For people of a certain age, the “baby-sitters club” series of books was everything.
these were chapter books (!) with strong female characters, focused on family, friends, and of course childcare, with plots often dealing with serious topics like bullying, divorce, and the loss.
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for us kids of the 90s, the bsc series offered a stepping stone to maturity. We put ourselves in the shoes of these very mature 13-year-olds, imagining what it would be like to own our own business, wear trendy clothes, and go on occasional adventures. we picked up those pastel paperbacks and asked ourselves “am i kristy? a claudia? a sunrise?”
This summer marks 30 years since author Ann M. Martin wrote the book that started it all: Kristy’s Big Idea. While much of the world has changed in these three decades (hello, internet!), books remain remarkably timeless. today sat down with the author ann m. martin for all the answers to our burning bsc questions.
1. Who really came up with the “babysitting club” idea?
although ann m. Martin is the true visionary behind the 131 BSC books (plus the Super Specials, Little Sister, and more), she wasn’t the one who came up with it in the first place. An editor from Scholastic approached Martin with the idea of a 4-book miniseries titled “The Babysitters Club”. It was up to Martin to determine what a babysitting club would be!
2. How were the original four main characters created?
Martin not only had to figure out what exactly a babysitting club was, but he also had to create the members of the club. The club was originally made up of Kristy Thomas, Mary Anne Spier, Claudia Kishi, and Stacey McGill, four girls each to narrate one of the original four books.
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The characters of Mary Anne and Kristy were based on the childhood of Martin and his best friend. According to Martin, her best friend Beth was “the one with all the great ideas and the one who was out there and excited,” while she herself was definitely the quiet, shy Mary Anne type “who loved having this bigger what a friend for life.” Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that Kristy is Martin’s favorite character out of all the babysitters!
In creating the characters of Claudia and Stacey, Martin wanted to round out the group with two very different girls from the other two. The character of Claudia also contained a piece of Martin, with her love of art. The sophisticated New York City-born Stacey brought someone with a different background into the gang, and Martin admits “I’m not nearly as sophisticated as even Stacey was when she was 12.”
3. Why did stacey move out (and why did she come back)?
The series proved so popular after the first four books that Martin went on to write. She was initially producing a book a month as the club expanded (welcome Dawn, Mallory and Jessi!) and new storylines developed. Devoted fans were particularly horrified when a book featured club member Stacey returning to her hometown of New York. Martin and her editors had decided that it would be natural with any group of friends for someone to move on, but they didn’t know the response they would get. martin said she received so many emails protesting the decision to move stacey that she soon wrote a book to move stacey back to bsc’s hometown of stoneybrook, connecticut, and rejoin the club full time. wow!
4. where did claudia’s outfits come from?
claudia kishi was the character that many fans idolized for her style. Babysitting Club books devoted entire paragraphs to describing her outfits, and now-grown readers even reveled in a recent blog cataloging Claudia’s style. So how did Martin come up with outfits like “a very baggy lavender check playsuit, a white lace blouse, a black fedora” or “a shocking pink tunic over a white shirt with printed pink and yellow umbrellas?” in it?”
research!
Martin says she would look at the kids she passed on the street, go through kids’ clothing catalogues, or look at what kids were wearing on TV. She wanted to “create a character who was not only sort of fashionable, but also expressing her artistic side.”
5. Have the books been updated for modern times?
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martin wrote the books in the 1980s and 1990s, also known as the dark ages before cell phones, email, and social media. Fans will no doubt remember that the club meets in Claudia’s room for meetings because she’s the only one with her own phone, a landline.
The books were updated in 2009 for the series’ 25th anniversary in order to modernize slightly. While Martin knew she didn’t want to give her characters cell phones, she did take out references to technology that younger readers might not understand — words like “VCR” were turned into “recording device” in order to make the books more timeless. Martin also felt it was important to update details of Stacey’s diabetes and her subsequent treatment, which had changed considerably since the books were first published.
Apart from those changes, the bsc books have remained frozen in time (literally, after book #9, martin made the decision to stop the passage of time and keep the characters forever with 13 years and in high school).
6. will there be more bsc books?
The last babysitting club book was published in 1999, after a total of 131 titles, plus spin-off series and “super specials.” Martin herself wrote over 100 titles within the BSC arena and was heavily involved in the writing and editing of each book. She returned to the Babysitters Club universe in 2010, with a prequel titled “The Summer Before”.
but when asked about future books, martin says he has no plans to revisit the characters at this time. he also acknowledges that he prefers to write for young adults, so any older fans wanting “baby-sitters club: the adult years” could wait a while.
7. where would the bsc members be in 2016?
It’s hard to believe, but if the babysitters had aged in real time, they’d be in their early 40s in 2016! what would they be? Martin likes it when her fans come up with her own ideas and theories, but she has her own thoughts about what her characters would do.
once he thought kristy would go into politics (kristy in 2016!), but these days, martin sees his favorite character running a business, possibly a nonprofit. Claudia would still be in the art world, “an artist or running an artist gallery or agent”, Mary Anne might be teaching, and Stacey might be in the fashion world. In Martin’s mind, the original gang would be living in Manhattan.
Thirty years after it all began, Martin still receives daily messages of gratitude and appreciation from his many fans, some nostalgic, some sharing the books with their children, and others discovering the “babysitters’ club” for the first time. . . all aware that there is something special in this group of nannies and in the world that ann m. martin created.
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and as for what ann m. martin wants from the fans of him? she simply wants people (children, in particular) to have an enjoyable reading experience with her books, then “go on and discover other authors, other types of writing, other books, and just be really happy, eclectic readers.” /p>