Am I the only one who has noticed that since the reissues/reunion book became known, fandom has sort of died down a little? Posts on the BSC livejournals and boards are less frequent. Could we really have exhausted everything there is to discuss about the BSC in the ten years since Graduation Day?

I mean, for ten years the only thing that happened in the fandom was the Graphic Novels. And then, BOOM! Reissues! A prequel! Things that we had all fantasized about, but had not really considered likely, since Ann had made it pretty clear she wanted to work on other things. We were free to go through the books with a fine-tooth comb and read into them things that we not there, and to write fanfiction about what we thought happened after the girls finally graduated from eighth grade.

But now, it’s almost as if the looming publications make us less interested in endlessly discussing the finer points of the series. Is some of the magical nostalgia gone, now that we know that the books will be updated and we will learn more about their lives before the Club?

Or perhaps I’m the only one who has noticed this, or if I’m just not participating as much as I used to. Thoughts?

I feel like it’s high time that I wrote something here on the rereleases, but I’ve had a hard time deciding how I feel about them. I am kind of bummed that 2010 is shaping up to be the biggest year in BSCland since ten years ago, when the series ended, and I’m not living in a country where I can really fully participate in what’s going on. The only way I’ll be able to access any of the new books until July is if Amazon decides to put them on the Kindle (go to the pages for the books on Amazon.com and let them know you want them on the Kindle! Do it for me, and, I guess, fans who want to read the books on the subway without anyone else knowing and other BSC fans living abroad who have an ipod touch and the Kindle app), or if someone types up an ebook of them and I can find it somewhere, although I feel that the attitude of the fandom will be similar to the attitude that is taken toward the graphic novels and Main Street. They’re in print, so let’s vote with our dollars and let Scholastic know that these should continue to be published.

Anyway, now that the personal stuff is out of the way, one of the biggest controversies is how the series will be updated. We know that the clothes and hairstyles will be changed to reflect current trends–although, frankly, are trends today (leggings! oversize!) all that different, except now we’ve combined acid-wash jeans and leggings to make JEGGINGS? I’m wearing jeans with zippers on the bottom right now, a style I first was made aware of by the Club. Fresh! Also, the new outfits I’ve heard of so far (featured in the prequel) sound way more hideous. From the USA Today blog post:

Claudia was wearing willowy black pants, cinched at the waist with a drawstring, and a boldly patterned summer shirt with ties that she was adjusting around her midriff. Her
midriff would have been bare, but Claud had slithered into a lacy black tank top before she’d put on the shirt. On her feet were delicate silvery sandals, and her hair, which was looooooong and thick, was held away from her face with two silver combs.

I kind of feel like this isn’t much different from the outfits featured in the series in the late 90s, rather than something a modern 13-year-old would concoct out of thrift store finds and Forever 21. I think Modern Claud would dress like Tavi.

Another issue the reissues bring up is what they’re planning on updating besides the fashions. One thing that has never really sat right with most people in the fandom is the “We don’t care if Jessi is black! We’d like a girl if she were PURPLE and a good sitter!” Even other series of the same time, such as the Saddle Club, didn’t make such a big deal about having a character of a different race, if they reissue the series up until the point where Jessi comes into the picture. See also: Claudia being “exotic.”

Also, I’m sure they’d have to update medical stuff in regard to Stacey. Perhaps she’ll have an insulin pump decorated with glitter or something for her by Claud!

As far as Kristy and Mary Anne go… I don’t know what they’ll update for Mary Anne, because Mary Anne’s early wardrobe seemed very fifties even in the 80s and 90s. I’m having a hard time with modern readers buying the excuse that Watson and Elizabeth need to get married right away so they don’t end up living in sin.

What do you think they’ll update? What would you be sad to see go? What would make you glad?

Stacey and the Missing Ring is a book I misplaced years ago. I had always wanted to reread it, because although I remembered that Stacey was accused of stealing a ring and everything and the people she stole it from were pretty fancy, I didn’t really remember much else.

