In the 90s, I remember seventies stuff being pretty cool. That is how we ended up wearing bell bottoms and velveteen tops in 1997. The last few years have been all NEON! RAYBANS! LEGGINGS!, culling its sartorial influences from the 80s. There’s a 20-year cycle of fashion, when things have faded from memory just long enough to stop seeming hideously ugly.

Thus, we have started to see a 90s revival, both in fashion and in entertainment. Beverly Hills, 90210 is back on air, as is Melrose Place. Of recent book releases, the book I’ve heard the most about is Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music by Melissa Meltzer, which has insipired even those who weren’t even alive at the time to listen to Bikini Kill.

It’s no surprise, then, that both the Baby-Sitters Club AND Sweet Valley are coming out with new books. (Yes, the long-awaited Sweet Valley Confidential is being released.) Had these books been released five years ago, only those of us diehards in the fandoms would have cared. The sales would have resembled those of the attempted revitalization of the series that was Friends Forever, if that. But now enough time has passed since the heyday of these series to mean that people who were readers the first time around might have kids of their own of BSC/SV-reading age. Those who don’t have kids might check out the books just out of pure nostalgia, and old enough now to not be embarrassed about being seen buying them Teachers and librarians, also of the first generation of readers, can introduce the books to the kids they work with. When the graphic novels came out, I think it was just slightly too early for all of this. Only the hardcore fanbase seemed to be interested, for the most part, and I don’t remember as many writeups across the internet. Jezebel, for one, has been following the reissues/prequel story for as long as the fandom has.

While ten years ago, Ann said she was simply “done” with the characters, perhaps the real implication of her words were that, outside of her hardcore and aging fanbase, the public was done. They were a relic, overshadowed by new phenomena like Harry Potter. Even a graphic design upgrade and less focus on baby-sitting couldn’t obscure the fact that their time was over. They were innocent books without anything supernatural. But now twenty- and thirty-somethings seem to all be infected with a sense of early 90s nostalgia.

Maybe Ann saw the marketing opportunity and seized it, or her editors gently suggested it to her. Or perhaps, she, too was nostalgic for the BSC’s heyday, and wanted to revisit these characters.

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.

One of the main complaints about later BSC is that so many talents are exaggerated. Jessi becomes an INTERNATIONAL PRIMA BALLERINA. Mallory is no longer just a girl who writes stories about mice wearing high-tops, she’s a future best-selling author. Stacey is better at math than anyone else in Connecticut. In the beginning, before ghostwriters, fans argue, Jessi was just a girl who liked to dance and didn’t want to go pro. Dawn would sometimes eat a piece of cake, provided she had a toothbrush handy.

I don’t often reread the earlier BSC books. The later ones, for me, capture the flavor and time of my childhood and hold more nostalgic appeal. Sure, I’ll agree that the writing quality goes a little downhill (but I stick out my tongue at all of the Peter Lerangis haters), but I don’t read BSC for quality writing. I simply just don’t get the urge to reread the early books all that often.

Well, lately, I’ve been in an early book mood. I recently reread Jessi’s Secret Language, and I really think that it invalidates the above argument for why the earlier books are better. Let’s review.

Jessi’s Secret Genuisness
Now, if Jessi were a member of the Glass family, this book might be believable. We’re told at the beginning that Jessi is good at languages. But there’s a difference betweeen “being good at languages” and “being a savant.” Jessi begins sitting for the Braddocks, Mrs. Braddock hands her a dictionary and shows her the sign for “bathroom,” and suddenly Jessi is able to have competent, complicated conversations.

As somebody who spends a lot of my life dealing with learning and teaching foreign languages, this made me shake my head. ASL has a different grammar than English. There are no synonyms or cognates, because you don’t use speech. You absolutely have to learn every sign individually. Even the best student can’t say as much as Jessi was saying in ASL after a few classes of Spanish I, and Jessi wasn’t even taking classes. And everyone else in Stoneybrook seemed to be learning just as fast.

Either Ann has never learned a foreign language in her life (although for some reason I recall her studying a few semesters of French…?) or she, too, is a real genius.

2. Jessi Ramsey, Best Dancer Ever
The subplot in this book, which mainly exists for Jessi to do a Really Nice Thing for Matt Braddock, is the production of Coppelia that is going on at Jessi’s dance school. Now, just so you don’t get confused, Jessi’s not just in the corps or something. No, Jessi is freaking SWANILDA. Now, the school only seems to go up to age 14, so MAYBE it could be believable that they’d cast an eleven-year-old–but I still doubt it. But the really unbelievable thing is that Jessi has time to become fluent in sign language AND star in a ballet AND go to school AND do other baby-sitting. It’s being a star or the kids, Jessi. Choose one.

I guess that what bothers me about both of these things is that they’re so… unnecessary, I guess? Jessi could have arranged the show for Matt even if she was a dancer in the corps. She also could have had the same “introducing Matt to the kids and learning some signs” plot without becoming practically fluent in three days. I’m just not sure what the point of making Jessi so AMAZING was.

