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Original cover art from Book #1: Kristy’s Great Idea

At the beginning of Coronatide (that’s what I call this time in our lives), I found the Baby-Sitters Club series on my digital library app and thought it would be fun to revisit my childhood friends, the members of the BSC.  As I read, I’d call my friends and go on long diatribes about the books, the things I forgot, the things I’d never noticed, and the things that didn’t age so well, and friend suggested I start a blog (probably so she wouldn’t have to listen to me). Of course, I only actually made it through about five entries before I lost all motivation for things not imperative to daily life (because, again, Coronatide. You know what I’m saying). I’ve still been reading the books, though. I started with the Super Specials because they were always my favorites and I read them all in order. Then I began on the regular books of the series and I’ve read books 1-53, in order. Although I hope to continue blogging my way through the books in the future, I wanted to write down some thoughts on this process before the new Netflix Baby-Sitters Club series goes live on Friday.

When I read the Baby-Sitters Club books 20+ years ago, I didn’t understand how groundbreaking they were. They certainly reflected more diversity than I experienced in the small towns I grew up in, where almost no one I interacted with on a daily basis was anything but white and Christian. Very few of my close friends were children of divorced parents or dealt with significant health issues. When I opened a BSC book, though, my world also opened up. Claudia became my first Asian friend, and Jessi became my first Black friend (because they definitely felt like real-life friends). In Happy Holidays, Jessi, I learned about Kwanzaa. In Kristy and the Secret of Susan, I was introduced to autism, a solid decade before I heard anyone else talk about it, even if the book’s portrayal of it is a bit cringe-worthy by current standards. In Aloha, Baby-Sitters, I grappled with the legacy of racism surrounding Asian-Americans in the aftermath of World War II alongside Claudia when members of the BSC visited Pearl Harbor on a school trip. The list could go on, but here’s the thing: it wasn’t until adulthood that I realized the real impact of this series.

This week, a whole new generation will be introduced to the BSC when the Netflix series premieres. I’ve already seen some buzz about casting choices (casting young women of color in roles depicted as white in the book, including Mary Anne and Kristy). And there will certainly be deviations from the books in terms of plotlines (in the series, set in the present day, Claudia’s landline phone comes from Etsy). It won’t be the Baby-Sitters Club I grew up with but, not only is that okay, that’s a good thing. The legacy of Ann M. Martin’s Baby-Sitters Club universe isn’t plotlines in children’s novels of the late 20^th Century; the legacy of this beloved literary universe is one of inclusion, acceptance, and diversity. I look forward to seeing how Netflix brings this legacy and this world to life on screen, transforming and inspiring a new generation.

Photo by @parktroopers on Unsplash

Book #5: Dawn and the Impossible Three

Synopsis: Dawn is adjusting to life in Connecticut and is complaining a lot about the cold. We meet the Barrett family, who turn into some of the regular baby-sitting charges.

Thoughts: My re-read of the series (I’m slow in blogging but am about 35 books in) has helped me realize that I totally underestimated the BSC books when I was growing up. They tackle some pretty serious and, at times, dark things and this book was where I really began to see it. Dawn is adjusting to life in Connecticut and although she was invited to join the BSC at the end of the last book, it’s still slow going. She has to prove herself, and Kristy is hella jealous that this California swooped in and stole her best friend. In what I can only call an inordinate amount of awareness, Dawn totally sees what’s going on and deftly handles the situation and wins over Kristy, who even suggests giving Dawn the title of “alternate officer.”

Meanwhile, in BSC business, we meet the Barrett family: Buddy, Suzie, and Marnie and their Mom, who is described as a “young woman,” which made me feel super old. The Barretts have just gone through a contentious divorce and when Dawn shows up to babysit, she’s instructed that the kids aren’t supposed to talk to Mr. Barrett on the phone if he calls. The house is a mess, Mrs. Barrett is scattered, and basically runs out of the house without giving Dawn any other directions. Over the course of the book, Dawn becomes they’re regular babysitter and is basically doing more to take care of the kids and the house than Mrs. Barrett, who even forgot to tell Dawn about a food allergy which could have proven tragic if it weren’t for Mallory’s quick thinking. Buddy comes to her house for homework help. Suzie calls her on the phone all the time. And it all comes to a head when Buddy disappears. It turns out that scatter-brained Mrs. Barrett mixed up visitation days and Mr. Barrett picked up Buddy, who was playing outside, without telling anyone. Buddy was returned about 10 seconds before his face was plastered on the side of a milk carton. Dawn finally confronted Mrs. Barrett about how dysfunctional she is, and Mrs. Barrett agreed to try harder and to pay Dawn for all of the extra chores she’d been doing. As I read, I couldn’t help thinking how absurd this entire situation is. It wasn’t so much that I disbelieved it, but more just that it reminded me how heartbreaking it is when kids and teenagers end up parenting the adults in their lives.

