So Ashley of dibbly-fresh sent me the new editions and The Summer Before (those who pay close attention the fandom will know why soon ;)), and I, naturally devoured them all. I’ll write about the prequel later, because I have more to say about it and probably should read it a second time before I sit down to do a thorough post about it, but here’s what I think about the rereleases.

The text is quite large, but the same font, so after a while, it’s less noticeable. I’ve read that they were aiming a slightly younger target audience, so this, and the graphic covers, makes sense. The handwriting is now fonts, and not the fonts that were created for the CD-roms. I suppose, going along with the new lower target audience thing and the decreased emphasis on learning cursive in schools–I’m shocked at how many even my age can’t read cursive–I’m not surprised. I’m sure it increases readibility. Plus, Claud’s “how did this girl ever get out of the first grade” spelling errors have been taken down a notch. She now seems like a perfectly capable twelve-year-old who isn’t the greatest speller, but at least picks up a book once in a while, even if it is Nancy Drew. If they get to Claudia and the New Girl, I wonder what they’ll do with the spelling test scene, where they go through Claudia’s spelling thought process.

After reading about the Sweet Valley rereleases, where they got rid of 1BRUCE1, I was scared about what I’d find. But they did a nice subtle job, one that I only noticed if I was really looking hard–and I’ve been reading these books constantly for nearly 20 years now. They changed “tape deck” to “stereo,” for instance, and frankly, even when I was a kid no one said “tape deck” any more. Charlotte’s favorite tv show is no longer The Cosby Show; she now has a favorite board game instead. Kristy, however, still says “One false move and I’ll punch your lights out,” and if I were an editor I would have taken that out, because what the hell are the best baby-sitters in town doing, threatening violence against their clients? WTF, Thomas?

So all in all, I think they did a damn good job here. In fact, I was kind of hoping for MORE edits, just so it’d be DIFFERENT and exciting. But whatever, yay Scholastic. I do wonder, though, if the lack of more edits to modernize it will lead to reviews like for the new Alice McKinley book, Alice in Charge:

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.

Today I was struck with a sudden thought. If you didn’t watch The Paper, go and watch the show on the site I just linked and then come back.

OK. Amanda Lorber=Karen Brewer in high school, yes?

edit: for non-USA readers, here’s a link to where you can watch the show.

I found this on youtube. It’s a song by a Czech band called SandWitch entitled “Mallory on Strike.” I’d like to think they were inspired by Ann’s novel, which I have been reading lately.

Stacey and the Bad Girls happens to be one of my all-time favorite BSC books. It might in fact be my #1, but I haven’t really considered this question thoroughly yet. Anyway, this book, if you’re one of those people who missed out on the later series, takes place after Stacey vs the BSC, where Stacey is kicked out of/quits the BSC, depending on whether you ask Kristy or Stacey. Stacey realized that maybe there is life outside of baby-sitting, and starts running with a different crowd. She starts skipping BSC meetings and sitting jobs to go to dates at places like Pizza Express and Burger Town, and throws a blowout party and only invites Claudia. Stacey is BSC history.

So in this book Stacey has these cool new friends, who are into things like nose jewelry and like to come over every day, watch MTV, and eat. Stacey’s mother thinks that it is time for Stacey to get a job. Hi, Mrs. McGill. Let me introduce you to a little something called “child labor laws.” (Paging the Rosebud Cafe.) There is very little for a thirteen-year-old to do except baby-sit, and as someone who was kicked out of the BSC, there aren’t really any baby-sitting jobs for Stacey to do. Stacey’s mom gets her a job at the Kid Center at Bellairs, which I kind of think is illegal, but moving on. Stacey’s cool new job gets her an employee discount, so her cool new friends use her and squeeze some money out of Bellairs, while also shoplifting paperback books. OMG.

All hell breaks loose when Stacey and her friends go to a U4Me concert. They sneak in miniature bottles of wine in their flop socks. Stacey and her new friends are no more. And Stacey doesn’t even get to see the one and only Aristotle Dukas in person. It’s very tragic.

Stacey is let back into the BSC. Good for her, I guess.

The one thing I don’t like about this book is the annoying subplot. Sharon Spier’s cousins are dropping off their six-year-old daughter for two weeks while they go to Europe. Um, yeah. Apparently the dad did not get along with Jack Schafer, so they were estranged or something. So these model parents are dropping off their daughter Amy with people she’s never seen before while they gallivant around Europe for two weeks. Obviously this does work out well, and Amy is really annoying and runs away to… the Bellairs Kid Center. Where Stacey happens to be working. It’s a bit awkward, since Stacey hasn’t made up with Dawn and Mary Anne. It’s hard to forgive a friend who spies on you from behind a jukebox.

