We Are the Baby-Sitters Club: Essays and Artwork from Grown-Up Readers by Marisa Crawford

We Are the Baby-Sitters Club: Essays and Artwork from Grown-Up Readers Reviews

• 
  Nenia ✨ I yeet my books back and forth ✨ Campbell

  
  
  
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  Like a lot of 80s and 90s kids, The Baby-Sitters Club was an instrumental part of my childhood. It's one of those iconic totems of my childhood that imparts instant nostalgia, like Patagonia jackets, boy bands, and My Little Ponies. For me, though, the books held a whole other level of meaning. I was a really lonely and weird kid, so large swaths of my childhood were spent retreating into books, where I could imagine myself being a part of these other happier worlds.
  
  
  
  This collection of essays, WE ARE THE BABY-SITTERS CLUB, delves into a lot of facets of the popular series. All of these people grew up reading the books, like me, and even if it holds a special place in their heart, they aren't above critiquing some of the less savory elements of the books (such as how it glides over racial issues and microaggressions regarding its two main characters of color and basically ignores the LGBT+ at all except for nebulously coded references to not quite fitting into gender roles).
  
  
  
  I was expecting to like this but I actually ended up really liking it. The opening essay about a reader secretly hating Kristy because she tied into her own attraction to women was poignant and powerful. I loved the essay written by the English man who did a podcast about the books with one of his guy friends. There's several essays about Jessi and Blackness, and how she is represented both on the covers and within the books. There's an essay written by someone with diabetes and how she both did and didn't relate to Stacey, and how disability is presented in the book. There's an essay written by someone with autism discussing the one book that featured an autistic character, The Secret of Susan, and some of the blindspots with the story-telling and the rep.
  
  
  
  This is just a really great collection of essays on a really nostalgic series, and I like how it is both nostalgic and critical, all at the same time. When you like dated media, as I do, it can be hard to explain to others why you like something that is now in many ways problematic, but I think as long as you talk about those things and don't make apologies for them, you can make do. One caveat is that a lot of the art and comics don't translate all that way in the Kindle/eReader format, so that is something to consider when buying a digital copy. Luckily, they make up a small piece of the overall content but it was still annoying.
  
  
  
  4 stars
• 
  Megan

  This was Marisa’s Great Idea... I jumped at the chance to team up with her on it and I’m so proud of the work we, and all our contributors, have done here. Baby-Sitters Club fans, we have so much tremendously good writing and art in store for you—from Kristen Arnett’s essay on role playing as BSC characters to Yumi Sakugawa’s homage to Claudia as an Asian American girl role model, from Kim Hutt Mayhew on BSC fashion to Kristen Felicetti on the series’s exploration of adoption—plus Logan Hughes on BSC fan fiction, Jamie Broadnax on the cover images’ colorism, Myriam Gurba on BSC economics and entrepreneurship, and SO MUCH MORE. Enjoy!
• 
  Jenny (Reading Envy)

  For anyone who loved the BSC in their childhood (or adulthood, whatever), this is a collection of essays and other forms reflecting on the impact of this series. I was a 90s kid who had a babysitting kit and modified my handwriting after seeing some of theirs, which I hadn’t remembered until reading this!
  
  There are essays on sexuality, race, being a child of divorce, diabetes, fashion, social status, and more.
  
  I had a copy of this from the publisher through Edelweiss, and it came out July 6, 2021.
• 
  steph

  I feel like if you grew up during the 80's and 90's in America this is probably the book for you. I was never a giant fan of the BSC, I know some girls who read THEM ALL and that was not me (I just read a lot as a kid in general) but I did read a bunch of the books and watched the 1995 movie. I loved the Super Mysteries the best, they were much longer than the regular novels and jammed packed with activity and shenanigans. Also does anyone remember the California Diaries spinoff (when Dawn moves back to California)? I owned a few of those books that I picked up from the Scholastic Book Fair and thought they were so cool because they dealt with "mature topics" that were not found in Stoneybrook.
  
