Marisa Crawford - We Are the Baby-Sitters Club

We Are the Baby-Sitters Club is a complicated paean to Ann M. Martins serial magnum opus, grappling with its loose ends and blind spots through the passionate insight of grown-up fans; its a varied volume of deeply personal literary criticism that takes tween girls lives and culture seriouslyfinally!

Johanna Fateman, founding member of Le Tigre

From brains and bodies to dating and dieting, and from race and representation to the cool, cute, and near queer, this pathbreaking book sheds light on readers active reception and critical reflections of the pop culture phenoms of their generation. An outstanding work that expertly and insightfully places girls and girlhoods at the center of analysis!

Miriam Forman-Brunell, author of Babysitter: An American History

One of my happiest moments of 2020 was binge-watching Netflixs The Baby-sitters Club with my seven-year-old nieceit was the first time we ever watched something we were equally invested in. Im excited to keep the BSC vibes going with this fun anthology, featuring work from Myriam Gurba, Kristen Arnett, and others.

LitHub

We Are the Baby-Sitters Club made me cry, laugh, and appreciate now more than ever the heart and soul of the BSC. Every contribution feels personal and unafraid to challengewith lovethis well-read series. Ann M. Martin teaches kids a unique lesson in emotional literacy that we now get to enjoyfully grownin the works within We Are the Baby-Sitters Club. If the Baby-Sitters Club was in your life in any way, this anthology is a must-read!

Katy Farina, bestselling artist of the Baby-Sitters Little Sister series

An explorative collection of essays that sends you right back to those nostalgic moments of childhood.

Shannon Wright, cocreator of indie bestseller Twins

Copyright 2021 by Marisa Crawford and Megan Milks

All essays and artwork remain the copyright of their listed authors

Foreword 2021 by Mara Wilson

All rights reserved

Published by Chicago Review Press Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN 978-1-64160-490-1

Could the Baby-Sitters Club Have Been More Gay? by Frankie Thomas previously appeared in the Paris Review.

I Want to Be a Claudia but I Know Im a Stacey by Marisa Crawford previously appeared in Weird Sister.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Crawford, Marisa, editor. | Milks, Megan editor.

Title: We are the Baby-Sitters Club : essays and artwork from grown-up readers / edited by Marisa Crawford and Megan Milks.

Description: Chicago, Illinois : Chicago Review Press, [2021] | Summary: Ann M. Martins Baby-Sitters Club series featured a complex cast of characters and touched on an impressive range of issues that were underrepresented at the time: divorce, adoption, childhood illness, class division, and racism. In We Are the Baby-Sitters Club, writers and a few visual artists from the original BSC generation will reflect on the enduring legacy of Ann M. Martins beloved series, thirty-five years later-celebrating the BSCs profound cultural influenceProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021007884 (print) | LCCN 2021007885 (ebook) | ISBN 9781641604901 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781641604918 (pdf) | ISBN 9781641604925 (mobi) | ISBN 9781641604932 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Martin, Ann M., 1955Appreciation. | Martin, Ann M., 1955- Baby-sitters Club.

Classification: LCC PS3563.A72322 W44 2021 (print) | LCC PS3563.A72322 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021007884

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021007885

Cover design: Rebecca Lown

Interior design: Jonathan Hahn

Printed in the United States of America

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C ONTENTS

W hen I was six, I tried to start a babysitters club.

It didnt last too long. I think I came up with the idea to start one on a Thursday, and Id moved on by Monday even though my family was encouraging and all promised they would join. (One of my brothers responded in a very Sam Thomaslike way: You guys dont actually SIT on babies, do you?) It was absolutely inspired by the books, although I was still a little too young to have actually read them, and definitely too young to be a babysitter. But I was well-versed in the Little Sister series. Id seen the TV show, and I knew one thing: the Baby-Sitters Club was incredibly cool. Dibbly cool.

When I started reading the books at age nineI got my first few copies, appropriately, as hand-me-downs from a cool older girlI was not disappointed. Kristy, Mary Anne, Stacey, Claudia, Dawn, Jessi, and Mallory were the ultimate cool older girls. They had unbelievable style, a nice amount of responsibility, spending money, sometimes even boyfriends. Best of all, they didnt let that go to their heads. They were loyal friends who always made up after fights and were still nice to younger kids. They were everything I wanted to be.

I did what probably every other kid who ever read the series did and tried to figure out who I was most like. I figured I was a Kristy/Mary Anne hybrid: a loud, occasionally bossy tomboy who had big ideas but sometimes struggled with decorum, but also the sensitive, cat-loving daughter of a loving but overprotective widower father. (There was more than a bit of Mallory in me, too: I had a lot of siblings, dreamed of being a writer, and also eventually left home to go to an arts boarding school.) My favorite characters, though, were Claudia, Stacey, and Jessi, who were nothing like me. Their lives were more interesting, and they were good at all the things I secretly wished I could be good atfashion, art, math, dance.

I dont know if I ever talked about the books with my friends. My preteen years were a confusing time for me, with shifting friend groups, grief over my mothers death from breast cancer, and trying to live two lives as a normal kid and as a child star. I think I feared my tomboy friends would think I was too girly for loving the Baby-Sitters Club, and my bookish friends would think the books were too babyish. They wouldnt have understood how much the books had helped me. Mary Annes struggles with her father were very familiar. Jessi felt grown up in dance classes, just as I did on film sets, but she and I quickly turned back into children as soon as we got home with our parents (and Aunt Cecelia!). I finally understood why my grandfather, a diabetic, needed to test his blood sugar and got tired so easily, thanks to Stacey. My three older brothers were A students while I struggled to turn in my homework on time, much like Claudia. Ann M. Martins California Diaries, an extension of the original series focusing on Dawn and her friends, had one of the most realistic depictions of parental loss Ive ever read. The girls from the Baby-Sitters Club understood me when I felt like no one else did.

If I didnt talk about the books with my childhood friends, I made up for it as an adult. The Baby-Sitters Club, it turns out, is something that nearly everyone in my generation knows, and many of us loved. In my early twenties, I stayed up late with my roommate Jessie (a Claudia/Stacey) and talked about Claudia and her many outfits, laughing about her insistence to Kristy that sheep are IN while Kristys snowman sweater was out. Fellow California girls and I have talked at length about Dawn, and how we wished our California lives had been more like her hip surfer-girl life. (Her best friend from Palo City, the pessimistic, ironically named Sunny Winslow, was much more my speed.) Ive lost count of how many times Ive had the was Kristy actually a lesbian? conversation with fellow LGBTQers. When I watched the new Netflix adaptation, I cried at the scenes between Mary Anne and her fatherand I was not surprised to find out many of my thirtysomething friends had also watched the series, and also cried. Theres a feeling of community among us, those who grew up with these girls.