Babysitters Club #100

 If there's one thing a librarian appreciates, is a long running series that hooks readers for the rest of their free reading time. 

.Which brings me to the Baby-Sitters Club. If you were a girl like I was in the 80/90s this was the series your big sister read and ordered from the Scholastic Lucky Book Club. It was about a bunch of American girls who start a baby-sitting club not because they need the money but because Kristy's solo mum needs a babysitter and was ringing around for a sitter. So Kristy calls three of  her 12 and 13 year old seventh grade girlfriends together to form a club at her neighbour Claudias house (because she has her own phone line!) and the Baby Sitters club is born. The first book was called Kristy's Great Idea and every book thereafter featured a different club member narrating their own book and experiences baby-sitting, friendships, and sometimes fall-outs.  

Never mind that these girls are actually underage and might have needed to be babysat themselves - this is fiction remember! They did not actually babysit babies either. All this is candy to a young reader perhaps wanting to be part of a cool club themselves but probably not able to find the time - they met three times a week and were extremely professional and committed, they had a President, a Vice President, a Treasurer and a Secretary and ran all things like clubs do with membership dues and a minutes book, and planned sleepovers and pizza parties with the proceeds from their babysitting jobs. Kristy ran it as a business, she was bossy, but as far as I know, every club member respected each others different personalities and roles and nobody tried to steal each others jobs or embezzle money. 

My sister bought the series and she must have collected up to book #45 until she grew out of them. I was reading the junior series Baby-sitters Little Sister about Kristy's 7 year old step-sister Karen. Except Karen was the star of each and every title that also ran on forever although I think I only had the first 10 or so books. 

Every character was always described in great detail at the beginning of the books, their looks, personality and family background. Girls were extremely self-aware, so there was Kristy the boss, tomboy who's dad abandoned the family, Mary-Anne the shy sensitive listener only child who's mother died when she was a baby, Claudia the Japanese-American funky creative artist with the genius sister and Stacy the permed blonde New York sophisticate diabetic who's parents got divorced. 

More sitters joined later on and the series became extremely popular. I thought I had left the series behind in my childhood after I got into the classics and wasn't reading about tweens anymore. I skipped Sweet Valley High and went right into Gone with the Wind, War and Peace and Jane Austen.

The Baby sitters Club never died though as it came back as Graphic Novels and became the most popular books in the school library (amongst girls) with new full colour editions. The first seven books flew off the shelves and totally outpaced the original chapter books. Even when they came out with fresh covers and Netflix series tie-in. 

I've now gotten into the e-books editions of the original chapter books on the public library's Libby platform as the paperbacks we had to ditch. My sister had stored them under the house I have no idea why - and they'd gotten mouldy. Was she hoping to save them to give to our younger cousins or what because that moment had totally passed them by and they were into Harry Potter and the Divergent series. 

It's interesting reading the rest of the series as an adult and finding out that new club members had been added, some of the girls start dating and that, shock horror for the hundredth book Kristy decides to disband the Baby-sitters Club. Then there's all the spin off books, the mysteries, the super specials in which the Baby sitters travel far and wide (how can they afford??) and the diary series, and even after their 8th grade graduation, a Forever Friends series in which their friendships are explored after they stop baby sitting. The entire Baby-Sitters Club series is more than 200 books which possibly beats Danielle Steel's output but maybe just a bit below Nora Roberts and James Patterson. 

If there's one series to binge read and like me you  don't really get the whole manga thing, want to avoid any cringy sex scenes because secretly, you never really grew up anyway -  the Baby-Sitters Club may be just your gateway drug into the delights of reading. 

Sometimes boys are shamed into reading Baby-sitters Club by their teachers but actually I know quite a few liked them, even though it was mostly a girls club (Mary Annes boyfriend was an associate member)   but honestly I think there could worse things adolescent tweens could be reading, and nobody practised witchcraft or fell in love with a vampire or zombie in this series. Thank you Ann M Martin - who knew you would create so many happy readers.