Pop Culture Retrospective # 32 - The Babysitter's Club : the literary phenomenon of the 80s and 90s!

It’s been a while since I have started the show this way, but let’s begin with a dramatic reading, shall we?:

You can always count on me and I can count on you

Good times, bad times, in between, my friends will see me through

We'll be sharing wonderful times every day

All together singing our song, growing in every way

Say hello to your friends (Baby-Sitters Club!)

Say hello to the people who care

Nothing's better than friends (Baby-Sitters Club!)

Cause you know that your friends are always there.

If I'm feeling down and out, if I'm feeling blue

I know I can lean on you, my friends will see me through

We're growing up together never to part

I'm sending you my love, straight from the heart

Say hello to your friends (Baby-Sitters Club!)

I cannot take credit for these terribly cheesy and nostalgic lines as they are the theme song lyrics to the television series based off of the classic young adult books, the Babysitter’s club.   It’s really no wonder that a television show was developed as a result of the success of the Babysitter’s Club Books in the early 1990s. After all, over 176 million copies of the series have been sold since its inception, that figure is likely higher than that at the time of this show’s release. It has been 35 years since the very first installment, “Kristy’s Great Idea” was first released in 1986.  My sister was an avid reader and enthusiast fan of the Babysitter’s club series as her first job was, well, being a babysitter.  Coincidentally,  Becky often used the money she earned babysitting to purchase Babysitter’s Club Books. 

With that being said, on today’s show we will be discussing the legacy and impact of the Babysitter’s club, the brain child of the book publisher Scholastic.  What was intended to be just a 4 book series run evolved into hundreds of books, several spin offs, a few tv series incarnations and even a feature-length movie.  So grab your notebook, your landline phone and your kid kits, here we go!

Hello and welcome back and thank you so very much for tuning in to the Pop Culture Retrospective Podcast, a show inspired by, and in memory of, my big sister Rebecca and her love for all things pop-culture, especially the people, places and things of the 80s, 90s and early 00s.  My name is Amy Lewis and I am your captain aboard this pop culture time machine.  It has been almost a month since my last episode as I've been busy with visits with family, traveling and researching and planning for future episodes. You are tuning in to Episode # 32, the Babysitter’s Club, one of the most memorable and successful book series of me and my sister’s generation.  

On today’s show you will learn all about how the series came to be, what made the books so popular and why new generations of fans continue to be inspired by these juggernauts of young adult literature.  

There are two women who we can thank for the development of the Babysitter’s Club - Jean Feiwel who initiated the topic of the books and Ann M. Martin who would go on to write them.  Martin is the daughter of Edith, who was a pre-school teacher and Henry Martin, who was an artist and illustrator. Growing up, Martin was an avid reader and enjoyed the likes of Nancy Drew and the Wizard of Oz.   Later, Martin attended Smith College, she studied Child Psychology and Early Childhood Education. She graduated in the late 1970s during a time when women were fighting hard for equal rights.  Perhaps this powerful movement had an impact on what Martin would eventually write about. Foreshadowing perhaps?  She began her career as a teacher, but eventually moved on to editing and landed at Scholastic.  While working there, she met a fellow colleague named Jean Feiwel who suggested a book about a babysitting club because a previous book released about the topic called “Katie’s Babysitting Job” was very popular.  Martin took the idea and ran with it.  She decided to write from a middle schooler’s perspective because it came naturally to her.  And if you’ve had the pleasure of reading a Babysitter’s Club book, you will know that she is essentially an expert at doing so. 