Here’s a comment from mella2750 that I got recently that I found interesting:

Be forewarned if you do go! I was in charge of the author signings at Book Expo a few years ago, and Ann was there. I talked to her and she signed her then-new book, but she did NOT want to talk about the BSC. When I brought it up, her eyes narrowed and she looked away, and I backed off. Maybe she was having an off day, but be prepared!

I recall reading in an interview that Ann felt that she was more well-known now for her post-BSC books than the BSC. That had always struck me as wishful thinking on her part. Sure, her books have been well-received and she’s won numerous awards, and Main Street has been doing well enough for Scholastic to justify its continued existence. Still, for those of us who were active readers of middle grade books for girls between 1986-2000, and perhaps for people who are younger but discovered the books in libraries or had older siblings, Ann M. Martin’s name will conjure up the BSC before anything else.

Now, obviously the BSC isn’t the most high-quality fare out there. And while I haven’t read any of her post-BSC stand alone novels, Main Street is of markedly higher quality than BSC. But still. The revenue from BSC has given Ann a lot in life. I’m interested by this response from Ann, from her unwillingness to be associated with BSC.

Thoughts?

As astute reader Sadako pointed out, Ann will be at BookExpo in NYC on Friday, May 29th, signing books from 3-3:30.

I like to check out Ann’s website every once in a while. She doesn’t update all that frequently–maybe once every two or three months–so it’s a nice surprise when there’s something new.

It has been updated for April, with a 25 Random Things post. Sound familiar? In this missive, we learn that Ann (gasp!) likes I Love Lucy and salmon–I thought she was a vegetarian? Maybe she just doesn’t eat red meat.

About this list, Ann writes,

If you’re familiar with the Internet (and since you’re reading this online, you probably are!), a lot of questionnaires, quizzes, and polls may have come your way. I’ve definitely seen my fair share of these, but nothing had caught my eye until a friend sent me her “25 Random Thoughts.”

She then talks about how much fun she’s been having reading her friends’ lists. Now, it’s entirely possible that maybe her friends are just emailing her this stuff. But questionnaires? Quizzes? Polls? It’s pretty obvious that Ann has a facebook account. And sits around doing quizzes like “Which Wizard of Oz character are you?” and posting them to her news feed.

Peter Lerangis has a facebook page. And Ann has an official page, so you can be her fan. But I bet that her real facebook page, where she posts pictures of her dog and her latest sewing projects, is hidden. Smart lady, that Ann.

Thanks to Booboobrewer for finding this!

Ann discusses her daily routines and writing tips.

Fun fact: Ann is a Mac.

When I was a kid, I never read any of Ann’s non-BSC books, not until P.S. Longer Letter Later came out. Why, I’m not sure. In my elementary school’s library they were shelved right next to the BSC books, and I would pretty much read any chapter book I could get my hands on as long as it was not fantasy, horror, or sports.

But I’ve started reading them recently, and maybe it’s because I didn’t grow up with them, as other people’s responses, the responses of those who did read them as children, are much more enthusiastic than my own. So far I’ve read Stage Fright, With You and Without You, and Missing Since Monday. I made an unsuccessful stab at Ten Kids, No Pets, but got bored, and plus I was reading a British or Australian edition* and trying to change all the “mum”s to “mom”s was irritating me. Stage Fright was ok, but nothing special, and I felt that the other two weren’t quite as deep, emotionally, as they should have been, considering their serious subject matter. And they both used dates with boys as the bandaid to the really terrible and tragic situations which occurred in the books, which seems odd to me. If my dad died or my little sister went missing, god forbid, I would be FLIPPING MY SHIT. The protagonists of these books seemed to almost take things in stride.

I still really want to read Slam Book. It seems so dark! But reading these early Ann books and comparing them with, say, Main Street (I haven’t read Belle Teal or A Corner of the Universe or any of her other recent books, but they seem to be doing well and winning awards so I assume that they’re pretty good books)… I can really see how Ann has grown and matured as a writer.

What do you think about Ann’s early books? Did you read them as a child or only as an adult or not at all?’

*sorry to my non-American friends, but I really hate reading BSC in non-American English!

Pigeonrat set up a cool new feature on the wiki which has the latest BSC-related headlines. I read this news story, and can’t help feeling jealous of this girl.

Her prize $500 gift card, well, “that’s sort of all gone now,” says Emily, a fifth-grader at Arnco-Sargent Elementary. She bought a trampoline, an American Girl doll — Molly, if you’re curious — Legos for her little brother and doodads from Claire’s Accessories. Books, too.

But there’s another part to the prize: Martin, the author, in the flesh.

Martin’s writing schedule usually keeps her from book tours, but she’ll be in Newnan on Monday to greet fans and sign books.

Emily is so excited, so nervous, she doesn’t even know what to say to the writer.

She expects to start with “hi.”

Pretty cool, huh?

Yeah, I doubt they would have picked a 22-year-old’s entry as the winner. But still. Completely and utterly jealous.