The Baby Sitters' Club Series

[ivy]

Something that makes me laugh when I think about it is how, in one book, we found out Stacey's real name was Anastasia. All the other BSCers are horrified by this because it's such an ugly name. Pft. I'd rather be called Anastasia than Stacey any day! "Stacey" is such a cheesy bimbo name.

In fact now that I think of it, a lot of these girls went by nicknames. Besides Stacey, Kristy's real name was Kristin, I think, and Jessi was Jessica. Also they called Mallory "Mal" a lot, which I always thought sounded so stupid. "Mal Pike" would be the dumbest name ever.

[twistedangel]

heh.... even though I always liked the name Stacey, I agree that Anastacia is a much nicer name. I guess I can sort of see why a bunch of barely teenagers would think "Stacey" sounds cooler.

Looking back, it is odd that so many parents there trusted their kids (especially the newborms) to a bunch of 11-13 year old girs. At the time, though, I never really thought about it. Probably because I always kinda thought the girls were written as more mature than 12/13 in the books. They just always sounded like they were older to me.

As for the babysitters themselves... I always liked Stacey and Claudia the best. Kristy just got on my last nerve and the others kinda bounced back and forth from tolerable to kinda cool to annoying.

[Deleted]

So my local library was throwing out Mallory's Christmas Wish and I couldn't resist. I stopped reading BSC somewhere in the 50's so I never knew about Dawn leaving and Abby joining and have always been a little curious about later BSC events that I missed.

Observations:
The book is dedicated to Peter Lerangis who helped with the manuscript. I'm assuming 'helped' means 'ghost-wrote'.

Kristy is in full dictator-mode and Stacey is too scared to go to a concert with her boyfriend Robert and his parents, because the other BSC members are helping at an old folks' home and Kristy might get upset if she's not there.

Jessi brings Kwanzaa music to the BSC Christmas party.

Abby is really annoying but I never missed Dawn at all.

[Xerox]

The Death-Eaters Club, or BSC Meets Harry Potter

[susyhomewrecker]

That's too funny! Why is Stacey's picture still up there with the rest of them?

First of all, the DEC is a club that I belong to. It's really more of a business, and our aim is to kill as many muggle borns and muggles as we can. Voldemort started it when he found out his dad was a muggle, and he had to spend ages trying to find a way to get rid of him! Then he thought 'Wouldn't it save time if someone could just press their dark mark and reach lots of Death Eaters at once, instead of owling one person after another?

Holy shit, that's funny.

[Deleted]

ronette said:

So my local library was throwing out Mallory's Christmas Wish and I couldn't resist. I stopped reading BSC somewhere in the 50's so I never knew about Dawn leaving and Abby joining and have always been a little curious about later BSC events that I missed.

Observations:
The book is dedicated to Peter Lerangis who helped with the manuscript. I'm assuming 'helped' means 'ghost-wrote'.

I don't think I read this one, but since I compulsively read all book dedications, I remember his name. Some of the ghost writers were better than others, but he wasn't one of the "good" ones. IMO, anyway.

[susyhomewrecker]

He wrote like every other book. I remember my friends and I (who were obsessed, of course) figured out early on that the dedications were to the ghost-writers, and we couldn't believe A MAN was writing our beloved BSC books. Maybe that's why the babysitters wore hideous outfits and said things like "dibbly fresh."

I was always kind of mad that Ann M. couldn't crank out like, one book a year. Or something. It's not like they were very long with complicated themes, you could easily write one of those once a year. Peter Lerangis seemed to be writing six a year, hello!

[polygal]

Is Mallory's Christmas Wish the one where The Pikes are being taped for some reality show? And of course, it all goes to hell. I think I read that one, and it was lame, even for a Mallory story.

The worst part about the books being all ghostwritten was that the stories managed to get even more one-dimensional when they took over.

[ivy]

How many clothes did Claudia have? In every book there was at least one description of her crazy outfits. Sometimes multiple ones. I realize her clothes were probably bought on sale because no one else would buy them and the stores wanted to get rid of them, but still. The girl must have had about 100 pairs of slouchy boots in various colors alone.

Claud must have made a mint babysitting. Thinking about this makes it even funnier to remember the scene where Mallory goes shopping in Mallory and the Terrible Twins and she realizes she has to "stop spending all my hard-earned babysitting money" after buying a pair of push-down socks and some hair clips. Even when I was a kid I thought that was stupid. Did Mal earn 50 cents an hour or something? Maybe the rest of the BSC made decent money but Mal didn't since it seemed everyone in the whole world hated her.

[Sunbaby]

Didn't Mallory mostly babysit her own siblings though? Was she paid for that? I can't remember but if she wasn't it would explain how she didn't want to spend any money on anything.

Speaking of Mallory, the discussion a few pages back about all of her misfortune and general geekiness had me rolling. The writers really did hate her, didn't they?! Haha.