Kristy’s Great Idea was first published in 1986.  It didn’t take off right away, but once it caught on it grew exponentially.  The first run sold out, then 30,000 were published and those sold out.  Then 100,000 prints sold out.  The momentum would continue.  The first book introduced us to the four main characters of the story and the town where they all reside, Stoneybrook, CT:

• Kristy Thomas: she’s the club president.  She is sort of a tomboy if you will, and often wears jeans, sneakers, etc.  She loves sports and is incredibly athletic and even has her own softball team where many of the kids that she and others babysit for play on.  She has a strong and sometimes stubborn demeanor.  Her father left her family when she was little and her Mom starts dating a new man named Watson and they eventually get engaged and then married, much to Kristy’s initial dismay.  I could relate to Kristy as I too have always been a tomboy and I was very upset when my mom started dating when I was in middle school! She also has 3 brothers.  
• Claudia Kishi:  was my sister’s favorite character as she is of Japanese descent and is very artistic. She likes to draw, paint and make her own jewelry. She is the club’s vice president.  The girls meet once per week and it is in her room because she is the only member who has a phone in her room and also because she is addicted to sugary food like candy which she keeps stashed in her room.  Her older sister is a genius and often corrects her grammar.  Claudia designs the BSC logo which is The Babysitter’s Club spelled out on the wooden blocks like the ones many of us received as young children in the 70s and 80s.  
• Mary Anne Spier:  is the club’s secretary as she has the best handwriting of the group and is very organized (also a quality that my sister had all of her life, neatest and most interesting handwriting of anyone I’ve ever known.  I love her signature so much that both me and my dad have it tattooed on our left arms).  Mary Anne’s mother died of cancer when she was little.  She lived with her Grandparents for a while when her father was figuring out how to navigate raising his daughter alone.  He is very strict but loosens up when he gets remarried.  
• Stacey McGill:  is the club’s treasurer as she is very good with numbers.  She is originally from New York City but due to a job transfer for her dad, the family relocated to Stoneybrook, CT.  Stacey has been diagnosed with diabetes which she is initially hesitant to tell the other girls due to how she has been treated.  Apparently Stacey was also bullied for her illness so her parents wanted her to move to a smaller town in addition to the need to relocate for work.  

The characters Kristy and Mary Anne are based on Ann M. Martin and her real-life best friend, Beth.  When they were kids, Beth was always starting clubs with Martin.  Further, Martin did babysit when she was a teenager so the topic of her writing was truly fitting.  

Like I said earlier, the first book of the series is called Kristy’s Great Idea and the tagline on the cover says:  “Four friends and babysitting, what could be more fun?” In this first book we get to meet all of the girls, how they know each other, what their families are like and the moment Kristy realizes that she has a brilliant idea.  Kristy’s mom is in desperate need of a babysitter one day and despite making several phone calls, she is not able to secure anyone to watch Kristy’s little brother.  So Kristy thinks to herself, what if there was a club (which initially includes the girls mentioned earlier and later other members) where a bunch of baby sitters get together at the same time and are available to answer inquiries while together to help ensure families in their neighborhood can secure a reliable, safe and knowledgeable babysitter.  Kristy’s a god damn genius if I do say so myself.  Why didn’t I think about this when I was a teenager?  Oh that’s right, I hated babysitting, unless it was for my cousins.  I especially hated babysitting for that family whose house was ALWAYS A HUGE MESS! And to add to this genius idea, they agree to collect dues which can be put toward food at meetings like pizza and candy or for kid kits which is a collection of activities and arts and crafts to do with kids while babysitting, etc.  Further, they agree to keep a journal of all of their jobs including medical and medication information and reports on how it went.  Each journal entry is written in a different font than the rest of the book is.  Each girl has their own personal handwriting style and apparently this was done by one individual artist who worked at Scholastic.   

And as I mentioned, Ann M. Martin was able to write as if she was in the mind of a middle school student.  In fact, her writing sounds a lot like how my sister talked and likely thought about things when she was a tweenager.  Here is an example which is a passage from Kristy’s Great Idea:  (read page 1) and here is another where Kristy and Claudia are discussing subjects at school:  (read excerpt from page 117).  Apparently, Martin had a large collection of her personal journals to refer to which aided in conveying this book is narrated by a middle schooler.  

The second story is called “Claudia and the Phantom Phone Calls.”  The tagline on the cover says:  “Claudia’s not sure she wants to find out who’s on the other end of the line.”  And on said cover, we see Claudia, holding a child on her hip, with phone in hand, but it’s  not a cell phone of course, it’s a rotary phone.  In the story, the girls keep receiving prank phone calls while they are babysitting, but it turns out to be boys that they have crushes on.