  Anyways, I digress because the point of this review is to talk about this collection of essays from grownup BSC fans which is GREAT. I like how each person covers a different topic or opinion and quite a few deal with gender, friendship, ethnicity, ableism and the rise of BSC fanfiction (I saw some fics I had already read mentioned in here which was cool but also weird. I'm still not used to see Ao3 talked about in published literature haha). It was really interesting and engaging and made me think about how far ahead of its time BSC was in certain areas (strong friendship bonds and the culture of entrepreneurship) and yet how it was a product of its time in other (how it talked (or didn't talk) about race). There was a section devoted to the handwriting of the BSC girls which instantly made me recall a long dormant memory in which I changed my handwriting during third or fourth grade to be more loopy with hearts instead of dots over my I's because I wanted to write like Stacey. Oh the memories!
  
  Anyways this book is definitely worth the read if you were ever a BSC fan (or current day fan because the Netflix series is amazing!). It made me smile and think about this universe and why myself (and thousands of other children) got addicted at such a formative age.
• 
  Kelly

  If you love essays and art about The Baby-Sitters Club, this is your catnip. I loved it, and I found myself thinking about so many of the characters and stories in new ways. I was especially taken by "Let's Talk About Jessi" by Yodassa Williams and how Jessi experiences racism in not-subtle ways in Stoneybrook -- as well as how Mallory served as an ally in a way that wasn't seen in books for young readers, even though she's certainly imperfect and stumbles in that role. "Skin the Color of Cocoa" by Jamie Broadeauz was a fascinating look at the inconsistent and incorrect skin tones of Jessi across the book covers of the series. Caolan Madden's "I Am My Own Mom" was a gutpunch to me in a number of unexpected ways: the exploration of deadbeat fatherhood with Kristy's dad and also the ways and means in which the books take caregiving as a series, important job and how that contrasts to today's world of caregiving seen as simply a thing someone else does to free up time for another person's "more important" work. The essays digging into queerness, both as it relates to the characters and to the writers themselves, were so powerful and thought-provoking.
  
  A couple of pieces didn't resonate for me, but this is what an anthology does. Those pieces WILL resonate with other readers and that's why they're there.
  
  It's nostalgic, sure, but it's also critical and thoughtful. The range of authors, queer and of color, is broad and introduced me to tons of new voices I'd not yet experienced. Again: a sign of a great anthology.
  
  My only criticism is in the design. The art is rendered in less-than-ideal ways to FEEL scrapbook-y, but the text itself takes up a lot of space on the page, taking away any intentionality in that design feel. I wish it'd been one or the other: clearer as a book that's meant to be taken like a traditional anthology OR one that let the art take the lead in developing a fun, scrapbook-style (think
  Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of '80s and '90s Teen Fiction).
• 
  Nev

  This was such a great collection of essays and art looking back at The Baby-Sitters Club and the impact that series had on different people’s lives. I think this struck the perfect balance between nostalgic celebration and critical analysis of aspects of the series that didn’t age so well. Contributors to the collection cover a wide range of topics from the girls’ handwriting and outfits, race, disability, family structures, fanfiction, and the perceived queerness of Kristy.
  
  As with any collection there were a couple essays that I didn’t find quite as interesting as the others. But overall I think this was a strong book that provides a wide variety of viewpoints and different ways of looking back at the series as an adult.
  
  Thank you to the publisher for providing an advance copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
• 
  Alli

  I did not expect to read an entire book of essays about the BSC and walk away wanting more, but I've already downloaded an article from JSTOR and started looking through the notes at the back of the book for references. Essayists write about relating to queer-coded Kristy and Stacey's challenges managing diabetes. They also express frustration with the series' limited representations of disability and racism, and discuss the possibilities explored by the newer Netflix series and fanfiction.
  
  One of my favorite chapters examines the BSC members' handwriting and ohmygod I want my whole job to be creating handwriting styles for fictional characters.
  
