Baby Sitters Club
 

The Baby Sitters Club series came up while I was out at dinner with my friends last night.. don't ask, I have no idea why we were talking about this! Did anyone else ever read the books OR own the movies that were like 30 minute episodes?

Tonight I dug out a BSC book I found buried in my closet for old times sake. :D

I had every book, the board game, the dolls, the movie, I watched the show, my friend and I even started a babysitters club (but we never babysat). It makes me sad that they don't have them at the stores anymore:(

I used to have a huge, huge, huge collection of these books! I don't know where they went now, and the only one I can find is "Jessi's Baby-Sitter" (the one when the mean Ramsey aunt moves in and won't let Jessi do anything, including taking baby-sitting jobs AND going to BSC meetings (Mean Auntie actually told Jessi that she couldn't go to the meeting because she didn't know who Claudia is!!!!!) I also have one of the videos (it has a pink case and Claudia is the main character in it).

I wish I could find the rest of my collection. I loved the Super Specials, especially the one where they went to Vermont and the one where they went to New York. I also owned a few of the mystery series spin-offs. I read BSC until I was about 12 1/2 and even owned the special book about Logan!

ETA: I met Ann M Martin when I was about 11 years old and she signed my Super Special 4 (the one where they were lost on the island)!! :)

My copy of "Jessi's Baby-Sitter" is also signed, but it was to my cousin, who never took it home with her.

The local bookstores still carry the BSC books.

I used pretend like I was Claudia just because I'm Japanese too. I could spell better than she could, though.

It's safe to say that I have every book including the Super Specials. I'd buy the 4-Packs from Costco every chance I got.

I have the Board Game, the videos, and the books. Not the dolls though...I felt like I was too old for them.

All my BSC things are in a protected storage bin!

I remember I think I was in HS or college by the time Ann M Martin wrote the last one. They graduated from SMS, and it was such a nice end!

I had tons of books and I read almost all of them -- plus I had the board game, one or two of the 30-minute movies, and I'm sure I had some other random stuff as well.

One day last year I was feeling nostalgic and made my then-boyfriend watch the BSC movie with me.


I liked Sweet Valley High better, though.

My favorite was the Sweet Valley Saga...the epic that told about the Wakefield women. :)

Those were awesome.

My two favorite parts were the ones who were in the POW camp in WWII (I think) and the Roaring Twenties section when one of the twins set up the other one's boyfriend for having alcohol during prohibition.

Memories!

I liked the Baby Sitters Club, but when I was younger I read the "Baby Sitter's Little Sister" series about Kristy's stepsister Karen... anybody remember this?

Oh, I was a huge Sweet Valley Fan. I preferred them to the BSC! In 2nd grade I religiously read Sweet Valley Kids, and in 4th &5th grade I read Sweet Valley Twins. Never really got into Sweet Valley High though. I tried to read some of them and the characters seemed to have changed... Amy wasn't Elizabeth's best friend anymore, etc. Nor did I ever watch the series.

i had a ton of BSC books, and i was really into, but in a rage of "cleaning the little kid away" in 9th grade i gave them all to goodwill.
last year i got sad about it. i wanted to read some. i was in the mood for an abby centered mystery special. sigh.

I absolutely loved all things BSC. I had all the books, including every Super Special. My sister is 6 years younger than me and continued the collection after I grew out of it.

Favorite Super Specials: The Disney World one, the one where they got stuck on the island, and the Vermont one.

I was also a HUGE fan of the Baby-Sitter's Little Sister books. We had all of those, too. I think all this stuff is in a bin in our attic.

And the BSC movie was the best.

I never really got into all the Sweet Valley stuff, but I did have some of the Sweet Valley Kids books when I was young. I had a few Sweet Valley High books one of my cousins or aunts handed down to me, but I wasn't a big fan.

I'm still on winter break and I think I'm going to dig these things of of the attic....

I was a HUGE fan of the Baby Sitter's Club. When I was in 4th grade, I thought being a babysitter was the coolest thing ever LOL. If I remember correctly, I think my favorites were Claudia, Kristy and Mary-Anne, because I seemed to own most of their books more than anything else. I also read alot of nancy drew books too.

Does anyone remember when the movie came out?

the movie came out in august of 1995. i have the movie, the 30 min videos, and a ton of the books. i still adore the BSC. i still go to the library and read the others that i do not have.

same thing with SVH. i have episodes recorded on tape, and i have a ton of books.


i feel so silly when i admit to that. but it is apart of me that refuses to die. it relaxes me when i am stressed

I liked it too! Did anyone read the other Saga book, about the Wakefield side? I never did.