The third story is called:  “The Truth About Stacey.”  In this story, the girls learn more about Stacey and how she is living with diabetes.  In the first book the girls think she is on a diet as she often doesn’t eat the junk food they are often chowing down on during meetings.  

However, it turns out that she is diabetic and her parents struggle to accept it and how to best approach it.  The tagline on the cover says:  “Stacey’s different and it’s harder on her than anyone else.”  Recently,  I was visiting with my family in CT (but not in Stoneybrook because that town is fictional, ha!) where my nieces and nephew live and I was telling my youngest niece about how I was reading the Babysitter’s Club as part of my research for this week’s show.  “I love the babysitter’s club!” She exclaimed, especially the book “The Truth about Stacey because she has diabetes, like me!”  Who knew that a 30 plus year old book could have such a positive impact on my little niece?  She saw herself in Stacey and that brought her great comfort and visibility.  How profound is that? 

The fourth book is called:  “Mary Anne Saves the Day” in which Mary Anne ends up babysitting for a child that is sick and ends up having to call 911 to get help.  The original cover has Mary Anne sitting next to a childing laying down and she is looking at a glass thermometer with a worried look on her face.  The tagline on this one says:  “Mary Anne’s on her own, can she take charge?”  Dear God, I hope so, she looks so worried! 

The fifth book is called:  “Dawn and the Impossible Three” which focuses on the newest member of the BSC, Dawn. She ends up babysitting for 3 children who end up being very overwhelming as is the parent.  On the cover, the tagline reads:  “Dawn thought she’d be babysitting, not monster-sitting.” The original cover is classic 80s as Dawn is dressed in an oversized, blue button up shirt, her pants are tight-rolled above her white scrunch socks and leather penny loafers.  There is a tube-tv in the background on a TV cart with a VCR.  Further, she is clearly irritated by the 3 kids who are all crowded around her as they stand on hideous, green carpet.  

So that was just a taste of the first 5 books of the series, but there are 131 books in its entirety, as well as 15 Super Specials (including one where they go on a cruise and visit Disney World!), 3 dozen mysteries and many, many more spin offs like we talked about earlier.  Later books would introduce additional characters like Dawn who I just mentioned, as well as Logan Bruno, Shannon Kilbourne, Abby Stevenson, Mallory Pike, and Jessie Ramsey.  

The original and infamous book covers were primarily painted by an artist named Hodges Soileau who also did art work for another popular book series at the time, “The Boxcar Children.”  I distinctly remember the Boxcar Children having a strong presence in our elementary school library, but I never picked one up.  I looked up the synopsis and apparently the gist is that four children take up residence in an abandoned boxcar when their parents pass away, leaving them as orphans.  Sounds uplifting.  Or not.  

Eventually the books became so popular that Martin was writing a BSC book per month.  Her daily routine was as follows:  wake up early and write, on yellow legal pads, from 8am-6pm.  Soon, she was writing about 30 books per year - that included 12 Babysitter’s Club Books, and spin-offs like Super Specials, 12 Little Sister Books, 6 mysteries and 4 Ms. Coleman books. In later years, there were portrait collections about each girl in the story as well as Graphic Novels more recently. Martin once said that the hardest book for her to write was called “Claudia and the Sad Goodbye” which is book #26 in the series.  In this book, Claudia deals with the loss of her grandmother which was written around the same time that Martin lost her grandmother.  