  Having grown up reading the books, part of the appeal of these essays is reminiscence, but it's also interesting (if unsurprising) as a librarian to see the lasting impact that books have on young people. In the Data-Sitters chapter, Maria Sachiko Cecire writes
  
  "studying a partially ghostwritten adolescent girls' series [...] may seem to some like a fun nostalgia trip at best and a waste of time at worst. But analyzing children's and young adult literature can lay bare the structures that silently shape our everyday interactions and most sacred beliefs."
  
  Also I'm a Mary Anne/Claudia with Kristy-like big ideas, in case you wondered.
• 
  Jes

  Ranking non-fiction and essay collections is so hard! I really loved a lot of these pieces and quite a few of them really resonated with me. I'm really glad that so many of the authors here had the similar experience of longing for closeness and friendship as young, closeted gay girls. I read the BSC series obsessively from fourth grade to the summer before sixth grade. They were a special treat-- way below my assigned reading level but perfect for a little black girl who was denied socialization by her restrictive religion.
  
  For as much as many of these essays appealed to me, just as many of them made me roll my eyes. (Some) Gen X and millennials are so annoying. The worst offenders for me were Can Mary-Anne Save the Soul? and I Am My Own Mr. Mom-- they felt like self-righteous thinkpieces on gender, the former of which had little to do with BSC. I was also a little annoyed that the only black women and WOC brought in for essays wrote about either Jessi or Claudia-- like. Of course there's interesting stuff to be said about BSC handles race but it felt slightly token-y to restrict non-white writers to solely their takes on race. Don't get me wrong, all the WOC-written pieces were amazing, but it was a little frustrating. The two exceptions, Getting Over Claudia and Calories and Kristy's Invisible Hand... were truly excellent and some of best pieces of the collection, to me. Creators of color are allowed to have feelings about things other than racism and racial identity!
  
  Anyways. This is a (mostly) great collection that has something to offer for anyone who loves middle grade novels.
• 
  Sharon

  With a foreword by Mara Wilson (follow her on Twitter, she's great) this is a collection of essays and artwork from grown-up former readers of the beloved children's book series written by Ann M. Martin (and many, many, MANY others).
  
  The writers discuss what The Baby-Sitters Club meant to them growing up, and how parts of it still stay with them today. Things like Kristy's assumed queerness, Dawn's food restriction, Stacey's diabetes, Mary-Anne's overprotective Dad are discussed alongside things like negative and positive representation, ableism, racism, feminism and chronic illness.
  
  I expected this collection to be much more lighthearted than it turned out to be, and I was pleasantly surprised by that. While there are some lighter things in here (the chapter on handwriting analysis was really fun, didn't we all go through that "hearts over the letter i" phase?!), I really enjoyed the more serious essays and the discussions on representation and what that meant for each reader who saw a little bit of themselves in a BSC member.
  
  If you are or were a fan of the BSC, I would recommend this collection.
  
  Thank you to the publisher for the ARC via Netgalley.
• 
  Ashley

  I wasn't fully sold on this book when I first heard of it. Yes,
  The Baby-sitters Club is my life, but I didn't think I cared to read about how it affected other people; I like to discuss BSC with other fans, but I want it to be a conversation, not somebody's essay. And I already have SO MUCH Baby-sitters Club junk, do I really need more? (FYI Future Ashley: the answer is always yes!!!) In short, despite the subject matter, I didn't really think that I cared about this book.
  
  As you can tell from the four-star rating, and that I'm writing about my apprehension in the past tense, I ended up really enjoying this book. Right off the bat, the foreword is by
  Mara Wilson, so it really revs up the nostalgia factor. But not in a gimmicky way; you can tell that Ms Wilson was (and still is) as passionate about the girls from Stoneybrook as the other contributors to this book and all of us fans, both old and new. I liked the way the book was sectioned off: about friendship, about fashion, about representation, about entrepreneurship. For the most part, I found the essays were very enjoyable; some were informative, some made me think. Truthfully, I skipped the Data-sitters Club entry, as it was a little too technical and jargon-y for my liking, but that was the only one that I didn't read in its entirety. And some of the artwork was hard to read on my phone, but I'll definitely go back and reread them when I buy the book. Yes, this is definitely a to-buy. (But then again, it's BSC. It was always going to be something I'd have to have in my collection.)
  
