Day 8 - Least Favourite Super Special

I realise I haven't updated this in a few days. Apologies, but sadly university work has to come before the Baby-Sitters Club! I know, it's shocking, isn't it? 

30 Days of the Baby-Sitters Club

Day 8 - Least Favourite Super Special

This was difficult for me as I don't remember any Super Specials that I particularly disliked. There are a few that I don't have terribly strong memories of, such as the book that took place at Shadow Lake, but none that I have bad memories of from my childhood. However, I did read Here Come the Bridesmaids! for the first time last year and found the story quite contrived. To be honest, most of the Super Specials are pretty contrived but sometimes reading a children's book for the first time as an adult can make you pick up on these things easier, without the smokescreen of nostalgia! I remember actually getting bored with the California part of the story and preferring the parts set in Stoneybrook with Stacey, and by the end of the book I felt like this plot would have worked a lot better as a regular series book told from the point of view of Dawn. I did enjoy this story as it was pretty fun, but it would probably have to be my least favourite of the Super Specials.

Also, I actually have a US copy of this book, but I love the cover-art for the UK edition so I had to use it on this post!

Day 7 - Favourite Super Special

30 Days of the Baby-Sitters Club

Day 7 - Favourite Super Special

As a kid, Sea City, Here We Come! was definitely my favourite book. I must have read it at least ten times. It just seemed so exciting, with the hurricane hitting Sea City and everyone having to evacuate and pack up their stuff and take emergency measures. I live in Scotland and we never have extreme weather. The biggest thing that's happened to me weather-wise is the extreme snow we had in 2010, and the most that happened then was that Tesco ran out of bread and milk for a day because the Forth Road Bridge was shut because of snow! So books with extreme weather emergencies were always exciting to me.

And to be honest, they still are! I reread Snowbound recently and found that I enjoyed it a lot more than I'd remembered. Although there's extreme weather in this book, all of the situations were much more normal and realistic than in the Sea City book, and the girls have their parents help them out when they're stuck with their baby-sitting charges! Definitely one of the more "real" Super Specials.

Day 6 - Least Favourite Mystery

30 Days of the Baby-Sitters Club

Day 6 - Least Favourite Mystery

Without a doubt, I'd have to say Beware, Dawn! I read this book earlier this year and as much as I love to escape into a BSC book and ignore the unbelievable aspects of the story, there were too many ridiculous things about this plot for me to ignore. The story surrounds the girls being given threatening notes but not consulting each other on this because they're too busy competing to win some sort of sitter-of-the-month award and don't want to look bad by being scared by the notes. I can buy Kristy doing this because she is competitive and I can see her wanting to look brave in the face of the threats, but the other girls, especially Mary Anne and the younger sitters would be scared for themselves and for the kids they were sitting for. The competition was blatantly just a plot device put in place to stop the girls talking to each other, since otherwise they would have solved the mystery immediately. As much as I like non-mysteries, this one was lame: Dawn had told off some boy for teasing someone else and got him in trouble with his parents so he rode around the town on his bike, leaving threatening notes for each of the girls as payback. Kudos for continuity as this kid had been causing trouble in other books, but otherwise this plot was pretty lame. Definitely one of the weaker mysteries.

What was your least favourite mystery?

Day 5 - Favourite Mystery

30 Days of the Baby-Sitters Club

Day 5 - Favourite Mystery

I didn't read many of the mysteries as a child, but the one that I do remember the most fondly (and the only one I ever owned rather than borrowed from the library) was actually non-mystery, as such. 

Yes, I am talking about Jessi and the Jewel Thieves. And yes, the British mystery covers were even worse than the covers for the regular series, although at least Jessi looks a) like a real eleven-year-old and b) African-American rather than just being tanned. 

I know that some people hate the mysteries that didn't actually feature a real mystery, instead focusing on the BSC members worrying over something that they'd misheard or misinterpreted, but I preferred the more realistic non-mysteries. The way that Jessi and Quint rush around NYC convinced that they need to stop a jewellery heist is quite amusing, and it was nice to see kids acting like, well, kids for once.

Did you ever read the Mystery spin-off series? If so, which was your favourite book? Did you prefer the "non-mysteries" or not?

