The Baby Sitters' Club Series

[linared]

Honestly, I think that with the Jessi character someone decided that the series needed to be more diverse and they never came up with any decent storylines for Jessi. All of her stories were either lame and boring or totally unrealistic. I now that alot of the BSC books are unrealistic but still the Jessi books were dumb. A girl in Jessi's dance class has an eating disorder (that she develops in a week) and Jessi is the only who notices, not the parents or the dance teacher. Jessi takes care of a deaf child and is expected to learn and totally masters sing language in a week. Jessi is allowed to take of care of her sister and baby brother alone for a weekend. All dumb. I looked at the list of the BSC books and she really doesn't have that many compared to the rest of the characters.

[Deleted]

I kinda liked the pet sitting one, though, and that was a Jessi one IIRC.

[marywebgirl]

Her dad loses his job and Mallory is mocked for it.

Whoa! Mr. Pike lost his job? How in the heck did he support that Duggar-esque family without a job?

[Mutagen]

Well you know, as a Stoneybrook resident over the age of 13, he was pretty useless anyway...

[dragonfly80]

marywebgirl said:

Her dad loses his job and Mallory is mocked for it.

Whoa! Mr. Pike lost his job? How in the heck did he support that Duggar-esque family without a job?

All the kids try to earn money- one of them gets a paper route and Mallory tries to babysit more. Vanessa opens a beauty salon in the park & I think Claire has a lemonade stand. Mrs. Pike goes back to work, perhaps part time? It's been awhile since I read that one. I think her dad gets a job at another law firm at the end.

[ivy]

That book was called "Poor Mallory!" which is amusing because that could have been the title of pretty much every book about Mal.

Don't feel bad for Mal because her dad lost her job. In that book, she gets a job babysitting a super-rich kid with a pool and everything he could want, but she realizes it's all worthless since his friends are just using him for his things. Yeah, I'm sure most eleven-year-olds from struggling families would feel that way about the situation.

[Deleted]

After reading what a hard time Mallory had, I feel bad about disliking her so much. I think I used to skip the books about Mallory and I was kind of pissed that they let her join the club.

You know, I sold my BSCs on ebay sometime around the end of Fametracker. I've always wondered if someone here bought them. Same with the Sweet Valley High books.

[dragonfly80]

I may have bought some from you MissPriss. When fametracker imploded the group from the BSC thread there was scouring Ebay and Half.com and every thrift store in our home towns. We all managed to collect huge amounts of books to rebuild or fill in our collections & then we traded the doubles around to each other. I had to pay nearly 10 bucks for Claudia and the Terrible Truth.

I had stopped collecting the books around Dawn's Big Move and then gave away/sold/lost my collection as I entered high school and thought I was too cool for the BSC. Who would have known that at 24 I'd start buying them back for far more than I ever paid in the 90's. Now I have all the California Diaries, Super Specials, Super Mysteries and all but Kristy at Bat in the regular series. There are a few mysteries I'm missing and I've lately started buying back the Little Sister series in case I ever have a daughter.

[Deleted]

I sold mine as one big lot. If I'd been more industrious maybe I could have made more money by selling them individually. I tried to re-read them all before selling, but I just never made it so I settled for reading most of the Claudia books and the super editions with the cruise and the New York trip.

It was only by reading the FT thread that I learned that Dawn went back to California and had her own book series.

[susyhomewrecker]

Dawn's series was supposed to be "edgy." I never read her books, because I'd outgrown the series by that point, but I think I remember seeing synopses about Dawn and Sunny Winslow doing drugs or getting pregnant or selling themselves into prostitution or something. Did anyone here read them?