Well, I got a chance to reread it a few days ago. Usually, I’m a big Stacey supporter. When other people talk shit about her, I defend her. I can often relate to her better than most of the other characters. But in this book, the girl is just spoiled. She demands that her mother buy her a diamond ring!!!!!!!! At 13!!!!!!!!! (LUCA VOICE!) She thinks that her mother is TOTALLY UNFAIR to not want to buy her this ring, and insists that her dad totally would, making her mom feel shitty for having less money than her dad. I mean, usually when people are all, “Stacey is a bitch,” I can see where Stacey’s coming from. But this “BUY ME A DIAMOND RING” thing seems pretty out of left field for Stacey, who totally could have had that purple suede fringe jacket from Betsey Johnson (I can just imagine the price tag! More evidence that Mr. McGill=up there with Watson Brewer in terms of wealth), but went with sunglasses instead. And here she is just so spoiled and demanding.

Of course, this whole diamond ring-thing is plot device to make Stacey seem suspicious. While coincidences like that happen all the time in everyday life, in fiction they seem contrived. Another thing that seems contrived is the “OMG NO ONE IS CALLING US BECAUSE OF SOMETHING BAD A SITTER DID,” which also happened in Mary Anne Breaks the Rules. No guys, everyone just randomly went on vacation!!

Another thing that sucks about this book: the Gardellas are wacky! They love their pets more than their daughter! Yet this whole plot point never goes anywhere. No sign of the crazy for real, just “oh look, the cat eats on the table, ho-hum.” What a waste of comic potential! They could have at least had some weird crazy secret or something.

Also, there is no real subplot of this book. Just a sort-of rehashing of the Phantom Caller plot, where the girls get scared while baby-sitting. Jessi robber-proofs the house.

I feel like that for the first branded mystery, they should have done something… better. Not just Stacey being spoiled and stuff that happens multiple other times in the series–although in defense of The Powers That Be, Mary Anne Breaks the Rules was published later. But it still feels like “Well, this aspect of the plot has certainly been done to death in other books in the series.” Overall, it was just disappointing. It may rank up there in the pantheon of my all-time, least favorite BSC books.

Has there ever been a BSC book that you haven’t read in a long time, and were super excited to reread, and then it just fell completely flat?

I have a sister who just turned ten, and is thus part of the target demographic of the Main Street series. Unfortunately, she is a not a Reader. For her, reading is something torturous forced upon her by evil parents and teachers to interrupt her computer and television time. She would rather, I think, do math problems than read a book. (My little brother, however, is following the example of his other siblings and reads voraciously and far above grade level, so that is some comfort.) So despite the fact that I do have an “in” to this age range, I don’t really know much about what kids that age like to read nowadays apart from Hannah Montana novelizations.

A question that the upcoming BSC prequel/reissues raised for me is what it all means for the fate of the Main Street series. Now, I like Main Street. I like how it focuses on the lives of both and the adults and the children. You rarely got insight into the adult world in the BSC–it was all about the fantasy of thirteen-year-olds leading independent lives. The girls in Main Street are fairly independent for their ages as well, considering that most parents nowadays wouldn’t let a fifth grader go more than a one-block radius from home without an adult present, but adults in Main Street are not just there to be parents who need their lack of parenting skills to be supplemented by some eleven and thirteen-year-olds who pretty much know everything about child-rearing. No, in Main Street they have their own problems and lives and interesting plots. Mim and Mr. Pennington, hot stuff, right?!

Yet I’ve always wondered, ever since I first heard of the series, about how well it is possible for Main Street to sell. Girls who hang out at their grandmothers’ sewing store? That does indeed sound like something that Ann M. Martin would fantasize about, but perhaps not something that would interest preteen girls. The books, while they do deal with heavier issues than the BSC, retain a kind of slow, old-fashioned pace, kind of like Mayberry RFD. Perhaps I am just buying into marketing hype, but that doesn’t seem to me to be the kind of thing that KIDS TODAY! would be into. I would have been into it, but I was also a loser with no friends who sat in my room making weird crafty things.

