BSC #1: Kristy's Great Idea

Front Cover: Four friends and baby-sitting - what could be more fun?

Back Cover: Kristy thinks the Baby-sitter's Club is a great idea. She and her friends Claudia, Stacey, and Mary Anne all love taking care of kids. A club will give them the chance to have lots of fun - and make tons of money.

But nobody counted on crank calls, uncontrollable two-year-olds, wild pets, and parents who don't always tell the truth. And then there's Stacey, who's acting more and more mysterious. Having a baby-sitters club isn't easy, but Kristy and her friends aren't giving up until they get it right!

So this is the book that started it all! Kristy and her friends are in grade seven, and on the first Tuesday of the school year, Kristy gets her great idea: The Baby-Sitters Club. She immediately tells her best friend Mary Anne and her close friend Claudia. Claudia then brings in a new girl named Stacey, and together they get the club started and running.

I haven't re-read the first few books of the series in a long, long, long time. I don't know why, but for some reason, I liked it better once they were in grade 8 and all seven girls were established, and status quo and what not. So this time around, I was pleasantly surprised by the writing style and the description of the characters. It was really refreshing! They seem a lot more nuanced and less one-dimensional.

There was really no subplot in this book. Kristy's mom is dating Watson and Kristy hasn't met his kids yet and refuses to give him a chance, which is bratty but completely realistic. Mary Anne ends up baby-sitting for Karen and Andrew as her first job.

Kristy's first job is the infamous dog incident that gets referenced a fair amount of times over the series. Nothing particularly bad happens, it just catches Kristy off-guard, which is surprising considering I'm used to the Kristy of the later books.

Claudia's first job is for 4 kids instead of 1, and they're completely crazy. However, Claudia shows some real maturity and insight. I miss this Claudia. Her handwriting is completely different in this book than in the rest of the series. She has a few spelling mistakes, but understandable ones. It's clear that she's not strong in school, but she's in no way remedial and bordering on mentally handicapped as her later writing and spelling suggests.

Stacey's first job was for David Michael. It was super-easy and she mostly got to flirt with Sam in the process. I find it interesting that afterwards, Stacey went upstairs to Kristy's room and the two of them hung out together for a bit. I don't think just the two of them ever hung out together in the future, not unless they had arrived first and were waiting for the others. It's especially interesting, because Stacey is completely new at this point, whereas in the later books, they'll have known each other for quite a bit longer.

After lying about it for the whole book, Stacey finally admits that she has diabetes and everyone acts like normal people do. I always found it so weird the way Stacey and her parents acted. I mean, I get that her old friends made fun of her and stuffs, but yeah.

In the end, all is well. Kristy's mom is engaged to Watson and Kristy has come to terms with it and is okay.


Random Thoughts:

