Here’s a blogger who loved the Babysitters’ Club book series growing up – and has decided to re-read all of the books (there are quite a few!!) – and blog about her responses to the books now. Her entire blog is focused on this endeavor. Great idea!!
I never read that series – they started coming out when I was a bit too old to get into them – but if I recall correctly, my younger sisters looooooooved them.
So I have been having just a FABULOUS time re-reading some of these posts.
What a great idea for a blog. I have to read every single one of her posts now.
Some choice quotes below – but I imagine if any of you out there read and loved that series, you will have a BLAST reading through her posts. I love the ADULT analysis of the childhood favorites. So funny!!
From this post:
Sometimes, although not nearly as much as when Im watching the John Hughes oeuvre, I wonder where the parents in Stoneybrook are. Not necessarily the parents of the BSCs charges, but the parents of the BSC members. I know that they show up for advice, or to punish the BSC members for not doing their homework. But when something serious is going on, where are they? Seriously.
And from this post – this made me laugh out loud:
Jessi volunteers to help with a six week ballet class for underprivileged kids. One of the other volunteers is Mary, who is also in Jessis regular ballet classes. When all the volunteers go out for fast food (yeah, right, ballet students going out for fast food after class my ass), Mary doesnt eat, she just pushes her food around. She also obsesses about her body in the locker room, if thats what its called in ballet. Well, Jessi gets to worrying, especially after Mary collapses in class. After checking in with the BSC, she decides to confront Mary about her anorexia. Well, of course, Mary denies it; what, has Jessi never seen that tv movie starring Tracey Gold? Or that one after school special? Or Center Stage? Then Jessi talks to big, scary French ballet teacher and all is well in the world of ballet, you know the one that encourages healthy bodies and even healthier body image.
So, why do these bitches get mad at their friends for changing their looks? Not just in this one, but also in the-not-yet-recapped Mary Annes Makeover. Apparently, when you start to look even a little different, you are a traitorous bitch.
hahahaha
Or this:
Not too much to say about this book. In it, Dawn gets a crush on an older boy (sixteen with his own car) and loses all sense of self. I never read this series for realism, so this one kinda blew if I wanted to see girls turn into doormats for stupid boys, Id watch mtv or lifetime or Degrassi.
I am in love with this new blog. I love the comments, too – people who read and loved and remembered the books all weighing in. Awesome. It’s called BSC Headquarters. Go check it out.
(via Book Slut)
Weren’t there about forty thousand Babysitter’s Club books? I think they had a minor government department wholly dedicated to producing them (until Reagan cut them, the heartless bastard).
Seriously, she’ll never run out of material for her blog.
Nightfly – if you look at her blog, you’ll see how high up the numbers go.
Book #75, etc …
It was kinda like the Trixie Belden series which got up into the high 80s or 90s.
She doesn’t appear to be going in order, though – because she still has to track down many of these books – I think they sort of lost their popularity, so she’s had to read them as she comes across them.
She’s getting quite a bit of attention right now – Jane Magazine mentioned her, Gawker linked to her – I think it’s great. One of the funniest most charming blogs I’ve come across in a long time.
EEEE!!! I LOVED those books! How cool…
P.S. You just like her cause she referenced Center Stage. :)
hahahaha Of course that helped!!
I love the first quote you post, the one about the lack of parents.
Every time I visit my old childhood fare, or modern day children’s fiction (cough, Harry Potter, cough) I always wonder where all the adults are. Which leads you to think, my all the adults in these stories either really hate the kids or are just really, really stupid. Which makes you start to hate the series. Which makes you slap yourself back to reality — stop overanalyzing! Which makes you depressed that you’re talking to yourself so much. Which makes you start a blog so at least you’re not entirely succumbing to the voices in your head …
I always loved books with few adults as a kid. I had this whole orphan fantasy going on. Not because I hated my parents, but because of all the books I read that featured plucky orphans.
I don’t go through the thought-process you go through, cullen. As a matter of fact I have a whole theory about it. It makes total sense to me that I (and most kids) would love books like Anne of Green Gables, or Oliver Twist, or Trixie Belden – books which feature orphans, or kids with mimimal adult supervision – because it’s really empowering as a child to read about kids doing stuff on their own, figuring stuff out, being thrown onto fortune and having to find their own way out.
I think the books are geared towards kids – and kids obviously don’t give two shits about adults and find adult concerns boring and suffocating – and so to make a successful book for kids, the adults should be rather peripheral.
The adults in Harry Potter, though, border on openly abusive.
Border????
I am now recalling, hahahahahahaha, the classic book How to Eat Fried Worms … that was an adult-less universe, if I recall correctly – what a great book, I need to read that again!!
