I super duper wanted to be Kristy. With Stacy's fashion sense.

Oh my lord. I had so many of those books!! Also, The Saddle Club, and those cheerleader books. Such a gigantic bookworm was I. These sites are ultra-cool.

I've been reading these sites for months - they're pretty much the greatest things ever.

Favorite BSC member? I identified the most with Mallory, since she wanted to be a writer like I did, and also since we're the oldest of HUGE families. But I always looked more like Dawn. What a dilemma.

I recently re-watched the BSC movie. It was kinda surreal. I had forgotten how uptight Mary Anne's dad was.

I also used to watch the SVH TV show, although I never liked it much (but now I have the theme song stuck in my head, bleh!).

Personally I loved the Encyclopedia Brown books, the Bunnicula series, and of course anything by Judy Blume.

But Mary B, Mary Anne is all he has left...
I read everything as a kid, all the good stuff and the umm, not as classic stuff. I loved BSC. I was definitely Kristy, but Ionged to be Claudia with the crazy artsy outfits.

Oooh, The Saddle Club really was an awesome series too. Almost forgot about that one. And I also found Sweet Valley Saga to be quite fascinating.

The BSC book pictured above, Claudia and Mean Janine, was my first BSC book and I remember getting it on my birthday...Claudia was my favorite too, the fun outfits, hiding candy in her room, etc, and I was angry when a friend likened me to Mary-Anne.

My friends and I treid to set up our own baby-sitters club which proved a difficult and dissappointing endeavor...

OH. MY. GOD. Awesome. Did any of you dorks watch any of the BSC videos? The guy that played Logan was a dreamboat, and of course I loved him b/c he was from KENTUCKY!

Oh, when I was younger than SVT/SVH and BSC age, I read Trixie Belden. I have her linked on my blog page, in fact. :) Cowgirl!!!

I was Mary Anne. And deep down in my little calcified, bookwormish heart, I knew it.
I also used the mom's library card trick, since my local library only allowed me to take out SEVEN books, which was how many I often read in a day (not only was I Mary Anne, but I also had few friends and did not like going outdoors, or even outside my bedroom. Because there are no books outdoors.).

I was definitely mallory... I also loved Jessi because she was a graceful ballerina, which I was not. This is so weird... that insane Jezebel thread has got us all (me included) talking about YA books.

So, one of those moments indelibly burned into my consciousness.

I was telling my mom that one of my friend's moms literally read every book before she was allowed to - making sure it wasn't inappropriate for her age or something. My mother looked at me in absolute horror and said, "Even the Babysitter's Club?"

Later, she would go on to talk about censorship and trusting your child and encouraging literary exploration. But her first reaction was pure unadulterated horror that the woman was exposing herself to the stuff I considered good reading.

I had Naked Lunch action figures.

Aww, seeing those Babysitters' Club and Sweet Valley High covers takes me RIGHT BACK to the days of cruising through those books week after week. Fantastic links, Ann. Thanks for them. :D

Claudia was my favorite too!!

But I was OBSESSED with the Sweet Valley Twins (never really got into Sweet Valley High, however). Loved those books. Every weekend, before ballet class, my dad and I would hang out at the library and I would check out what new Sweet Valley Twins books they had. I was also an Animorphs fanatic.

Thanks for this Ann. I have to agree with Jessica-- I wanted to be hip like Stacy but spunky and resourceful like Kristy. And I wanted a little sister named Karen. No fair making the birthday girl be Logan!

I read the SVH books too, but to me they never held a candle to Babysitter's Club. I got rid of all my books in high school and I so regret it now.

My grandma used to tape the HBO show for me...I still have a tape with four of them that my friends and I have been meaning to watch during a BSC Reunion Party.

And I was definitely Mary Anne. Did anyone else start their own BSC? And did anyone else bug their elementary teachers incessantly for the Book Order forms/arrival? I was a Book Order addict.

omg, ann, i love you. i was obsessed with BSC. I can still list the first 20 book titles... in order. Every single time I go into a used bookstore, I check to see if they have any old BSC books.

I was totally Stacy.

Oh BSC... I was a Claudia fan girl, too. In elementary school we had a "dress like your favorite book character" day during reading month and I went all out to dress like Claudia. I was also one of the few people who bothered putting any effort into her costume...some people suck like that.

I would talk my younger sister into pooling our money to buy more BSC books on our monthly trips to the mall. I had every one the first few years. My dad threw them out when I was in college...still haven't forgiven that.