Anyway, the fact that the focus seems to be shifting back to the BSC makes me wonder if this is somehow a bad sign for Main Street. On Amazon, the most recent Main Street book came out at the beginning of last month. It’s ranked around 10,000, which seems pretty respectable to me. There are no listings for a next Main Street book, though. Perhaps it just means that Ann has been busy with the prequel and the presumed editing of the reissues to write another Main Street book. If the prequel does well, it could be feasible that Ann would do more with her BSC characters, which I think would not bode well for Main Street.

What do you think? Has Main Street been a success? How do you think that the upcoming BSC excitement will affect the series?

This is old news by now, but the REISSUING of BSC books will begin soon. This is not surprising, as you’d hardly expect that they’d go through all the trouble of releasing a prequel when they couldn’t capitalize on either the new fans of the characters that the prequel will bring, nor bring the nostalgia bucks that the old fans whose collections were sold off in garage sales and donated to thrift stores by well-intentioned parents would be willing to spend, once the prequel jogs their memories. Rather than being completely blindsided by surprise (as I was by the news of the prequel itself), it was simply confirming what I knew would happen all along. Sure, they have the graphic novels, but as I learned when I tried to get my stepmother to buy them for my sister–some people just don’t want the comic format, and the four-book option already ended. It’s cheaper just to take the old books, reprint them with a new cover, and send them out into the marketplace.

I have my doubts, though, that the texts will remain untouched. Thinking of other reissues-Sweet Valley comes to mind, although I heard that Saddle Club was reissued as well–as well as updated versions of old classics like Judy Blume books, I am pretty sure that the BSC will not escape modernization. Perms, flop socks, even iconic pieces like Mary Anne’s “Famous Cities” skirt–it’s hard to fathom that they will be allowed into the homes of today’s children, despite the fact that the clothes right now are pretty damn eighties and nineties to begin with.

An interesting cultural shift that begun after I left childhood behind was the idea that kids are really, really stupid became in vogue. Yes, the whole sanitary belt thing in Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret confused me, but I understood that it was a story of the early 70s and things were different then, and I wouldn’t have wanted all of the slang and fashions updated. One of my favorite things about Harriet the Spy is the Mad Men-era Upper East Side locale, which is one of the main reasons why I absolutely hated the movie starring Nona F. Mecklenberg/Regina Sparks. But apparently nowadays even things like 1BRUCE1 are just too hard for the kids to understand, too unrelateable. You’d think it’d be the opposite, because now kids can just google that shit. Perhaps this lack of faith and push the modernize things is what made the SVH reissues not very successful: perhaps if they had just retained the corny, tacky, vintage feel that we all know and love, they’d have been more successful. Because I am sure that now it just reads like a less-scandalous Gossip Girl. Would today’s kids live in fear of trying cocaine after what happened to Poor Regina Morrow? Maybe, maybe not, but if it were framed in LOLEIGHTIES! it might seem less lame.

I think that now the entire concept of the BSC is outdated. Even in 1986, it was hard for the girls to compete with the Baby-Sitters Agency, which had older sitters. I can’t see any contemporary parents I know leaving their children in the care of an eleven-year-old, even a levelheaded one like Mallory. Claudia’s voracious appetite for junk food that never results in weight gain would definitely be frowned upon. And obviously, with cell phones, Claudia might even be stripped of her title as vice-president! The books are so firmly steeped in a pre-cell phone, pre-internet, pre-THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN!!!!!!! culture that it is hard to see how, exactly, they’d be able to modernize it without basically having to redo the entire concept. I mean, this stuff DOES enter the series, but only at the tail end, and I doubt that they will even get to the ghost-written books in terms of reissuing the series.

So perhaps, if we’re lucky, they will just leave them alone and reissue them as they are, as a relic of the 80s and 90s.

Yes, I know that it has been about two months since I last posted. What have I been doing? Well, I moved. I moved to a place where I could not take my BSC books. I have been quite distracted by my real life, and in all honesty have not been thinking much about the BSC. My mind has been occupied by things like, “How can I pay my tuition if I can’t get a student loan because my university has no association with the US banking system?” and “Oh fuck my head hurts from this hangover.” I had a few topics I wanted to write about, but I just never got around to forming the ideas to the point where I could write a meaningful blog post about them.

