Series: The Babysitters Club

The Truth about Stacey by Ann M. Martin, Bsc #03, 1995


This summer we began culling the bookcases to make a few paltry holes for the unending publishing influx that continues to stream into our hobbit hole. Entling no. 2 who is in college, allowed that she could part with her beloved Babysitters Club books. I think we had the complete set. For years I thought she would never move on to any other reading. She did of course. She took off to Middle Earth and in many ways (along with her family) never came back but the books were still a form of comfort food in stressful times.

I find now that I am the one having a hard time parting with these books. I am looking at a box right filled to the top with those distinctive covers. I will always remember my youngest daughter looking at me with horror moments after learning she had Type 1 diabetes and saying, "but Mom, there is no cure for diabetes, I know because I read about it in a Babysitters Club book!"

The local elementary is having a book drive for children affected by Katrina. I think these books have more stories to tell.













When I read that Scholastic is transmorgrifying (thank you Calvin and Hobbes for such a useful word) the series to a graphic novel format with graphic artist Raina Telgemeier I was interested. Telgemeier was a huge fan of the series as a girl.

...while meeting with the editors of Scholastic about getting involved in the Graphix imprint, they asked her what she had most liked to read as a child. “I mentioned being a fan of The Baby-sitters Club,” she says. “And they said, ‘Why not try doing a sample of that as a comic?’ ” Telgemeier submitted some drawings and layouts, and the editors were immediately won over. “She drew the characters with so much charm and affection, that we knew this was a perfect pairing of artist and material,” says Saylor.

Author Ann M. Martin's comment sounded a chord in my heart for sure.

Martin says she hears from women like Telgemeier quite often. “I get lots of letters now from women who are in their mid-twenties,” she says. “They talk about how much they liked the books and how much they meant to them when they were young. Most of them are still interested in going back to them every now and then, even in their mid-twenties.”