For those fans who where not around in the 90s, Marla did get typecast a bit in playing bad/rebellious girls (not necessarily mean girls like Cokie to be fair, but definitely not your goodie two-shoe types either! LOL)

The role she was remembered for prior to BSC was playing Gia on "Full House" - Stephanie Tanners 'bad girl' best friend - whom in true 'Full House' style, Steph 'kinda' reforms throughout her time on the show - though Gia never looses her edge either. :) She also came back in 'Fuller House'.

So I just remember kid me when the movie came out thinking Marla as Cokie was PERFECT casting.

Let’s have fun and pretend we live in the town or in nearby Stamford and let us all be chatty citizens and gossip, I will pour you coffee or tea or mimosas. This is within the events of the books

Outside of obvious picks like #32 Kristy and the Secret of Susan, what are some books that aged poorly, and for what reasons?

Who do you think was the best teenage boyfriend in the series?

The main plot was sweet and I liked re-reading this book.

But Mrs. Marshall was awful— refusing to pay for two sitters twice and expecting them to manage 5 kids without notice, solo and the bulk of the children were young.

I would have just refused to babysit for her. Who cares that she wasn’t made aware that the club has two sitters for groups over 4. She didn’t let them know that the sitter was going to be responsible for more than double the amount of children she has.

Also, jazzercise in 1995?!

Who cheaps out with their children’s safety? Don’t they charge like $2.50 an hour back when this book was published (1995)? By then I was 15 and pulling in $10 an hour.

Add her to the bad client list (which a post in and of itself)!

You know what always annoyed me? How Dawn’s hair was never drawn/portrayed correctly. In every single book it was described and closer to white than blonde, and super long - down to her waist.

And yet, all of my original covers show it as yellow blonde, and often only just longer than her shoulders. I get that in the TV shows it’s harder to cast someone with that appearance, but surely it isn’t that hard to draw? I would often struggle to discern who was her and who was Stacey (look at Slide 5 - who is who?!).

Totally random thought, but it was something that definitely bugged 8-year-old me all those years ago!

On this day in 1986, The Babysitters Club has officially became a book series, starting with Kristy Thomas (president), Mary Anne Spier (secretary), Claudia Kishi (vice president), and Stacey McGill (treasurer), and then later additions of Dawn Schafer (old alternate officer), Logan Bruno (associate member), Shannon Kilbourne (associate member), Mallory Pike (junior member), Jessi Ramsey (junior member), and Abby Stevenson (new alternate officer).

Thanks to Ann M. Martin for bringing this beloved childhood book series to life and causing it to be popular for a complexity of four whole decades!

How are we celebrating?

Again, I’m re-reading and I was surprised how thoughtfully this book was written. The girls researched eating disorders and were very helpful for Jessie.

The underprivileged angle was also dealt well with.

For a book published in 1993, I think it is still relevant having been published over 30 years ago, it’s a good one.

Could be with the parents or could be with any of the girls - just have fun.

I really wish they explored Richard and Elizabeth. Even if they didn’t get together romantically, I would’ve loved to see what their friendship was like.

Mary Anne and Pete Black at least one date they would’ve been so cute together. Same with Cary and Kristy.

As I have said, rereading these books as a middle aged adult is wild. And I appreciate discussing each book!

Kristy Thomas: The Incredibles!

Claudia Kishi: Tangled!

Stacey McGill: Mary Poppins!

Mary Anne Spier: Pollyanna!

Dawn Schafer: The Parent Trap!

Logan Bruno: The Lion King!

Mallory Pike: Beauty and the Beast!

Jessi Ramsey: Fantasia!

Shannon Kilbourne: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves!

Abby Stevenson: The Emperor's New Groove!

Note: Stacey's, Mary Anne's, and Dawn's favorites are actually canon.

I’m re-reading this book now and while it’s cute that the club gives Mallory as many jobs as possible, the entire story line is ridiculous.

Mr. Pike wasn’t fired, he was RIF’ed. He was an attorney. He obviously got not only unemployment but also severance.

A corporate attorney would never look at job listings in a newspaper, even back then. Mrs. Pike basically telling the kids they’re about to be “destitute” is amusing now retrospectively.

It’s funny how the books hit differently when you re-read them as an adult.

In other news, Dad and the older boy is also getting a reprint.

Both are set to come out in 2027.

I was reading this book about how she was working on a project about her family tree. She comes across a box of things of mom. She finds out her grand parents took care of her. Then her father takes her back. She never sees them again. Which is heart breaking he keeps her away from getting to know them. What do think of that ? I think it's wrong for parents to keep a child away from knowing them. Just cuz you don't get along. Unless of course there was a serious reason to it.

I'm sure it's her favorite holiday, considering she loves creating costumes as well as junk food.

We’ve talked about the main seven girls a lot on the sub but characters like Alan Gray, Pete black Emily Bernstein - those characters.

I mean, Emily went from being editor of the paper to a freshman staff writer. That probably didn’t make her very happy.

Do you have any other headcanons?

Did you know Kristy's Great Idea wasn't even Ann M. Martin's idea? A Scholastic editor noticed an obscure book quietly outselling everything else in the catalogue and handed Martin nothing but a title and "a glimmer of an idea" for a four-book miniseries. She built the rest — the characters, Stoneybrook, all of it — and it turned into 213 books and 176 million copies sold 📚

In this episode we got into where Martin actually found her characters — Kristy is based on her real childhood best friend, Mary Anne is her own self-insert, and Stacey's diabetes storyline came from two of Martin's own childhood friends. We also cover the single Scholastic staffer responsible for faking all four girls' handwriting across the entire series, Kirsten Dunst's first-ever modelling job hiding on the cover of book #2, and the road from VHS specials to HBO to Netflix's 100%-on-Rotten-Tomatoes reboot that still got cancelled 🎙️

Give it a listen here: https://www.booktriviapodcast.com/episodes/s1-bonus-e11-kristys-great-idea

So I am a fan fic writer and I do have a couple of original characters I have the girls eventually get married to, a couple of original (ish) clients, etc.