BUT THEN SOMETHING TOTALLY UNEXPECTED WAS DISCOVERED YESTERDAY, THE BIGGEST NEWS SINCE THE YEAR 2000 WHEN THE SERIES ENDED. If you care enough about the BSC to follow this blog, then you probably about know about it. Adri posted this yesterday in the BSC livejournal. I haven’t read the comments yet, because I wanted to write this post completely unbiased. But anyway, A NEW BSC BOOK IS COMING OUT APRIL 1ST. It is a prequel called The Summer Before, which takes place the summer before seventh grade. You can read the summary in the link to the BSC lj.

What are my thoughts on this? I have many.

I recapped Daisy of Love on ONTD today.

Yes, my taste in both books AND television is excellent.

I know, I know–this blog is basically turning into “Greer Bitches About How Dumb Mysteries Are” dot com. BUT THEY REALLY ARE DUMB.

Today I read Dawn and the Disappearing Dogs. The premise is that one of the wealthiest men in Stoneybrook is no longer so wealthy, so he’s taken to stealing purebred dogs to maintain his lavish lifestyle. This is dumb for many reasons:

*****SPOILER ALERT*****

Yesterday I reread Kristy and the Haunted Mansion. It is not a book I have read many times. I wasn’t sure why, before I read it again. Despite the presence of Karen Brewer, the idea of sleeping over in a creepy old house seems kind of neat, looking at all of the old crap in the house, all of it perfectly preserved. And then I got to the end and I realized why I hated it.

And this is where you should stop reading if you haven’t gotten a chance to read this book in the sixteen years since it’s been published.

So the caretaker guy, Will Blackburn, was so heartbroken that nearly sixty years later he was living on his ex-girlfriend’s property, keeping up all of her things, which is actually really creepy. You know, it’s sad that his first love died and all, but really he should have done something to get over it. He should have fought in World War II or something and gotten over it. Seriously. Are we meant to believe that his girlfriend died, his girlfriend’s dad died, and then he just bought this huge mansion on his own? I guess he must have made money while pining away for her after her death or something. But that’s beside the point–basically you have this dude, who never got with anyone else, never had kids, never seemed to really do anything in his life because his fiancee died in 1937…

AND SHE WAS WORKING IN A SEWING SHOP IN STONEYBROOK. AFTER TRAVELING THE WORLD AND BEING AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN SUPERSTAR.

Despite the fact that Dorothy’s actions killed her father and destroyed Will’s life, basically (although OK, I can see the argument that Will not moving on with his life is totally not her fault; he chose the path he followed, I guess), she is presented as a positive character in the book. She’s a nice old lady who bucked convention and had a great, feminist-empowerment life. I do understand why she did it, I suppose–not wanting to go from her dad’s house to her husband’s house–but, you know, she could have just met Will and said “I am not ready for marriage” and then gone off to Paris or whatever. She didn’t have to let everyone believe she was DEAD.

And what is the BSC’s reaction? “Oh, let’s reunite them! How romantic!” No, all you Mary Anne Spiers of the world, she’s just not that into him. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have faked her death to get away from him. Plus, how will poor Will feel, when his sixty-years-presumed-dead-fiancee-who-jilted-him shows up at his door? Dude’s gonna have a heart attack. Then he is going to be really, really pissed off.

In conclusion, this book is just all kinds of messed up and sends a weird message.

One of the major themes of the series is thirteen as a turning point, the age where one is Grown Up. You can baby-sit at night. You can go steady. You don’t ask your parents for help in 95% of the cases where you really, really should. Mallory and Jessi see thirteen as the magic age where they will get sparkly sweatshirts, contacts, and nose jobs. Shannon Kilbourne even titles the essay that frames her portion of the The Baby-Sitters Remember “Thirteen,” which is a sort-of coming of age story.

Apart from the whole “no sitting at night” thing, Mallory and Jessi actually have a fair amount of autonomy for eleven year olds, especially by today’s Helicopter Parents standard. How many eleven year olds do you know, for instance, who go to New York City to visit a boyfriend? How many eleven year olds are allowed to spend a weekend baby-sitting their siblings? (Sorry, Jessi, but I have to agree with Aunt Cecelia on that one. That’s just plain illegal.)