Unbelievable/Surprising: “In Connecticut, people barbecue things.” As someone from below the Mason-Dixon line who also lived in Connecticut for years, I am here to tell you that this is one of the most ridiculous sentences ever written. Ever. In the history of the world.

For context, Mary Anne’s dad and Dawn’s mom have started seeing each other and the Schaefers decide to have people (Sharon’s parents, the Spiers, BSC members, etc.) over for a cookout. Sharon plans a sprouted tofu salad casserole or something of the sort, but Dawn is so eager to make a good impression and fit in that she forces her mom to go to the store and buy a grill and meat to cook on it. She calls it a barbecue, but we all know the truth: it’s just a cookout.

Lingering Question(s): Will Mrs. Barrett ever get her shit together?

Next Up: Kristy’s Big Day

Markus Spiske

Book #4: Mary Anne Saves the Day

Synopsis: When Kristy accepts a sitting job without consulting the other members of the club, the BSC gets into a massive fight. Could this mean the end of the BSC as we know it? Meanwhile, Mary Anne is trying to prove to her father that she is growing up (spoiler alert: she succeeds). And, perhaps most importantly, we finally meet Dawn.

Thoughts: The underlying story in this book is the fight between all the girls in the BSC. Mrs. Newton calls during a meeting and asks for a sitter; in her excitement, Kristy accepts the job without consulting anyone else and they all get mad. They turn on Claudia because she tends to do the same thing, and it devolves from there. They accuse Stacey of always talking at New York (I mean, they’re not wrong…) and call Mary Anne a baby. The fight stretches on; they even go so far as to cancelling regular meetings and just have one person answer the phones during meeting times.

During her turn one day, Mary Anne gets a call from the Prezziosos who are in need of a babysitter. Mary Anne takes the job and begins sitting for Jenny, our favorite monster of a pre-schooler, who ends coming down with a 104 degree fever while Mary Anne is watching her. Mary Anne tries calling her dad, the neighbors, and others but no one picks up, so she ends up calling her new friend Dawn (we’ll get to that…) to come help her. They end up having to call 911 to get a ride to the hospital and Mary Anne truly does save the day. Her heroic efforts finally make her dad realize she’s growing up: she might actually be too old for pictures of Humpty Dumpty on her walls and could probably stand to get a new hairstyle other than braids.

And yet, the BSC fight continues. It all comes to a head when Mrs. Newton asks the BSC members to help at Jamie’s birthday party and the sitters can’t stop squabbling with one another and almost ruin the party. Mary Anne, emboldened by all of her personal growth, calls them on it, which leads to emergency meeting of the club and everyone reconciling.

The silver lining of the fight is that it helps Mary Anne and Dawn meet. When she goes to school after the fight, Mary Anne has no one to sit with at lunch and so she sits by herself but is quickly interrupted by a new student looking for a lunchmate: Dawn. They hit it off and become fast friends, much to the chagrin of Kristy, although Mary Anne tells Dawn she’s sitting alone because all of her friends are sick. Eventually Dawn realizes this is a lie and gets upset, although we’re told the fight stretches on for like a month and you’d think Dawn would realize sooner that Mary Anne’s friends we’re all out sick for a full month. In any case, it all works out and Dawn ends up becoming the newest member of the BSC.

Of course, if I’m being honest, the most exciting part of this book is when Mary Anne and Dawn discover that their parents dated in high school! They even arrange for them to meet again toward the very end of the book and it looks like there could be LUV on the horizon… 

Unbelievable/Surprising: Again, it seems necessary to point out that the BSC fight lasted for weeks on end and Dawn didn’t even seem suspicious that Mary Anne’s friends were all out sick.