  But what really sold me was seeing my longtime BSC friend mentioned multiple times in the essay about fanfic. I literally gasped out loud and started geeking out: "I know her! I know her!!" ;)
  
  I received this book free from
  NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thanks!
• 
  Katie Fitzgerald

  This collection of tributes to the Baby-sitters Club comes at the iconic 1980s series from all directions. There are essays about the characters' clothing, their sexual orientations, the books' feminist triumphs and failings, and the books' treatment of race, as well as reflections on lessons learned, expertise acquired, and ideas inspired by Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, Stacey, Dawn, Jessi, and Mallory. Much of the content read more into these books than I would typically want, but there were some highlights for me, including an essay by Jack Shepherd from The Baby-sitters Club Club podcast and one about Stacey's diabetes. For readers who grew up with these books, these essays are a fun walk down memory lane even if some of them may read into the stories things that aren't really there.
• 
  Carianne Carleo-Evangelist

  I really, really loved this book. I totally grew up on the Babysitters Club, although I was the leading end of it so outgrew them sooner than the Millennials most associated with this series. There were some passages referred to that vividly came right back to me.
  
  The authors in this collection are probably about my age and represented a good cross section of race, gender and age exploring the same theories. I loved how they also incorporated things as small as the characters' handwriting. While BSC did some things right for the era in which it was published, especially in addressing blended families, there are definitely some areas where it could have been better: Queer representation, ableism, colorism in terms of Jessi's skin color and more. I was surprised to discover there's a thriving fan fic community for the series as well. Because I had wandered away from the series, I had missed Ann M. Martin's subsequent coming out, which in hindsight was not surprising.
  
  A good read.
• 
  Sarah

  I would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. I loved the BSC growing up, and Stacey was my favourite sitter. As I grew up and aged out, I never finished the series. As an adult, over the last few years, I reread the entire series in reading order and fell in love with it all over again, this time loving Claudia and Mary Anne. I enjoyed this book for what it was worth, the nostalgia and feels of years gone by. It is nice to see that BSC is still alive and well in 2021 and that doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
• 
  Melanie

  This collection of essays (and artwork!) about the BSC made my heart explode with delight. If your childhood was transformed and immeasurably enriched by a bunch of entrepreneurial weirdo girls in Stoneybrook, CT, your heart may also explode!
• 
  The Kawaii Slartibartfast

  I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and Chicago Review Press.
  
  This book is chockful of essays and art about the Baby-sitters Club and I am over the moon about it.
  
  Its a funny,and sad, bold and intimate look at how this bestselling series affected so many.
  
  There's also a fair amount of criticism to be found, too.
  
  I'd definitely recommend this one to any Baby-sitters Club fan.
• 
  Kyle Kesatie

  I loved The Baby-sitters Club growing up. I had so many books from the series, and considered it my favorite series. This set of essays was written by a bunch of adults who grew up with the series just as I did, and it talked about the impact The Baby-sitters Club series had on them and on society. Some of the essays were really interesting, like how minority characters were seen as great representation for people of those races at the time but how they would be written differently if the series was written today. Others fell flat or read way too much into characters or plotlines that Ann M. Martin probably never intended to be read into so deeply. It also seemed like many of the essays centered around the same theme (how many essays do we really need exploring the possibility that Kristy was written as a queer character or talking about how awesome Claudia was or the exploration of race as an issue in the series? ) It seriously felt like I was reading several versions of the same essay written by different people at times. I feel like the book could have been a lot better if it had more diverse essays, focusing on different aspects of how the Babysitter's Club impacted its readers rather than the same 2-3 topics. Many of the essays left me wanting to know more about how the series impacted individuals, and I felt frustrated that the essay author did not go into more detail. All in all, a nice trip down memory lane, but not a very well written collection of essays.
• 
  Lacy

  For a whole generation of readers, the Baby-Sitters Club is something more than nostalgia. It’s a series that expanded our understanding of life and ourselves.