Day 4 - Least Favourite Regular Series Book

30 Days of the Baby-Sitters Club

Day 4 - Least Favourite Regular Series Book

This is another one that I've split between books that I remember, and books that I've read recently. In all honestly, there aren't any books from the main series that I particularly disliked, but there were some that I didn't care for very much or don't have any strong memories of. This seems like a rather big list, but to be entirely truthful, I really just have little niggling issues with the following books.

From my childhood. This is one of the books that focused on Stacey and one of her many boyfriends, with an issue that was partly altogether too mature for someone who is thirteen and really shouldn't be having boyfriend problems, but also dealt with in a manner that seems appropriate for someone is thirteen. Here, Stacey goes on holiday with her dad and her best friend, Claudia, but spends all her time with her boyfriend, Robert, which annoys Claudia because she didn't tell her Robert would be there also. I suppose Stacey's Lie sparked my hatred of books surrounding "Big Misunderstandings"!

This was one of the last BSC books that I ever read, once I'd almost altogether finished reading the series when I was almost eleven and had moved on to more "mature" literature...like Sweet Valley High! But a friend of mine was still really into the BSC and lent me this. I didn't particularly enjoy this book, maybe because I was growing out of the series or maybe just because the entire plot surrounded synchronized swimming, a hobby of Jessi's that was mentioned in one book and then never again! I adored ballet as a kid so normally loved the books about ballet, but Jessi's Gold Medal just didn't interest me.

It's sad but true - a lot of my least favourite BSC books involved Jessi. I don't think it was anything in particular to do with her; her family was most like mine (small, little drama and not Caucasian [yes, I'm actually Anglo-Indian, despite the fact that my skin is literally white]) and I wanted to be a ballerina for a brief period when I was a child and even took classes for a while. By all means, I should have loved Jessi's books, but she just got the most boring or unrealistic plots! Here, I think, she babysits some bratty kid who is a movie star. Sadly, that's all I can remember about Jessi and the Superbrat so it can't have been that interesting.

 

Here we have evidence that, yes, not only did Jessi get the worst plots, she also had some of the least flattering covers! I honestly cannot remember what Jessi's issue was in Jessi's Horrible Prank, I'm not sure if she pulls a prank on the teacher or if she just doesn't stop the other kids from teasing him. I think this was another book that my friend lent me - she must have been a Jessi fan - but I do remember that the font on this cover was silver because it was the 75th book. I think it came with a free bookmark with vague paisley-style swirls on it. Not sure if it actually had much to do with the BSC, I imagine that they put a lot less thought into the UK releases than the US ones.

* * *

But as an adult? I'd have to say that Stacey and the Mystery of Stoneybrook jumps to mind immediately. I think the whole BSC fan community is in agreement that the ghostwriter of this book was high when they wrote this book as it just isn't in keeping with the rest of the series at all. One of the weirdest, least-explained and just downright bizarre mysteries in the main series.












Then there's Abby the Bad Sport, and not just because it shocked me with the use of the word "mental-retardation". Maybe it was still considered PC to use this word in 1997, so I could be making a fuss out of nothing. Mainly, I just wasn't interested in a book about football, and most of this book focuses on either Abby playing football, the other girls watching Abby play football or Abby bragging about how good she is at football. (Or soccer, if you're American). (Also, this book never got published in the UK, hence the garish pink cover. I'm sure my copy is more of a baby-pink so this may be just a bad picture).

I read Dawn's Family Feud fairly recently, actually over this particular summer. But despite this, I don't have any particularly strong memories of it, except that the kids were complete brats! Dawn, Mary Anne and Jeff were all very out-of-character. Although, I will admit, they probably acted like normal kids, it wasn't in keeping with their usual behaviour in the series. It reminded me a lot of Dawn's Wicked Stepsister, in which the problems seemed a bit contrived and then were fixed very quickly and never mentioned again. 

Finally, I'd have to say Mallory and the Mystery Diary. Why? Because I read it last year and can barely remember the plot. Except that I found it weird that the mystery belonged to Mallory, not Stacey, despite most of the story taking place in Stacey's house. Not quite as weird as Stacey and the Mystery of Stoneybrook, but definitely not very memorable. And the cover-art? Oh, my. Poor Mallory indeed!