Oh, I understand that it’s written to appeal to children. Why, if adults in fiction listened to the kids, there’d be no fiction: Harry Potter and the Dilemma That Was, Once Again, Solved by Dumbledore.
My wondering where the adults are is where that thought process ends because I, of course write it off as a byproduct of children’s literature.
The rest of the comment was for the sake of, perhaps misguided, humor.
hahahaha with your alternate title!! heh heh
Misguided humor is the best kind. Interesting, too, that in Harry Potter – Harry is untethered from parental care at ALL. At least the Weasleys still have scoldings and parental influence at home – but Harry has none of that. He’s free!!!
I mean – good Lord – I read Goblet of Fire and thought: what parent in their right mind (important point) would ever send their child to Hogwarts??
“Your child may DIE in the following competition …”
Oh, okay, sign my kid up!!
hahahahaha
i was OBSESSED with the babysitters club!! i owned every book in that series. i even started writing my own spinoff series called “the Pet Sitters Club”. didn’t quite catch on. i can still remember all of their names and all of the stories. kristy. claudia. stacey (dotted her i’s with hearts.) maryann. logan (maryann’s boyfriend). who am i forgetting. there’s one more. loved that series, though!!
//didn’t quite catch on//
siobhan, i am howling with laughter. you are so cute!!
If you look thru that woman’s site – maybe you’ll find the missing member of the club??
Jessi, the dancer?? Was she the missing one?
yes, jessi! stacey was my favorite. she had diabetes.
Was it a TV series, too??
Right on about the adult-free zones in children’s lit – a kid hears parental advice all the live-long day, and to open a book and have more of it pour out? Where’s the fun in that?
In re the Potter series, I find it sort of refreshing that Rowling lets her kids screw up, blow off sound advice, not trust wiser heads, and then act astounded that the oldsters had a pretty good point. Despite all the spellcasting, castles, near-toxic levels of quirk, and Latinate frills, it’s fairly grounded in reality.
For example – very old spoiler alert – the adults aren’t just abusive pointlessly, either from a narrative POV or their own. I can see how Snape’s a nasty piece of work, but even before the flashback Harry sees of his father and Severus at school, it seemed clear to me that most of his frustration with Harry was in seeing him forever fawned over when he hadn’t actually done anything yet, and resenting it. Because of his own personality, he doesn’t notice that Harry suffers a similar isolation because of it – he sees the parallel between Harry and James, but not between Harry and himself – he has made himself unable to see it, and he reacts spitefully where others react in keeping with their kinder natures.
Harry, for his part, doesn’t see it either: he’s too callow and (truth be told) a little self-absorbed (but what teen isn’t?). All he can see is the parallel between Snape and the Dursleys, who treat him just as badly for much the same reasons. (And yes, in the end I think Snape’s just as scared of Harry as the Dursleys are, because he sees that under it all Harry’s probably going to live up to that hype. Some people can’t handle it when people they dislike and belittle grow beyond their skills.)
Keep in mind that I haven’t read the sixth book, so my whole analysis may be preposterous.
You’re so off base, ‘fly. In the sixth book Harry becomes a pimp and has Snape wacked ’cause he kept dissin’ him in his hood.
Ha.
Seriously though, I see your point. I mean, if we’re going to use the magical situations in Harry Potter as allegory to actual children getting in trouble with big events, I guess it makes some sense. However, I find it hard to make that leap because I don’t think JK puts as much thought into the character development as you are reading into it, but rather creates the character archetypes and lets them react based on that archetype. With the exception of Harry.
Not meant to belittle the HP books, but I think Rowling’s outcomes outstrip her intent. It that makes any sense.
If that makes any sense, rather.
I can barely think about those books because I’m so insanely eager for the next installment. Like – it’s barely enjoyable, the anticipation. It was like waiting for Empire Strikes Back. It feels UNFAIR how long it’s taking.
Will Hermione become one of Harry’s hoes? The anticipation is palpable.
Palpable!!
I’m rooting for Hermione and Ron to give it a go, though.
(I love that it’s all about the romance, cullen – like that was your first comment. hahahaha Voldemort Shmoldemort … will there be any hook-ups???)
You’re so off base, ‘fly. In the sixth book Harry becomes a pimp and has Snape wacked ’cause he kept dissin’ him in his hood.
Hahahahah! “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Crips.”
No, but I hear you on the archtypes thing – or half-hear. I finding more than is there, maybe, because I enjoy the books and I’m mentally filling in the gaps, sort of projecting my own read on the characters.
I’m rooting for Hermione and Ron to give it a go, though.
Actually, this is probably a good example of what you’re talking about, Cullen – JK’s been setting THAT one up since book two, at least.
I read bookslut too and I was going to recommend this site to you if you hadn’t seen it already. Very heavy flashbacks occurred as I read it.