  
  The Baby-Sitters Club will always be special to me because it's why I'm such an avid reader now. It was one of the defining things from childhood. And with the world of fandom today, we are getting to experience that love all over again. We now are finding each other in the nostalgia of things that got us, the ones who were different, the ones who sometimes 'just didn't fit in', through all of our different childhoods. And you get to see various accounts of that throughout the essays in this collection. I truly enjoyed reading it and will be adding it to my collection when it's officially published.
  
  

  You wish you were a Stacey, but you know you’re a Kristy. And there is something so embarrassing about that fact—something you won’t recognize until you’re much older and realize it’s because Kristy is a little queer and so are you.
  
  
  The BSC earned this lasting legacy, in part, by making inclusive values and progressive beliefs part of the series’ core— values like honoring diverse voices and experiences, promoting empathy, and suggesting that girls make great leaders. These values were far from standard in young adult lit in 1986, when Kristy’s Great Idea first popped up on the scene. But today, they form the backbone of modern YA.

  
  And now I'm off to Ao3 to look up Byron Pike (Mallory’s younger brother) and Jeff Schafer (Dawn's younger brother) fics because I. NEVER. KNEW. IT. WAS. A. THING. while I impatiently wait for BSB season 2 on Netflix.
  
  
  
  ***Thank you to Netgalley and Chicago Review Press for providing me with a review copy.
• 
  sarah

  This was a nostalgic impulse read for me. While I have always loved reading, The Baby-sitter's Club was the first series I remember really falling in love with reading. I got really into the series apparently after its conclusion and peak, having discovered one of the books at my local Goodwill in what had to be around 2009. Anywhere that sold second hand books- goodwill, yard sales- then was somehow an ample source for finding BSC books then. I fell in love with the series through the remnants of it, with the last book being published a few months before I was born. Having not had any internet access or the care to look into these books beyond my reading of them as a kid (other than a biography of Ann M. Martin that fourth grade me decided to write for a school project), I had no concept up until a few years ago how prolific these books actually were for so many people, and how many other people too, had formative experiences with them.
  
  Most of the writers of this essay collection seemed to have the experience of getting into the series when it was the most popular, and in this case, it gave me such a disconnect from them considering the wildly different contexts we read these books in. Reading is such a personal and subjective experience anyways, so pop culture essays like this run the risk of only being enjoyable if you had a shared experience and that's kind of what happened here. Some of these essays were unnecessary and repetitive, and I think that the ones speaking to the gay lenses that these books could have been looked at with were the ones that resonated the most with me.
• 
  Mackenzie Walton

  My enduring affection for the Baby-Sitters Club is a little-kept secret, but sometimes I end up identifying too closely to the series; to see it thoughtlessly criticized or mischaracterized can feel personal (as the title says, I AM the Baby-Sitters Club, in that regard).
  
  So I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the essays and comics in this book. Critiques were by and large thoughtful and necessary—I was particularly intrigued by chapters on series ableism, the treatment of adoption, sizeism, and of course, the depiction of Jessi from the point of view of several Black readers. Lighter fare include looks at BSC online fandom, the fashion of the series, and the creation of the sitters' handwriting, all of which were absolute highlights.
  
  You don't need encyclopedic knowledge of a topic to have feelings about it and an important perspective to share, but there are a handful of factual errors that potentially undercut the arguments of some essays in a small way, or might have enriched them had the author known. The BSC series is huge, though, so it'd be unfair to dock stars for that.
• 
  Joanna

  This book was interesting, but very repetitive. The same ideas are presented over & over again by different authors. I’m sure within a series as vast as the BSC there could’ve been a lot more variety in this essay collection. I also wasn’t wild that so much criticism was thrown at a 30-year-old series just because it would’ve been written differently today. You have to evaluate the series with a 1990s eye, not a 2020s eye. The artwork, on the other hand, was all great!
• 
  Crizzle