What's more distinct for you, your favourite novels or your least favourite? Do you have specific reasons why you don't like some of the books, or were they just not as interesting as others?

Day 3 - Favourite Regular Series Book

30 Days of the Baby-Sitters Club

Day 3 - Favourite Regular Series Book

This is another one that I find myself thinking of in terms of "then" and "now". Thinking back to when I was a child, the two books that really stand out to me (other than Kristy and the Baby Parade, which was inexplicably one of the first BSC books I ever read) are two winter-related books from the early #90s - Mallory's Christmas Wish and Claudia and the First Thanksgiving. I think Claudia's story excited me so much because it dealt with history, censorship, acting and a holiday I'd not heard much about, due to being British. Mallory's story was the first BSC book I ever read and I adored her huge family. Something about this book has just stuck with me over the years. 

Now, however, I'd have to say that my favourite book features my new favourite character - Mary Anne. Mary Anne Saves the Day is probably my favourite BSC book that I read for the first time as an adult. I know, it's terrible to admit that I didn't read a lot of the original books until now, but since I was a child of the nineties, not the eighties, I didn't start reading the BSC books until 2000, which was when I turned nine. By this point, most of these books were in scarce supply in Britain, as they were focusing on issuing the later-series books. As a result, this was one book that I sadly never got the chance to experience when I was a child, but I loved it as an adult. On a similar vein, other recent favourites (some of them rereads) have been Dawn and the Impossible Three, Kristy and the Snobs and Good-bye Stacey, Good-bye. As much as I have fond memories of the later-series books that I grew up with, there's no doubting the quality of Ann's originals.

Confused by the covers? These are what those of us across the sea had to contend with. I actually now generally prefer the US editions, but the books in the #90s had some nice cover-art. The early stuff, such as Mary Anne Saves the Day? Not so much. Poor Mary Anne!

What was your favourite Baby-Sitters Club book? Has this changed now that you're an adult?

Day 2 - Least Favourite Sitter

30 Days of the Babysitters Club

Day 2 - Least Favourite Sitter

The sad thing is that as soon as I saw this entry's title, I immediately thought of Abby Stevenson. I don't think that I have anything in particular against Abby - in fact, Welcome to the BSC, Abby is a pretty emotional book, and the chapter where she visits Niagra Falls in BSC in the USA because she'd always planned to go there with her family before her dad died is pretty moving - but she joined the BSC in the 90th book. Scholastic stopped printing the BSC books in the UK at #105 so I never got the chance to properly get to know Abby, which means that when I did get around to reading some of the later books in the series thanks to BookMooch and Amazon, I never really felt like I'd connected with her. In particular, I was almost bored out of my skull when I read Abby the Bad Sport. Is it possible to have a worse combination of factors in a BSC book for me, a character I don't particularly like and SPORT? Pass me a book or some knitting, please. I'm more of a Mary Anne. It's nothing personal, Abby, you just entered the series a bit too late for me to get to know you.

Who was your least favourite sitter in the BSC?

30 Days of the Baby-Sitters Club: Day 1 - Favourite Sitter

Apologies for the lack of posting lately. I've been busy doing NaNoWriMo (nowhere near 50K, but I'm hoping for 30K!) and writing tons of essays (part of the reason why I'm very far behind with NaNoWriMo). So to make up for the lack of reviews lately, I've decided to take part in the 30 Day Baby-Sitters Club Challenge and entertain some nostalgia for the next 30 days.

Day 1 - Favourite Sitter 

If you'd asked me this question ten years ago, when I first read these books, I would definitely have said Mallory Pike. As a preteen I had chunky glasses, braces, awkward clothes and an obsession with reading and writing. I didn't have a huge family (although we spent a lot of time with my mum's best friend, who had five red-haired children...seeing the similarity here?) and I'm afraid I've never been into horses in any way, but other than that we could have been twins. Mallory Hates Boys (and Gym) still resonates with me even as a twenty-year-old, and I cringe alongside Mallory as she's chosen last for the volleyball team and can't hit the ball to save her life. 