At one point, Scholastic, who, as we know, published the Babysitter’s Club series, wanted to develop a television series. Although the books were incredibly popular, trying to get a network to develop a show was a tough sell.  Allegedly, many network executives thought that a TV series aimed at young girls would not be very successful.  One executive apparently thought there should be more male/boy characters added and another thought it should be a cartoon.  What a bunch of morons.  Thankfully, Scholastic didn’t agree with these suggestions, they knew their characters and stories were strong enough to carry their own show. Instead, they created a straight to VHS special and it would go on to sell over 1 million copies, I believe we had one or maybe we recorded it off of the TV.  In 1990, HBO picked up the show and released about a dozen episodes which also ran on Nickelodeon.  If you are interested in witnessing 90s fashion in all of its original glory, check out this show.  You can watch most of the old episodes on YouTube.  I believe all of these episodes were also released on VHS tapes which you could get through mailorder.  First they were released by a company called Good Times and later they were released by KidVision.  The KidVision versions came with temporary tattoos and stickers.  The tattoos appeared to be Lisa Frank inspired as they were incredibly colorful and stereotypical for the time.  For example, one was a purple panda, another was a heart with hearts inside, another was a rainbow with stars and one was a moon with a smiling face.  Avriel Hillman played Kristy Thomas, Meghan Lahey played Mary Anne Spier, Jessica Prunell played Stacey McGill, and Jeni F. Winslow played Claudia Kishi.  The show ended it’s run in 1990 and includes the theme song with lyrics I mentioned at the top of the show.  Take a listen to this classic tune: 

<Insert Audio Clip Here>

In addition to the stickers and temporary tattoos that came along with a VHS purchase, there were several other BSC merchandise items available at the height of the series’ popularity.  At one time you could get a BSC doll, board games and even bedding. In the board game, the goal was to collect three different colored tokens.  You had to answer questions about what to do in various childcare situations, as well as answer trivia  questions from the books.  Later in 1996, after the release of the movie we will discuss in a moment, you could purchase a computer game called the Babysitter’s Club Friendship Kit.  The CD-Rom allowed you to create your own stationary, write in a journal that was password protected and taught you how to maintain an address book and how to keep track of birthdays.  Had that CD-Rom come out a few years earlier, I’m sure my sister would have wanted it and would have played it endlessly as she loved all of that kind of stuff.  You can find both the board game and the CD-Rom for sale on sites like Ebay and Etsy.  

1995 saw the release of a Babysitter’s Club feature length film.  The film apparently drew on inspiration from 2 of the Babysitter’s Club books- #45 Kristy and the Baby Parade and #86- Mary Anne and Camp Babysitter’s Club, neither of which were written by Ann M. Martin. Because the stories were so popular, Scholastic had to enlist Ghostwriters to help write some of the BSC books. The film stars Schuyler Fisk as Kristy, Bre Blair as Stacey, Rachel Leigh Cook who you may remember from “She’s All That” and that anti-drug commercial where she swings around a skillet to symbolize the destruction that can be caused not only by carelessly hitting fragile items with cookware but also by opioid drugs like heroin.  At the time, I remember it actually being pretty powerful.  Also in the movie, Tricia Joe starred as Claudia, Stacy Linn Ramsower as Mallory, Zelda Harris as Jessi, Vanessa Zima as Rosie Welder and drum roll please, Larisa Oleynik as Dawn.  

You may remember Larisa from the Nickelodeon series called “The Secret World of Alex Mack” in which the main character, Alex, gains unique superpowers after getting accidentally spilled on by toxic chemicals on her way home from school.  The show ran from 1994-1998.  Although I would say I was a moderate fan of the show, I was a little bitter when I found out that “The Secret World of Alex Mack” replaced Clarissa Explains it All on SNICK which was the block of shows that ran on Saturday nights on Nickelodeon, aimed at younger teenagers.  That is a crime. Clarissa Explains It All was an outstanding show and everyone wanted to dress like her back in the day. Oleynik also starred in an episode of another fantastic Nickelodeon show from the 1990s, the Adventures of Pete and Pete.  By the way, I own both seasons of the show (which started as a short) on DVD.  

The original book series ended it’s run in 2000 after an incredible 24 years of really being a literary sensation.  The final book is actually a Super Special and it’s called “Graduation Day” where the members of the Babysitter’s Club FINALLY graduate from 8th grade, good lord they were in middle school for over 20 years!  Took them long enough!

