like allergies before taking on new clients (there's a scene where claudia gets allergy info from mrs. marshall before agreeing to sit for eleanor & nina). so...WTF?but i still love reading these early books. take me right back to being seven years old again.