But now that I'm older, I'm definitely more like Mary Anne Spier. I'm not quite as super-sensitive as she is, but I do cry at a lot of things, and last week I bawled at a climatic scene in a Firefly, which surprised even myself. Like Mary Anne, I love classic children's books - Little Women and Anne of Green Gables are my favourites - and my family owns two cats, who are currently shunning me as I only come home from university every two months and they're unimpressed with this. My dad wasn't quite as strict as Mary Anne's, but my family were definitely stricter than my school-friends'. I never really underwent a dramatic makeover as such in high school, but when I was fourteen I had my waist-length hair cut to my shoulders and everyone made a big deal out of it. I've always been seen as the responsible one in my group of friends (or the "Mummy" of the group, but let's not go into that...) and I was voted "Most Responsible" in my high school yearbook. While I never had a boyfriend at all in high school, I'm the only one of my friends to be engaged at university, much like Mary Anne was the only one of her friends to have a steady boyfriend. Enough comparisons? I think so. I definitely relate a lot more to Mary Anne so she has to be my favourite character as an adult.

Did you read the Baby-Sitters Club series by Ann M. Martin? Who was your favourite character? Has this changed over time?

Remembering the Babysitters Club

Although I was a nineties kid and a noughties teen, I, like hundreds of thousands of girls across the globe, was affected by the work of Ann M. Martin. Her Babysitters Club series was first published in 1986 and sold over 176 million copies worldwide. Although I also gobbled up Sweet Valley and Nancy Drew stories, it was the world of preteen babysitters that truly enchanted me. My dad used to moan at me for reading books that weren’t particularly educational or enlightening, but I’d have to say that I’d encourage my own daughters to read this series. 

While so many young teens read about gossiping, stealing boyfriends, buying clothes and joining the popular crowd, the adventures of Kristy, Mary Anne and their fellow sitters focused on having slumber parties, looking after younger siblings, making friends and discovering new talents. Even though the girls did have crushes on boys and go shopping at the mall, there is more to life for the BSC. Kristy coaches a softball team, Mary Anne loves to read and knit, Claudia takes art classes, Stacey is a Mathlete, Dawn cares about environmental issues, Mallory writes stories, Jessi is a ballerina and Abby plays soccer. And of course, they all love to babysit! 

The focus on babysitting, I believe, shows how much the girls care about their families. Kristy always jumps at the chance to babysit for her stepsiblings, Karen and Andrew. Sure, Claudia always moans about her oldest sister, Janine, and Mary Anne resents her father’s over protectiveness of her, but they love them really. The girls have fights with their parents and siblings and friends but ultimately they always work things out. Even when Stacey makes friends with the popular crowd and leaves the club for several books, she returns because she does care about her old friends. Friendship is the basis of the club – there is no bitching, back-stabbing or gossiping here. Sure, the girls argue, but only as much as a normal group of a friends; a group that has foundations in more than just fashion and boys. 

As a teenager, I was definitely a Mallory. I had glasses and braces at the age of 11 and always felt rather dorky. I wore rather outrageous outfits that I'm sure looked hideous on me, just because I was trying to be "cool" like my older friends. But I also loved to read and write tons of stories. Now I think I'm more of a Mary Anne - I'm a bit conservative, sometimes shy, have a steady boyfriend and love both books and cats! This was the wonderful thing about the BSC - there was always a girl that you could relate to. There was even a boy babysitter, Logan Bruno, to appeal to the male audience (as well as Shannon, another extra sitter who wasn't mentioned quite as often). I actually knew one boy who liked to read these books!

Thinking of boys and the BSC reminds me of the time that my friends and I tried to start a Babysitters Club Fan Club. There were four of us who loved the books - three ten-year-old girls and one boy in the year above us. We made badges out of cardboard and safety-pins and wore them on our school uniforms, probably causing everyone to make fun of us. We tried to have club meetings at school and I vaguely recall being allowed to meet in the library at break time, so I suppose our teachers must have been happy that we were appreciating some form of literature. We even had three newsletters - two of them word-processed on our dad's computers and one laboriously hand-written and copied several times. Alas, the club failed after a while. But the amazing thing was that at least five kids who had never read the books wanted to be part of our club just because it sounded like fun. Clubs have always had some sort of appeal, which explains the popularity of the Babysitters Club. From the Sleepover Club to the Unicorn Club, children have adored uniting because of a common interest. And while me and my friends weren't old enough to babysit (we may have been almost the same age as Mal and Jessi but this was 2001!) we formed a fan club for the books that we loved the most.