In 2010, a prequel to the original BSC series was released and it’s called the Summer Before.  Like I mentioned by this point the series had been out of print for 10 years, but it seemed like BSC fans just couldn’t get enough.  The prequel was written by Martin and it discussed what was happening with the girls before they joined the BSC.  Scholastic decided to re-release the first 7 books in the series but some items in the books had to be updated (i.e. taking out references to walkmans and the VCR). By the way if you are interested in learning more about the history of the walkman or VCR, check out episodes # 14 and #21, shameless plug.  And sadly, perhaps because they were dated when the stories were re-released, the covers of the BSC books were all redone and the painted covers were re-done.  No more penny loafers and rotary phones.  Instead, basic covers were used and will likely continue.  

More recently, Netflix has created a new generation of BSC fans as they have their own tv series based off of the infamous books.  I had the pleasure of watching a few episodes recently and as much as I really despise re-boots of pretty much anything, I did genuinely enjoy watching the show, 30 years after seeing the first TV series based off of the books.  One of the best parts is that Alicia Silverstone plays Kristy’s mom.  She’s still just as beautiful as she was in Clueless.  The show is done very well, includes pretty awesome music, which is a lot less cheezy than the original, like songs performed by Lizzo, and is updated to reflect a more diverse group of girls and situations which I certainly appreciated. It’s definitely worth checking out if you have younger kids or friends or family members or if you grew up being a fan of the books.   I think my favorite part of the show is when the girls formally meet for the first time and plug in a landline phone to use for business inquiries.  One of the girls purchases the infamous conair see thru phone that was super popular in the 1990s.  Much to their amazement, it still works! 

The impact and ripple effect of the Babysitter’s Club series, especially at the height of it’s popularity, is a testament to the power of solid children’s literature.  The stories inspired a lot of girls to start babysitting club businesses.  Further, Stacey having diabetes led to many readers being diagnosed with the illness or provided a sense of normalcy for those that were already living with it.  

Another reason for it’s prowess also had to do with the relatability that the girls in the books had to the kids reading it.  The girls in the BSC dealt with divorce, death, loss of a pet, blending families, disabilities, sibling rivalry and eating disorders to name just a few.  Martin received hundreds of fan letters each week and now I can definitely see why.  Martin has said that she wanted to show that girls could be entrepreneurs, even if they were young and could make mistakes.  She also wanted to show that girls were concerned with things other than boys.  I took have never been too concerned about boys, hahaha! I certainly can appreciate all of that.  Martin also wanted kids to learn from her books as well.  Most books have a letter to the reader in in, written by Martin, where she offers readers advice on what the topic is.  I.e. if readers were babysitters, they should make sure to get accurate phone numbers from clients, like the pediatrician, work number, etc. or calling for emergency services, etc.  

According to an article from the website Mental Floss, if you were to stack all of the copies of the BSC sold by 2000, 176 million copies to be exact, they would reach as high as 77,203 Empire State Buildings.  That, my friends, is a lot of books.  

I hope you have enjoyed this look back on the Babysitter’s Club, a book series that has been a favorite on bookshelves and e-readers for over 30 years.  

In an article from the Atlantic entitled “The Legacy of the Babysitter’s Club,”, writer Jen Doll said quote:  Along with serving as easily-digestible monthly installments of sheer reading pleasure, the books taught a lot of girls (and boys, too—"there was a sort of boy babysitter underground," says Levithan (he’s an editorial director at Scholastic), though the audience majority consisted of girls) lessons of empowerment, entrepreneurialism, and individualism. For some of us, the series also taught us how to love reading, and maybe even how to write. It immersed us in the world of Stoneybrook, Connecticut, and gave us a taste of what we might be able to accomplish in our own lives—it also taught us how to deal with common problems teens might face, ranging from the simple (annoying sisters and brothers, trouble at school) to deeper social and cultural issues, like coping with chronic illness, parents' divorce and remarriage, and racism. It's surely not surprising that this writer was a big fan of the series, but so were many others, including some of the editors who worked on the books at Scholastic.”  and my sister as well.  

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