BUT...my mom found a stash of them at a garage sale. Gosh, she was a good momma. *sniff*

Stacy kicked ass, but I loved Claudia the most.

Oh, the nostalgia! I knew about the last blog you mentioned but I'll have to check out the others. I had all the books, plus the BSC VHS tapes--in short, I was obsessed :)

...Oh, wait, I forgot the best part about the BSC.

I definitely wrote my own BSC story. That's how much I wanted to be Ann M. Martin and/or part of the BSC. And I wrote it on vacation and I was SO PISSED when my dad made me go on this horseback riding 'adventure' through the woods...I could have been writing it in my sweet cabin bunk bed, instead! And when I typed it on our computer, it was done in WordPerfect and saved on this enormous floppy disk. Even though I got mad at dad for the forced horseback ride, I hope he saved that document somewhere...

oh man, thanks for linking, these sites are amazing! i would read just about any book put in front of me as a kid, and consequently that meant all the SVH and BSC books.

i wish i had more time to re-read SVH and analyze, but i think i've killed enough brain cells already and i barely have time to read adult books as it is. maybe someday i'll revisit.

i always loved claudia's outfits. clarissa (of explains it all fame) seemed to be a student of the claudia kishi atelier.

OH MY GODDDDD i miss this so much!!! i absolutely loved BSC!!! and yes my friends and i tried very hard to start our own but it never worked, and we were never as cool and interesting as them, haha. i could never figure out who i was most like...I think I was sorta like Mary Anne but not THAT shy...with an artistic side like Claudia (Claudia & Dawn were my favorites!!)

I also loved SVH!! I still have the one where they trick that girl Brooke into thinking there's a triplet...and also I read the weird ones about werewolves...what was up with that?

and yes gabbi, I too was an avid animorphs fan. I am still upset that poor Tobias (my absolute favorite...he was a huge hunk) was perpetually a hawk. I wanted to make out with him.

Claudia and Mean Janine was my first, too. To be honest, I think out of all the characters I was most like Janine. (I would never have admitted it then, though). I liked Mallory because of her red hair and writerly ambitions, and Stacey because she was so trendy--and from New York! I definitely identified with shy, sheltered Mary Anne the most, and I was happy that she was the first to have a boyfriend. Wow--what great memories. I wrote Ann M. Martin a fan letter and received an autographed photo in return, which I cherished.

I was all about Mary Anne. She was shy and timid, but rebellious, like myself.

And can i just say I was SO traumatized by Elizabeth and Sam's little fling and Sam's subsequent death in SVH? Talk about sending a message about infidelity.

ZOMG! I was a Baby-Sitter's Club freak! I always wanted to be Claudia. When I was little (like between 5 and 10), I had a weird Asian fetish. I actually tried to teach myself Japanese when I was 7 or 8 by getting a Japanese-English dictionary from the library (which of course, didn't help). Maybe it all stemmed from Claudia, since I didn't actually know any Asian people. (The west side of Cleveland has European Catholics and some Puerto Rican catholics and 4 Jews, two of which were my mom and I. That was fun. *cough*.)
Did anyone read the Boxcar Children?
And I can't not do it...
Say hello to your friends
(Baby-Sitters Club)
Say hello to the people who care
Say hello to your friends
'Cause you know that your friends are always theeerrreee!

Too old to read any of these as a kid, though I will admit to flipping through them during my years as a bookstore salesclerk ("No, I wasn't reading on company time, they fell open in my hands."). But even without a personal attachment to the titles, dairiburger was a hysterical read.

guh, ive been trolling used bookstores trying to rebuild my libraries of both series, as my mother did god knos what with my books. i was a claudia fan but even moreso i was obsessed with the rich bitch lila fowler in the sweet valley high books. i had the sweet valley high board game and i always played her. i liked that she was a brunette and sorta mean and bad unlike the pretty blond nice twins (i kno jessica was bad, but still, lila was worse, plus she had a cool name).

this post makes my day.

I read the SVH books obsessively in seventh and eighth grades ... and you know what? For all the worrying about how Barbies fuck up girls' body image and self-esteem, the SVH books were a LOT more damaging to me in the long run. I never really expected to look like Barbie, but each SVH installment just had to harp on the twins' "perfect size 6 figures" and flawless skin, blonde hair, enviable wardrobes, scads of friends and love interests, and upper-middle-class lifestyle. It took me a few years to figure out that the SVH world was as fake as Barbie's boobs.

Another great site along these lines: Blogger Beware: The Goosebumps Blog, dedicated to the unintentionally funny children's horror series.