• I love how Kristy isn't such a one-dimensional tomboy. Look at that cover! She's wearing a dress and her hair down! I get generally looking/wearing the same thing [I'm always in jeans and a t-shirt with my hair down], but I hate how she eventually devolved into jeans, turtleneck, sweatshirt, ponytail. NO EXCEPTIONS. Unless she was being forced, in which case she'd complain the whole time haha
• related to this: she even mentions to Mary Anne the concept of looking forward to nail polish [although Mary Anne is definitely more into it than she is] and she keeps her house key in her purse. Can you imagine Flanderized!Kristy having a purse??
• Speaking of the cover: I love how the girls actually look age-appropriate here. I also have the re-release cover, the one done in the style of the 100+ books, and they look much older there. I ALSO have the updated 2010s version, which doesn't have the girls on the cover at all.
•  Kristy is also way more relaxed about things. She's not quite the dictator/Nazi she becomes. Case in point: she mentions that by having regular meetings, clients will know of a time that they can call to reach a whole group of baby-sitters, but that they can also still call the girls up individually outside of meeting times.
• They mention here that Kristy's dad ran off to California and got married again. From reading the whole series, including the Friends Forever books, we know that he ran off to California, but hadn't remarried. I wonder at which point in the series this changes.
• Kristy is born in August
• Kristy doesn't like Watson: he's divorced from his wife and has two little kids. Plus he's going bald haha I like how NORMAL Kristy is. Flanderized!Kristy would be like, "Little kids?? OMG YAY!" haha
• This book was apparently one of Claudia's first attempts at make-up. I love how they describe it. It's exactly how every little kid wearing make-up for the first time should look like: Mimi, from The Drew Carey Show: "There was blue stuff on her eyelids, gold stuff above her eyes, and magenta stuff on her cheeks." I'm Asian, and although I never ever wear make-up and would thus have similar results, even I know we shouldn't wear blue eyeshadow [unless it's a particular style or look we're going for, like dramatic LOOK AT ME make-up, not subtle everyday make-up].
• Stacey is always described as having permed hair. I'm going to go on record now and say that when I first read the series, I didn't realize that the books were written "so long ago" [at least 10 years prior to my having read them the first time] and that they theoretically took place in the late '80s. I found some of the fashion descriptions odd, but nothing particularly stood out to me [with the exception of some of Claudia and Stacey's outfits, which stand out even to the characters in the series]. But I was always so confused about Stacey and her permed hair. The book covers always just show her with thick, voluminous hair. I always figured it was natural. My best friend has giant thick wavy hair. It wasn't until later when I learned more about the '80s and saw movies that were made in the '80s that I realized what the books meant. By that time, I had stopped reading the series or I was now only reading the later books, which were published in real-time and had stopped referencing the perms haha
• In this book, the girls eat at separate tables: Kristy and Mary Anne together, Claudia and Stacey with a bunch of girls AND guys. Ah, the good ol' days when they were allowed to have separate friends haha
• Watson leaves his kids with a baby-sitter, which Kristy hates because he only sees them every other weekend, and he left them with a baby-sitter all day. I agree. They wanted Kristy to baby-sit, but she refuses, so Watson says he found someone else. In my mind, I'd like to think it was Shannon.
• Sam has baby-sat for Watson's kids. I like the idea that Sam used to occasionally baby-sit. Here, he'd have been 14, so definitely too young for any real job [I think in their world, kids start getting real jobs at age 15-16]. I also love that Sam, while being cool, loves math. I ship him and Stacey so hardcore.
• I'm surprised Kristy had such a hard time with Buffy and Pinky, the dogs. Kristy from the later books would be all, "I was surprised to find that I was dog-sitting, not baby-sitting, but it was no problem for me. I love dogs and I'm a professional!"
• David Michael is apparently allergic to chocolate. I don't think this is ever mentioned again.
• Karen is 5 and Andrew is 3 in this book, but in future books [when the girls are in grade 8], Karen is 7 and Andrew is 4, maybe 5. At least, I'm pretty sure she's 7. I used to read the Little Sister series, and she was in grade 2, but had skipped a grade.

[Although I read and reviewed one of the original copies of this book, I currently also own one of the updated copies, with the Author's Note and Notebook Pages in the back.]

Author's Note:
AMM talks about how the series came to be. In 1985, she had just quit her job to write children's books full-time. It was proposed that she write a 4-book miniseries called "The Baby-Sitters Club", so AMM had to figure out exactly what would that be. After deciding it would be a business run by friends, she then had to create the characters. She based Kristy on her best friend, Mary Anne on herself, and then rounded out the group with two other diverse and individual girls. Apparently writing about baby-sitting was second nature to AMM, because she continued to do it well into college.



Notebook Pages

Kristy had a great idea to start the Baby-sitters Club. If I were going to start a club it would be called Movie Maniacs

The purpose of my club would be to watch movies and then vlog about it. 

My club would do things like watch movies from "Best 100" lists or other lists or themes and vlog about it before and after.

These are the people I would invite to be in my club: me (President), Jamison (Vice President), Lexi (Treasurer), Kelly Green (Secretary).

Other club members: Pattycakes, Kesha, Yue, Moira.

My club logo might look like this: (haha omg so not attempting this)

The Baby-sitters Club holds its meetings in Claudia's bedroom. My club would meet in my basement.