The Babysitters Club still unites people all over the world - there are websites where fans blog, snark and generally chat about their favourite children's book series.  Just check out the list of book blogs that I follow and you'll find a few there. The love of the Babysitters Club series did not end when the final book was published in 2000. In fact, ten years later, Ann M. Martin released a prequel to the series, The Summer Before, which I read earlier this year and was incredibly satisfied with. The girls were exactly as I remembered them and Ann hasn't lost her touch after all these years. Although the books were ghostwritten as the series picked up popularity and thus slightly lost their Ann-touch, I still enjoy them as they contain the typical BSC values of friendship and families first, and also the general craziness of thirteen-year-olds who are allowed to babysit! 

I'd never allow a preteen to babysit my kids - nor would I allow my kids to babysit until they're at least sixteen! But this doesn't dampen my love for these wonderful books. Yes, they can be unrealistic, and yes, caricatures appear with more frequency as the novels became ghostwritten. But these books inspired me and made me happy when I was a dorky, Mallory-like child. And today, while I'm balancing John Milton's Paradise Lost and Alessandro Manzoni's The Betrothed, I may find myself turning to Mallory's Mystery Diary or Claudia and the Genius of Elm Street to cheer myself up!

Check out Babysitters Club Week at Bri Meets Books.

The Summer Before - Ann M. Martin

Before there was the Baby-Sitters Club, there were four girls named Kristy Thomas, Mary Anne Spier, Claudia Kishi, and Stacey McGill. As they start the summer before seventh grade (also before they start the BSC), each of them is on the cusp of a big change. Kristy is still hung up on hoping that her father will return to her family. Mary Anne has to prove to her father that she's no longer a little girl who needs hundreds of rules. Claudia is navigating her first major crush on a boy. And Stacey is leaving her entire New York City life behind... 

...in order to find new friends in Stoneybrook, Connecticut.

The Summer Before . . . is a sweet, moving novel about four girls on the edge of something big - not just the Club that will change their lives, but also all the joys and tribulations of being twelve and thirteen.

I must have read at least fifty of these books as a child and after coming across them in a charity shop at the age of sixteen and rediscovering the joy of the adventures of these preteen babysitters, I started to recollect the books. I now have half a shelf full of these colourful little novels sitting on my bookcase that I revisit when I'm in need of some light relief to destress myself. So when I heard that a prequel was being written I was naturally excited at the premise of it. Although many BSC fans would like to hear about the lives of the characters as adults, writing about children is what Ann M. Martin does best. The Summer Before did not disappoint. 

Martin seemed to slip back into the voices of the characters very easily. I particularly liked Stacey's story as it showed her as a normal girl, dealing with the problems of broken friendships and moving house. A lot of the BSC books focused on Stacey's diabetes or her boyfriends or how "sophisticated" she was. In The Summer Before she was just a regular preteen girl and I felt that she was very realistically portrayed. I also enjoyed Claudia's story and the excitement yet disappointment of having your "first love." This was also very natural, although it would have been nice to see more of Claud's relationship with her sister Janine. Mary Anne has to cope with convincing her dad that she's old enough to babysit, and although she came across as less mature than the other girls this was in fitting with her character in the regular series. It was nice to watch Mary Anne grow and become more confident with babysitting and talking to her dad. Kristy's story was my least favourite as it seemed a bit out of the blue for her to suddenly expect her dad to visit, but it did kind of tug at heart strings. I could never imagine what it would be like to be missing one parent and have no way of contacting them, but her emotions seemed believable to me. 

All in all, this was a fantastic book and was definitely worth waiting for. I only wish Ann M. Martin was creating more new Babysitters Club books as she definitely hasn't lost her touch. 10/10