Oh my. I LOVED SVH, with a little BSC on the side. I had ALL the SVH books #1-100. After they hit 100, I was getting a little old, so I stopped, thank god. I'm actually kind of ashamed to admit now how much I really liked those books. As someone already pointed out, the perfect size 6 figure thing was a little much. Still, Elizabeth cared more for brains than looks, and there was always geeky Enid, and Jessica was smart too although she pretended not be. And I'll never forget the descriptions of Todd Wilkin's "coffee-colored brown eyes...." Sigh.

aaah BSC..i swear i have about 70 of those books in my cupboard still. I was part of some book club where it sent you one a week. I loved them! I wasn't really like any of them but I always wanted to be stacey, and I loved Claudia's fashion sense (remember trying to copy her a few times...oh dear lord.) My mum didn't really approve, no idea why. Oh, and also I tried to set up my own BSC, but I was like, 11 and no one round my area has babysitters younger than 15! Those were the days...

nerdalert, I loved the Boxcar children! I loved their ingenuity and independence.
I remember the "perfect size 6" stuff in SVH too, though I was much more into BSC. I haven't reread them in adulthood, so I'm not sure how they read with a feminist lens. Can't be that bad though, since we all turned out pretty okay.
I do remember that I either had to take them out of the library, or buy them with my own money- my mum considered them one step above Just Seventeen.

You have officially ruined any potential productivity of mine for the rest of the afternoon!

I love Elizabeth Wakefield!!!

Leslie: Oh, Tobias. *sigh* He really was a hunk. I was so mad that he was trapped.

The memories come pouring back...I was all about the BSC for a few years there. Had them all lined up from 1 to about 65, plus the "Super Editions" where they'd all take a long trip somewhere, and somehow the parents of their sittees would let them take the kids on the trip...I always thought it would be so cool to go on a huge trip with my favorite sitter. I guess I'm the only feministing Dawn -- loved her: athletic, with a kind of cool, California style. I suppose she did appear a little later into the series though.

I read the books and me and my childhood BFF passed them back and forth each friday. She was Maryanne, I was Claudia. My sister and I found one of the BSC videos a few years back, popped it in and laughed our proverbial asses off.
Hey, they kept me occupied as a kid, but a few complaints. The characters seemed a bit one-dimensional, if ya know what I mean. For instance, "Dawn stepped into her Birks and ate a granola bar, because in case you couldn't tell she's a total fuckin hippie." Just saying. And the strange cover art was a literal interpretation of the book.
Anyway, good stuff, thanks for the trip down memory lane.

OMG I READ BOTH OF THOSE SERIES RELIGIOUSLY I SERIOUSLY HAD OVER 150 BOOKS OF EACH.

. . . that is all.

I never read BSC or SVH.(Too old!) But I haunted my local library for probably similar series. I was never so happy as when I found a new series of books! I read the Happy Hollisters, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, the Hardy Boys, and anything by Beverly Cleary, among others. I especially remember Sue Barton,...nurse. Sue was everything from a student nurse to a visiting nurse, to a chief nurse, etc. I guess she had an impact on me since I became an RN myself.(of course my RN mother was a greater influence.) I think back to how young and idealistic I was at the time and wonder where the time goes. *sigh*

I actually liked SVU when the twins went to college because it seemed a bit more mature. Some of the books dealt with date rape, unplanned pregnancy, and stalking. Still, they did always managed to mention the girls' size 6 figures.

Did anyone else read the Alice books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor. I loved them because they dealt with teenage awkwardness and sex questions in a kind of Judy Blume style. I actually still like reading them.

lol I had a guilty addiction to Babysitters Club. Even at 7 I was totally anti anything girly... But I loved them. I would INSIST I didn't read them but I did.

Weird about the library card though, because here kids can get 20 but adults can only get 10. And no fees, so I just used to get out 20 and return them when I remember :P

Yay! I'm not the only person who grew up a BSC nerd! I was totally Mary Anne (but I did hide candy in my room like Claudia).

And theemu323, that link reminded me of another childood obsession of mine... Fear Street!

OMG!
My Aunt Donna gave me BOXES of Sweet Valley High because she had some kind of subscription when she was a kid. (I'm 21) Sooo.. I remember a convo I had once with my mom as I paused from reading Sweet Valley High.
Me: Mom, what does 'seduce' mean?
Mom: Megan, I don't know if you're old enough to be reading those books....
I had to just guess from context clues what "seduce" meant.

By the way: this was when I was in 3rd grade.

I adored BSC. I really want to reread them, plus all the ones that came out after I outgrew them.

