Oh. My. Gawd. Pardon my randomness, but there is a microcosm of my childhood floating around on the Internet. Apparently there are people in this world that revere The Baby-sitters Club by Ann M. Martin as the holy grail of girlydom, just as myself.
As I am known to do, I was able to click-click-click my way into discovering a whole little online world devoted to the BSC that I never knew existed. I've discovered a blog solely devoted to character Claudia Kishi's off-the-wall attire (I also learned a new word, Whatthefuckery, but I digress) as described in this series of pre-teen fun. There's also BSC Wikipedia, Claudia's Room, BSC Stamped and Stoneybrookite, a blog dedicated to the "best friends you'll never have."
Wow. If I ever felt I am a reader of niche sites on the Internet, I do now. But I love that communities have grown to support the BSC books, as they basically half raised me. And look how good I turned out! I don't know about you, but every BSC book I ever purchased was the best $3.50 in the world. When a Super Special came out, it was like my birthday. Sigh. I miss the days when "boyfriends and babysitting don't mix!" spoke to me.
But in all seriousness, I think we love the Baby-sitters Club because the girls were real characters. Mallory rode horses and had, like, 18 brothers and sisters, Dawn was a "vegetarian" from "California" and wore white linen pants, Mary Anne had that boyfriend, and Claudia was artsy and painted Native American prints on her rain slicker. How weird were they?!
And yet it was okay to like them, and they were liked in the books. What a good lesson! And by another token, each book was narrated by a different babysitter. A true lesson in seeing the world for all its valid opinions. I think the entire BSC series should be mandatory reading at the elementary level. Not a believer? Let me just end with this. A book in which a girl can wear this outfit, and still have friends at the end of the day, is an open-minded, worldly book indeed:
(Claudia was wearing): "a big yellow shirt with red x-shaped buttons,
enormously baggy white pants, and big red Doc Martens double-laced with black
and yellow shoelaces. Her long straight black hair was pulled upon top of her
head with more black and yellow shoelaces braided together. Her earrings said
'stop' and 'go' - 'stop' in her left ear and 'go' in her right."
4 comments:
OMG i love the BSC. obvi i still have all of mine (including super specials) saved in a box in the garage.
sorry, I was all about Island of the Blue Dolphins and Julie of the Wolves-- you know girl power vs. Nature thins. How did you get away with reading such trash?? okay, okay, I confess to a little Sweet Valley High and looking for the whole period thing in Are you there God it's me Margaret. But Tiger Eyes was really "grown up". Judy Blume rocks!! ;)
At one time, I had read all BSC books up to #100, including Super Specials (and Babysitter's Little Sister). I dressed up as Mary Anne from a cover for a "Book Parade."
I then moved onto Sweet Valley High, naturally. The best in the series was the Evil Twin chronicles.
Now I read self-help books.
yI still have all of my BSC books too! Even the Super Specials and Mystery series! :) They are saved in a box for when I have a daughter and she will look at me and say "oh these are so lame and 1990s!" and think I'm crazy! but oh well...great memories! :)
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