One of the most notable things about this book is that it feels the most concurrent with its time, somehow. Now that Stacey has left the BSC, she is free to be a slightly more average teenager, so a lot of this book is filled with MTV-watching. There is talk of grunge, and flannel, and fashion that does not involve papier-mache. Stacey is hanging out with the cool kids, so we get to learn all about the mid-90s from a fashion perspective that does not inhaling paint fumes.

Stacey does not, however, live up to her sophisticated Chapter Two trait in this book. She dresses kind of dorky, bringing a white cardigan sweater to the U4Me concert. She also is hoodwinked by those “friends” of hers. Oh, Stacey. You’re the most sophisticated of the BSC, but it seems as if that is not a very large accomplishment.

One of the things that has been occupying my mind, besides the work I need to finish before the end of the semester, is finding a really good cookbook of American food. In six months I move to Russia, and the main issue of living in Russia, for me, is food. I don’t really know how to cook anything besides pasta and grilled cheese–I rely a lot on prepared food, and the kind of prepared food I’m used to is not as easy to come by in Russia. So I’ve been looking through my mom’s cookbooks, because I fear that new cookbooks will have a lot of stuff that is also hard to find in Russia.

One of the cookbooks I read this weekend was Home Cookin’ With Dave’s Mom, a cookbook David Letterman’s mother wrote in the mid-nineties. While it’s not as prevalent as her obsession for say, I Love Lucy, it was confirmed in her biography that Ann is a Letterman fan, although she rarely stays up late enough to watch it. Letterman is also mentioned a couple of the times in the series, notably in Claudia and the Lighthouse Ghost where one of the guys in the “Fred” group is pretty much a Letter Look-a-like.

Anyway, this cookbook features a Letterman family tree. On Dave’s entry, it says, “David Michael.” We all know how… obsessive Ann is with the stuff she likes, so I would not be surprised if Ann named Kristy’s brother after her favorite late night gap-toothed talk show host. This would, at least, explain the odd choice of two names–although this does not still explain why Emily Michelle Brewer is often referred to as Emily Michelle, although she is occasionally called just Emily. Without the Michael, however, you are calling DM by the wrong name, which is kind of… weird. Cause damn, that’s a long first name.

Ann has these weird obsessions, like with “I Love Lucy” and “The Wizard of Oz.” It gets tiring to read about constant allusions to Munchkinland and various Lucy plots, with people dressing up as the characters and imitating them at every turn.

Anyway, recently Nicole Richie had a baby shower. “Ann M. Martin” and “Nicole Richie” are normally not people that you would ever associate with one another. Nicole, however, recently had a “Wizard”-themed baby shower.

Perhaps Ann has more in common with Nicole than previously thought…

Today I was thinking about how fun it would be to dress as a BSC member for Halloween. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough female friends who are willing to dress up as the BSC with me for the costume to really work. Have any of you ever dressed up as the BSC for Halloween? What did you wear? My ideas:

Episode 208 of “Style Her Famous” on the Style Network is a total Claudia.

Also, I’ve noticed some confusion that was caught by my spam catcher: your comment will only show up right away if you have commented three or more times. If you’re a new commenter, your comment will be sent to me for approval before it appears on the site.

Lately I have been enjoying the VH1 show Rock of Love. For those of you without a Celebreality addiction, in this show Bret Michaels of the seminal “metal” band Poison is trying to find love, or at least something somewhat resembling love.How does this tie into the BSC? Like our Stacey McGill, Bret Michaels has juvenile diabetes. As we all remember from Stacey and the Bad Girls, alcohol would totally throw Stace’s blood sugar out of whack. Bearing this in mind, while my dad was trying to tell me that Bret had a hardcore alcohol problem back in the day (everyone confuses Bret with the much cooler member of Poison C.C. DeVille), I staunchly refuted his claim with no way, Bret has juvenile diabetes, he can’t drink.

As the show progressed, however, it became increasingly apparent that Bret Michaels drinks all the time and sometimes has drunk foursomes. But what about his diabetes??? I wondered.

I was reading USWeekly or InTouch or People yesterday and it featured an interview with Bret Michaels. He said in this interview that he taught all the girls in the house how to give him insulin injections… using an orange! Just like how Stacey was taught!

So basically what I am getting at is: 1)Stacey is the female Bret Michaels. 2)My fears that Stacey would never be able to be a drunken party girl was unfounded. She just needs to teach the guys she’s partying with how to give her an insulin shot using an orange for practice.

The real question, of course, is whether these girls said “Ew! Yuck!” while learning. This event occurred off-camera but I bet it played into eliminations. Brandi C., I’m looking at you.