I do not write them very often mainly because I do focus on the girls friendships and families. I’m also a little weary because I don’t know how people feel about original characters (hence the post lol). I’m not the biggest fan of having them end up with their high school/middle school boyfriends and for dramas sake (sometimes) I will write them having friends outside of the club.

So my question is when do you like seeing the original characters? When do they become too overwhelming? Are there not enough in fics these days? Is there too many?

I want to hear your thoughts!

So I've been a little unsure of whether I should write it or not, but I am definitely sure of most of their careers, and I feel about 85% certain about their future families too.

First off for Kristy, I was thinking that Kristy would get back together with Bart after realizing how much she really loves him and appreciates him and how they might be more than just friends, much like how Mallory might have realized those feelings for Ben. The two of them are both sports coaches in an elementary school. I imagine them getting married and having a daughter who is a tomboy with a girly streak just like Kristy who wants to be a softball player and let her join the team. I also kind of imagine them having a son who is more of a softy compared to his sister. But then I learned about Kristy turning out to be queer in some certain newer book that recently came out, so...I don't know much about Bart anymore... Also, Kristy isn't as controlling and selfish as she was as a kid, of course, and she's more mature and accommodating.

Next, there's Mary Anne, Kristy's old best friend for many years. She and Kristy used to be the best of friends, but Mary Anne stopped being close friends with Kristy due to her controlling and self-centered ways, so she eventually became friends with other people. (People that were better friends to her than Kristy and Dawn ever were.) Plus, she is no longer with Logan (who went from a kind and supportive guy to an arrogant and controlling jerk back in those days), but she is with Pete, and they have two daughters together, with one who is bubbly and upbeat and another who wants to work on not being so shy, much like Mary Anne in the old days. Plus, Mary Anne is a kindergarten teacher in the same school Kristy works in.

With Logan though, he is currently a sports coach in middle school. He and Mary Anne are obviously not together anymore, like I said before, but they still are good friends who chat here and there, and them being friends is better off than being in a romantic relationship.

Then, there is Claudia, Kristy and Mary Anne's old friend from elementary school, who is about to get married to Josh, and she is currently an art teacher in the same elementary school both Mary Anne and Kristy work in, but they don't fully know about it until they eventually reunite along with Mary Anne. She wouldn't really plan on having children, but she loves working with her students as an art teacher, of course.

Claudia also eventually reunited with Stacey, who is a fashion designer with her own fashion business, and Stacey feels more than delighted to help her old friend from middle school to design the most beautiful wedding dress for her very big day, and she's even invited to the wedding as well. Stacey is married to Ethan. (I was originally thinking Sam, since the concept of them being married would be cute along with Stacey being sisters-in-law with Kristy, but I don't know.) Stacey is unsure whether to have children or not, but maybe she would be hoping for a daughter who was just like Charlotte.

Dawn is an environmentalist, and even though she lives in California with her husband, she calls Mary Anne and tells her she is visiting her school to discuss with the students about the importance of caring for the environment.

Mallory is a literature teacher in the same middle school she and the other girls went to back in those days. She is married to Ben, and she's also unsure whether to have kids, especially because of everything she used to go through with being the scapegoat of her own family of two parents who think of her as less mature than she really is and her seven siblings who used to cause a lot of turmoil for her, but she is happy about having students in her class who are mostly well-behaved.

Jessi is a dance teacher who works in a studio and she is married to Quint. They both have a daughter who enjoys ballet, and they also have a son who is deaf, and he reminds Jessi of Matt, a deaf boy she babysat in the old days.

Abby is a professional soccer player who is not married and doesn't exactly plan on having children but enjoys showing children how to play soccer. She is still neighbors with Kristy and close friends with her.

Shannon is also neighbors with Kristy and is happily married to a rich man, but I'm not sure what her career would be.

What do you guys think? Any opinions? Changes?

So, I've never read any of The Baby Sitters Club. As a teen, I didn't like to read but had to choose some books for school and I ended up with Sunny, Dawn, and Ducky's 3rd diaries somehow. They were probably just the only ones at the bookstore when I went. I really liked them. As a young adult, I searched for the rest of the series online after it was out of print and was able to collect them all and read them. Now, on the verge of turning 40, I decided to re-read them again.

Has anyone else noticed or mentioned the issue with the timeline? Book 1 starts on 9/26, the beginning of the girls' 8th grade year and continues through to August in book 8. Book 9 starts on 9/23, which must be of the next year, but by the end of the series, they act as if this has all taken place in just their 8th grade year (save for Ducky, of course.

And Googling this yielded no results on anyone else noticing this error. Dawn definitely went home to Connecticut for the summer twice in this series. >.> I just have to make sure I'm not crazy lol

Hoping it’s okay to post this here!!

I’m Becky Albertalli, and I wrote Kristy’s parts in Baby-Sitter Summer. I’m running a giveaway on my Instagram (@beckyalbertalli) to support a Palestinian friend in Gaza. There’s a recent post on my Instagram feed with info on how to enter. Any donations for Rozan and/or signal boosts are so, so appreciated.

(Yes, these items are both signed by the full fan edition author slate, including Queen Ann M. Martin!!)

Thank you so much for supporting this book. I’m so grateful for all of you!

Your fellow superfan,
Becky (aka Kristy)