So one would assume that, despite all the whining from Mal and Jessi, that being eleven in Stoneybrook doesn’t really suck that much. Parents are more than lenient. Despite the fact that the Pikes have nixed the nose job idea, Mallory has more independence than would be considered prudent by commentors on parenting blogs, even the “hip” ones. But the same cannot be said for Mallory and Jessi’s peers. It is, in fact, one of the great mysteries of the BSC.

When we are first introduced to their characters, Tiffany Kilbourne is a sitter and Ben Hobart is Mallory’s Australian doppelganger/boyfriend. (Kind of creepy, if you ask me.) Yet somehow, over the course of the series, they are both on the receiving end of maturity downgrades. Rather than being pissed that the BSC has stolen her and Shannon’s sitting “territory,” Tiffany becomes part of the territory and becomes a BSC client. And Ben shows up at events that the BSC are running/involved with, and there is no mention of the fact that Ben and Mallory go out sometimes.

Sometime after December 1994 (Ben and Mallory have a fight about carolling in SS12), Ben and Mal’s relationship fizzles out. Perhaps all of the fighting about carolling and card catalog usage got to him. He shows up at the Greenbrook Club bathing cap contest. He plays an innkeeper in the church Christmas pageant and pisses off Mallory because he adlibs some Faux-stralian flavor into his lines. There is never any mention that hey, at one time, Ben and Mallory might have looked deeply into each other’s glasses and held each other’s sweaty palms. No, all has been forgotten–the scars from those card catalog/carolling fights go too deep. He is excised from Mal’s Chapter Two segments. The first cut is the deepest, indeed.

Ben has a chance to redeem himself after Mal’s Spaz Girl nervous breakdown, however. He is seen saying that he has tried to reach out to Mallory, but she doesn’t seem very receptive. No, Ben, your flames of love died out long ago. It happened while you were decorating your bathing cap to look like a shark attack.

Tiffany Kilbourne never gets a similar shot of redemption. She becomes a client and stays a client. Sometimes, I think, her age is even downgraded to ten. She’s eleven in The Complete Guide, but I swear she’s mentioned as ten in some places. Anyone with a citation, hit me up in the comments.

Then, in Claudia and the Recipe for Danger, we actually have a twelve-year-old pretty much being sat for by the eleven and thirteen-year-old sitters. He is the second Tyler in the Kids Kitchen thing, and no one ever really notes WHY there’s a twelve-year-old there, and he doesn’t do much. But it’s still alarming.

My conclusion is that really, Mal and Jessi seem to be the only eleven-year-olds in Stoneybrook who are afforded such responsibility. Perhaps if Ben had been smart like Logan (never thought I’d type the phrase “smart like Logan,” BUT SEE WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO ME, GHOSTWRITERS?!), and become an associate member, he could have kept his lady and his adult-ish status. It seems like being in the BSC is the ticket to maturity, and will help you avoid all of the potential pitfalls of adolescence, like acne, gum-chewing, trying cigarettes, and hiding those tiny bottles of wine in your flop socks. Look at what happened to Stacey and Dawn once they leave the comforting bosom of the BSC for Bad Girl-ism and California! Would Dawn have gone to a restaurant that served “more than just tea” (AKA HEAD SHOP IN THE BACK, DUDES) if she were still living with Mary Anne? Of course not.

The time warp works in mysterious ways. It can make you age so that you seem ahead of your years (everyone in the BSC). It can make you age backwards (Tiffany and Ben). Stoneybrook, Connecticut. An idyllic suburb of Stamford, a convenient train ride away from New York City straight into the heart of… THE TWILIGHT ZONE.

UPDATE: Not even bodily injury can stop Ashley from sharing her vast BSC knowledge. Thank you, Ashley!:

From #70, Stacey and the Cheerleaders:
Shannon nodded. “She missed the Terrible Twos. Instead she’s having the Terrible Tens. Even her teachers are complaining.” (p.23)
AND
Tiffany is a ten-year-old version of Shannon - physically, at least. (p.60)

But in #112, Kristy and the Sister War, Tiffany is 11 again, though she is still getting sat for.