Also: I realized that there are references to Mary Anne calling Mr. and Mrs. Prezzioso’s phones; I don’t even think I knew what a cell phone was I first read this book, even though the only phones that make sense in the context of this reference would be cell phones. Way to be on top of the technology, Ann M. Martin!

Lingering Questions: Will Mr. Spier and Mrs. Schaefer actually get together!? (Obviously I know the answer to this question but it’s fun to revisit!).

Up Next: Dawn and the Impossible Three

Viviana Rishe

Book #3: The Truth about Stacey

Synopsis: Stacey’s parents want her to try a new doctor in New York and, along the way, she is forced to confront her former BFF, Laine. Meanwhile, some 8th graders start a rival babysitting business and give the gals a run for their money.

Thoughts: Although I remember the plots of most books based off of the titles, this one didn’t immediately ring any bells. After all, we already uncovered Stacey’s Big Secret at the end of the first book. Or did we? It turns out that Stacey’s secret is only partially uncovered – the BSC knows and a few other folks do, too, but a lot of people don’t know about it and Stacey is continuing to navigate life with secret diabetes. The secret is getting harder to keep, though, because people are always trying to feed her candy, plus her parents have found yet another new doctor for her and she’ll have to go to NYC for several days in order to get some tests done and meet the new doctor. Stacey likes her current doctors, though, and so she asks Dr. Johanssen for help. They end up getting Stacey an appointment with a different doctor who basically tells the McGills that Stacey is healthy and should stick with her regular doctors. While in NYC seeing the doctors, Stacey has to stay with her former BFF, Laine Cummings, who finally knows that Stacey has diabetes. After some initial awkwardness and a little bit of a fight, they make up and are back to being BFFs.

Meanwhile, some 8^th graders from Stoneybrook Middle School have decided to start a rival business, The Baby-Sitters Agency, which is basically the MLM version of the BSC: the two girls running the agency find sitters for you and then take a chunk of the sitters’ profits. Prediction: if you looked up those girls in 2017, they were probably messaging all their high school friends about great business opportunities to do while working from home. The agency has great advertising, though, including balloons, which leads the BSC to great lengths (a.k.a. wearing sandwich boards) to advertise. Luckily, this also inspires some ideas that are better than wearing sandwich boards to school, including the Kid Kit, a box filled with toys, games, and art supplies to take to sitting jobs. Who among us didn’t make our own Kid Kit to take to baby-sitting jobs. Or was that just me?

The BSC is worried that they’re going to lose clients, though. The 8^th graders can stay out later, offer better rates, and have more sitters available. But you know what they also have? Terrible work ethics. They’d rather talk on the phone to their sig oths or leave cigarette burns on the Newtons’ furniture than actually spend time with the kids they’re watching. The sitting charges keep complaining about the new sitters and it all comes to a head one day when the girls find Jamie Newton wandering by the side of the road by himself. One of the older babysitters let him play outside by himself. The parents are informed, the older sitters are fired, and everything goes back to normal. The Baby-Sitters Agency folds and the girls jump straight to the next business venture: makeovers!

Everything works out in the end (surprise, surprise), including the minor story line in which a precocious and lonely Charlotte Johanssen gets to skip a grade and jump right into 3^rd grade.

Unbelievable: The book opens with the BSC members coming up with a plan for what to do when Mrs. Newton goes into labor (that is, what to do with Jamie when his mom goes to the hospital), as if an adult would let 7^th graders plan such an important thing. As if, I say.

Mrs. Newton also mentions wanting an older sitter for the new baby, hence her interest in the 8^th grade sitters. Seriously, though: what person is trusting their newborn with an 8^th grader?

Lingering Questions: This is definitely less of a question, but as a five-year resident of south central Connecticut, the exact geography of Stoneybrook vis-à-vis Stamford and NYC is a little bewildering to me. We learn in BSC Super Special #4 that Stoneybrook is a coastal town. We also know that its closest city is Stamford. A coastal Connecticut town whose closest city is Stamford would be only an hour from lower Manhattan (anything further away would be closer to Bridgeport). Basically, the books make it seem like it’s a world away when, in fact, it’s totally a reasonable commuting distance. A lot of things in the books, especially Stacey’s storylines are predicated on this being a much further distance.