I was mildly devastated when I learned they were ghost written, though. As a kid it never occurred to me that Ann M Martin would need help publishing five new BSC books a month.

I read SVH all through the 3rd and 4th grade, and looking back, I am starting to feel like they were entirely responsible for many of my neuroses growing up.

WHY was I so obsessed with the makeover? Even into high school? I think it's because that, in Sweet Valley, anything can be cured with looking beautiful. I sooo wanted to be Elizabeth Wakefield.

Sigh.

But I did love them at the time. I also learned to skip the first 10 pages of every book though, to get past the "sun-kissed blond hair like silk" and the "eyes like the ocean" bullshit.

Looking at the dairiburger was like looking into my nine year old soul. And laughing.

Oh, man, memories. I loved BSC and SVH. I also read some of the Full House novelizations. I loved Goosebumps, and eventually segued into Animorphs. I'm still working on the Animorphs collection, and I'll probably be able to finagle the series from my brother when I get my apartment and start moving things in. :)

Oh my GOD...I had let SVH slide to the back of my mind and go dormant until it was revived by the luscious, inimitable FUG GIRLS - www.gofugyourself.com - and now I find this - it's crack. In 4th grade, my then-BFF and I became so mutually obsessed with The (F'ing) Wakefield Twins that we started our very OWN library: a private library, with two members, who simply bought and swapped - ahem, CIRCULATED, THANK YOU - SVH books as fast as $5/week allowances would permit. We had our own cards, and sign-out logs...it was all quite elaborate and complex. The only way it could have been more like a real library is if we actually borrowed them from a library...and now that I think of it, I don't really understand why we didn't. Not like we weren't both there all the time.

I also read Baby-Sitter's Club, of course, and the Cheerleaders series (where the hell is Tarenton? New Jersey? Minnesota? Confusing), but my real literary vice, "back in the day," was the John Benton series. Ohhhhhh, how my mother hated him and his books, but bless her for preserving my freedom to explore, anyway. Each book was named after a different girl - Candy, Stephanie, Valerie - and in each book, said heroine would engage in a lurid, depraved, titillating life of crime, which nearly always ended in hooking or stripping or giving "massages with happy endings" - SCANDALOUS! HORRIFYING! DELICIOUS!!! And of course, in the last 3 pages, the Bentons would swoop in with their wayward-girl ministry and bring the hussies to Jesus.

My poor mother must have choked on her own bile watching her daughter devour that pap, but she knew me too well to make them any more forbidden. Thank god I don't have kids...I bet those Bratz Dolls actually have Massage with Happy Ending playsets...but no Benton Missionary Minivans to the Rescue. Poor Bratz....

Another site you might like is 1Bruce1, which is the LJ snark community. Be sure to read the posts on Crazy!Margo.

Meggers, I watched Gigi when I was 12 or so (for those who don't know, it's a musical in which a young girl is prepared to follow her family's tradition of becoming a kept woman only to wind up with True Love with Louis Jordan instead) and asked what exactly the career was that her aunts wanted her to follow. All Mum would tell me was that Gigi was supposed to be "friendly with men" which seemed awfully trivial for Jordan to get so upset about.

I was never a big fan of the BSC books, but I was an AVID devourerer of every Sweet Valley High book I could get my hands on. Oh, Elizabeth! Why, why did you always put up with Jessica's abuse with such a selfless silence?! Grow a backbone, woman!

That said, I do think the Scholastic BSC graphic novels (drawn by Raina Telgemeier) are great.

I actually went and got a typepad account just so I could join in this conversation. We never had money, so I would hit the library HARD for SVH and SVT and BSC books (and Encyclopedia Brown, and the Boxcar Children, and anything by Judy Blume) and then when we'd go to my cousin's for family gatherings, I'd lock myself in her room with her ample stash of SVH's and Archie Comics, and only come out for meals. As for your 'Read to Succeed' poster, my husband bought me this poster from the library that I love, with the WIld Things frolicing amongst a pile of books, and the words 'Reading is Fun!' across the bottom. This poster has the place of honor in our office. And I'm 25.

I love that Judy Blume also writes adult novels that deal with similar issues that are in her children's books, like sexuality and relationships.

I read The Boxcar Children. I liked them a lot better than the BSC, although I did read both series.

I am a big fan of Judy Blume. Sadly, there are also millions of people who despise her because her books contain what they called 'disgusting and degrading' information. She has constantly ranked in the Top Five in banned books. I'm thinking about restarting my Judy Blume Collection for the first time in 12 years.