  This was wonderfully nerdy and profound for a book of essays and art on the lasting legacy of the BSC, written by people from all walks of life ranging from mid-40s to mid-20 year olds. They write on things the BSC books got right and wrong regarding race and colorism, ableism, families, deadbeat dads, adoption, body image, LGBTQ issues (Ann M. Martin is a lesbian?!?) and more… I was so glad to see a full segment covering “Kristy and Mr. Mom” because it put to words all the weird feelings I had when I saw my daughter reading that title in the 21st century. Oooh there was also an article on the handwriting of the BSC and the history of American handwriting that was so so nerdy and soul-soothing.
  A couple segments I highlighted:
  Maria, a professor of children’s literature (my fave college course!) was recounting her interview for the Rhodes scholarship and was made to feel like being a scholar of children’s literature is insignificant in “fighting the world’s fight”. “Eventually I lost my temper and lashed back against the bias implicit in the idea that something associated with childhood, women’s work, the humanities, and care is necessarily trivial—when in fact these are often the bedrocks on which lives and societies are built.”
  “Studying a partially ghostwritten adolescent girls’ series like the Baby-Sitters Club may seem to some like a fun nostalgia trip at best and a waste of time at worst. But analyzing children’s and young adult literature can lay bare the structures that silently shape our everyday interactions and most sacred beliefs.”
  
  “Growing up means a lot of things for the BSC members. It means learning how to stand up for yourself and be independent (a frequent Mary Anne arc). It means being accountable to your responsibilities when you’d rather be painting or reading Nancy Drew novels (Claudia). It means honoring your body’s needs (Stacey). Cultivating sensitivity and patience (Kristy). Facing loss and uncertainty, and learning how to seek support from—and provide support for—family and friends (all of the BSC members).”
  
  While reading this, I had the thought that every BSC reader should write their own story on how it affected our growing years!
• 
  Rebecca

  I loved these essays, especially the ones about the ways that BSC was ahead of its time while also being a product of it, and the way that they tackle depictions of race, disability, queerness, and feminism in the series. Probably the essays I enjoyed the most were the ones about what Jessi meant to Black readers, and what her story did well and could have done better.
  
  I only realized after the essay I would have loved to see: Abby isn't in this book at all. I know she wasn't a member of the Baby-Sitters Club for long, but when she came along, I got to have Jewish representation -- here was a BSC member who had hair like mine and came from my culture. In a book of essays examining issues of identity for so many of the babysitters, it was a pretty glaring omission for me to not see Abby and the presentation of Jewish identity in this collection at all.
• 
  Jessi

  I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.
  
  As a big fan of BSC growing up, I was so excited to get approved for this book! I loved that Mara Wilson (aka Matilda) wrote the intro- that hooked me right away. I enjoyed the mix of in-depth analysis of the series and characters and the essays that reminisced on different characters, as well as the original artwork. There were a couple essays that I ended up skimming through more than others because they just were not super interesting to me, but I still think they had a place in this collection. To me, this was a wonderful melange of nostalgia and literary study. If you were ever a BSC fan, this book is for you!
• 
  Sara

  Oh, this was so good! Like a balm to my soul! The Baby-Sitters Club was so extremely important to me, and it's fascinating how many people had the same experience. Many of these essays call out problematic issues with the original series, while still acknowledging their positive impact. For example, issues around race and disability were handled in less-than-ideal ways, but these books were published during a time when people were thrilled to see representation in a fully-fledged character at all. Basically, the BSC books took kids/YA literature seriously, and kids appreciated that. I certainly did!
  
  (It's amazing how many details I remember from the books--because I read them so many times. Tights with clocks on them? Zipper earrings? "Sheep are in." Allllll the Pike kids' names? Oh my GOSH, good times!)
• 
  Beth

  3.5 stars. A fun and thought-provoking walk down memory lane, with many of the essays proving that there is a niche for everything anymore (two grown men reading BSC on a podcast, for example, or the women who make up "The Data Sitters Club" and use machine learning and data science to break down the books). I do wish there would've been more images included - the various writers describe some of the covers of the books and it would've been nice to see those images for more context.
• 
  Aryssa

  3.7 stars
• 
  Lindsay

  Amazing. jealous that they didn't get me to take part/so happy that there are more people like me.
• 
  Jen Petro-Roy

  Super smart collection of essays and art.