Up Next: Mary Anne Saves the Day

Annie Spratt

Book #2: Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls

Synopsis: A jewel thief is hitting the area and the BSC members are concerned that the thief will strike while they’re at a baby-sitting job. Meanwhile, there’s a dance coming up and the girls are in a flutter over whether or not they’ll be asked. Claudia is in LUV, as Stacey would say, but isn’t sure if her crush, 7^th grade poet heartthrob Trevor Sandbourne, even knows she exists.

Thoughts: Claudia was always one of my favorite BSC members because I love her creativity (and you KNOW she’s going to describe the outfits of all the girls if it’s one of her books!) and I also sort of identified with Claudia feeling like she was never quite good enough, so it was fun to dive in.

The book starts with her reading one of my personal favorite Nancy Drew mysteries: The Phantom of Pine Hill. Hm. Phantom of Pine Hill…Phamton Phone Calls. Coincidence? I think not.

We quickly learn that a jewel thief is on the prowl and their M.O. is to call homes and remain silent if anyone picks up the phone, and then target homes where people seem to be gone. Although the thief or thieves aren’t particularly close to Stoneybrook yet, they’re getting closer and the girls are worried.

And so, in true BSC form, they come up with a plan: if someone breaks in while they’re babysitting, they’ll call another sitter and use a code involving asking whether the other member had found their red ribbon. It was not, shall we say, the most clever plan.  They also decided they could set booby traps for potential burglars (maybe Kevin McAlister drew inspiration from this BSC book when he was left home alone and had to fend off the Wet Bandits).

There is a CrAzY ( read: embarrassing) moment when Mary Anne stacks cans behind the door when she’s baby-sitting for David Michael Thomas and forgets to put them away before the rest of the family gets home. Meanwhile, Claudia and Kristy each get phantom calls during baby-sitting jobs. Eventually there is a robbery right there on Braddock Ct. at Claudia’s next-door neighbors’ house and Mary Anne’s dad makes her stop baby-sitting for a while.

As the mystery unfolds, the girls are adjusting to middle school crushes and adolescent hormones. Claudia has fallen in luv with Trevor Sandbourne, a poet who publishes his work in the Stoneybrook Middle School literary magazine. That’s right. They have a literary magazine. And Alan Gray is hanging around a lot, in a way that makes you wonder if there is something more there.

It all comes to a head one night when Kristy and Claudia are babysitting for Jamie Newton and his cousins. They get a phantom phone call and see a shadow outside the window, so they call 911. The officers show up…with Alan Gray in tow! It turns out that he was hanging around in the bushes outside. He just wanted to ask Kristy to the Halloween Hop and had looked in the BSC notebook to see where she was babysitting but kept losing his nerve when he called. Claudia soon finds out that he was helping Trevor and all her of phantom calls were just Trevor trying to ask her out. do the same. In the mean time, the real Phantom Caller is arrested elsewhere (the burglary at Claudia’s neighbors’ house was a copycat) and the girls go to the dance with their new boy friends (not boyfriends, just friends who are boys).

 Unbelievable: This is all a little far-fetched for so many reasons: 1) I can’t imagine parents continuing to let their 12-year-old children babysit in a neighborhood where break-ins were happening. 2) The girls totally should have told an adult about all the phantom calls they were getting. 3) Why did the boys always call them at their baby-sitting jobs? They could have much more easily just called them at home. 4) What sort of literary magazine does Stoneybrook Middle School have? This is a suburban Connecticut middle school, not liberal arts college. 5) While she is trying to get things under control,  Kristy jokingly tells one of Jamie’s cousins that she will punch his lights out. That…does not sound like something a good babysitter would do.

Lingering Questions/Thoughts: How does Claudia sustain her junk food habit, both in terms of affording all of the stuff and her ability to smuggle it into her house undetected? She’s feeding the club members three times a week and that has to be expensive, and all those bags of Cheez Doodles and boxes of Ring Dings would be hard to get past everyone else. Plus, what does she do with the wrappers? Does she worry about mice?

Also, I know it was 1986, but I was disappointed that Ann. M. Martin played into the “picking on you is how boys show you they like you” trope with Alan Gray and Kristy.

Next Time: The Truth About Stacey

Photo by La-Rel Easter on Unsplash

Book #1: Kristy’s Great Idea

Synopsis: Kristy has The Idea for the club. We learn about Kristy, Mary Anne, and Claudia and then Claudia invites her new friend Stacey to join, although Stacey seems a little different from the beginning. Maybe it’s just because she’s from NEW YORK…or maybe it’s something else. It turns out that Stacey has a secret: she’s diabetic, which is finally revealed in a slumber party scene at the end of the book. In true BSC fashion, though, everyone is cool with it and just shrugs and says they’ll stop offering her Claudia’s hidden candy all the time. No biggie. Meanwhile: Kristy babysits for dogs and adjusts to her mom’s beau, Watson, who is going bald.

Thoughts: When I started re-reading the BSC books, one of the big questions in my mind was whether or not they would stand up to the test of time. I’ve re-read other beloved childhood series and been crushed to realize how problematic they can be (e.g. Little House on the Prairie, re: racism). Thirty-four years after its debut, Kristy’s Great Idea actually holds up pretty well. Sure, a lot of people don’t have landlines anymore and today’s middle schoolers are more likely to advertise for baby-sitting jobs via Instagram than by drawing up fliers or putting an ad in the newspaper, but for the most part this book feels pretty timeless.

While some of the lines feel a little (or very) absurd, that’s probably more to do with Ann M. Martin speaking to a younger audience than it is anything else. We see this when Kristy is describing her dad and says, “My father can be sort of a jerk sometimes. He hasn’t called us in over a year.” My response to this is “Sometimes? Try always.” But I think Martin knew what she was doing and simultaneously articulates Kristy’s love for her dad, her disappointment and hurt from his actions, and her longing for something different in a way that a tween in a similar situation might understand.

In terms of actual baby-sitting, this book introduces us to Kristy’s siblings and (spoiler alert) step-siblings-to-be (Charlie, Sam, David Michael, Karen, and Andrew); several of the babysitters watch various combinations of these siblings and siblings-to-be. We also meet Jamie Newton, the cutest 3-year-old ever, and some of his cousins, plus Kristy accidentally takes a job babysitting for two dogs, Buffy and Pinky. You’d have thought the names would have tipped her off…

One strange and sort of unbelievable part of the book concerns Kristy’s mom’s relationship with Watson. We’re told early on that they’ve been dating for four months.  About two-thirds of the way through the book, Kristy’s mom and Watson tells the kids that they’re talking about getting engaged but that nothing is set, yet by the end of the book, there is a giant rock on Mrs. Thomas’s left ring finger. It all moves suuuuuuuper fast.

Lingering Question: Is Mrs. Porter (Watson’s neighbor), dubbed “Morbidda Destiny” by Karen, actually a witch?

Next time: Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls.

Susan Holt Simpson

Long before debates about whether we are Charlottes, Mirandas, Carries, or Samanthas, we were asking ourselves different questions: Am I a Kristy or a Mary Anne? Am I a Claudia or a Stacey?

If you’re a child of the late 1980s-early 2000s, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about: The Baby-Sitters Club. The book series that convinced millions of adolescent girls (and some non-girls, too) that we could become little babysitting tycoons overnight. Even if you never read the books, it’s likely that you rented the VHS tapes of the short-lived television series from your public library (I sure did), or saw the 1995 movie starring a pre-She’s All That Rachel Leigh Cook (you betcha!).

For more than a decade, Ann M. Martin and a bevy of ghostwriters created the world of Stoneybrook, Connecticut and invited us there to befriend the most ambitious middle schoolers I can imagine. We solved mysteries, traveled extensively (we’ll get to that in future posts), and experienced heartbreak with them. They taught us about responsibility, grief, loss, illness, racism, and so much more.

And now, they’re getting me through a pandemic.

While browsing my library’s digital collection, searching desperately for something to ease my isolation-induced boredom, I discovered that the library has almost the entire BSC catalog. And so, laughing to myself about how FuNnY aNd CrAzY it would be to re-read some of the books, I borrowed a couple. And then I borrowed a couple more. And then I started texting my friends about the funny or ridiculous things happening in the novels. And then my friend Marta suggested I should blog about it, so I spent $18 on a domain that references the theme song to a 13-episode television series from 30 years. Coronabrain makes us do strange things, amiright?

So, here we are. I’m looking forward to blogging my way through the series, sharing the things that held up well, the things that didn’t hold up at all, and the insights of a 30-something re-reading these childhood favorites for the first time in 20+ years.