Yes, and they had a second series that told the story of the Wakefield men. It started off in the early 1900s with a Wakefield man meeting Alice, a Swedish girl, on board a ship that was heading for Ellis Island. It continues over the decades with the Wakefield men meeting these women from the same family but fate never seemed to bring them together until the 1960s.

How I remember this stuff is completely beyond me......

Those Sweet Valley Saga books were almost like a dirty romance novel for pre-pubescent girls.

hhe. i read the books. i liked stacy because she was the fashion savvy one. i had the movie too. i used to try to watch the tv show, but i think it played on the disney channel before the disney channel was on regular cable. disney used to show the channel for like 3 days so that you can see what's on it and order the cable channel like how you order hbo or something. it would always come up on different channels and different times. whenever i did catch it on tv, i would be glued to it watching all the shows like bug juice.

(if the bsc wasn't on the disney channel, then my bad. )

I loved BSC. But, I enjoyed the Junior High series more. I was never a fan of Sweet Valley High.

OMG I love this thread.

ah memories!!!!

I was such a huge BSC fan. I had all the books, the board game, the 30 minute movies and the the long feature. Pretty sad huh? :)

My friend and I actually started out own BSC with the Kid Kits and everything. (Remember those?!?)


As for SVH, OMG I loved those books too. My favorite was the saga with the prom. Liz got drunk, drove off with Jess's boyfriend, crashed the car and killed him. She went to trial. Her sister hated her. Everything worked out in the end. But OMG it was this huge drama and I loved it. Probably because the writer usually made them perfect so it was kind of nice to see them not perfect. LOL.

I should mention I also have (I say have because I still have these games boxed up somewhere. I don't have the heart to toss them) the Sweet Valley High game. LOL.

But you forgot that it was Jess that SPIKED LIZ AND SAM'S PUNCH so they got drunk and drove off together. So it was really all Jessica's fault, as usual, that her boyfriend got killed.

I love:
1) that they got drunk off of one spiked cup of punch split between the two of them . . . must have been a big cup.
2) that between the twins, I think they killed off about 20 boyfriends by the time the series was over with. You'd think that sooner or later they'd start getting a reputation.

It's sad that I know all this.

Oh, wow...I was crazy about the Babysitters Club books! I had hundreds of books, but those were my favorites--I had just about every single one, and still do. I also had a lot of the Sweet Valley Twins series, but like somebody else said, I was never big into the Sweet Valley High ones, either. Geez...does this bring back memories.

I loved the BSC! I found a DVD of the BSC in the $5 bin at Walmart about two weeks ago.

I read like two of the SVH college books. The ones where Jess falls in love with the "older" man and Liz starts getting fat. I only had the first two and I never could find anymore :(

I have some SVC books. I have the Sorority Sisters one (when the twins rush their mom's sorority, but Liz hates it) and the very first one too.

orchid2, we have the Karen books! I liked them too except that it made me crazy when the characters wouldn't use contractions. I also got sick of reading the chapter that would always be in there about "why I am Karen Two-Two". We always looked forward to the new Karen book every month!

As for the BSC books, we still have a ton here. ASLFRose adored the videos and I really think that the sisterhood on those was a prime reason that she pledged in college--she wanted that close friendship that the BSC members had!

didn't Jessica get married and pregnant by the 3rd SVU book?
also it pissed me off that Elizabeth thought she was fat cos she moved up from a size 6 to a size 8. boo frickitty hoo.

I was also a big fan of the Baby Sitters Little Sister books.. Karen and Andrew Two-Two. :p I think I was scaring my friends at dinner cuz I could remember Karen's best friends' names (Nancy Dawes and Hannie Papadakis) and her "husband" (Ricky Torres). Those books really stuck with me!

My favorite BSC members were Stacey and Claudia cuz they were obsessed with clothes and Claudia loved junk food. And I loved the Baby Sitters Remember book that had the gold cover with all their signatures raised, and a little story about every one of them!
God now I really wanna read some BSC books!

I used to read a lot of Sweet Valley books but I never really got into the series. I liked the one with the history of the Fowlers.

Did anyone play Karen's favourite game "Let's All Come In"?

My boyfriend swears this is his favorite movie. Sometimes I question his sanity.

I question his sanity too!

I loved the BSC. I wanted to be a baby-sitter so badly when I was younger. Now I look at my younger cousin trying to "baby-sit" all the little kids all the time and I just want to cry because I know I did that too. Then I grew up and realized what brats little kids were. My favorite was Dawn because I thought she was so cool being from Cali and all, but so down to earth at the same time. I think I was a hippie when I was younger or something. I also liked the Baby-Sitter's Little Sister books and the Karen Two-Two chapter always drove me nuts! Honestly, now I look back and I think those books were pretty juvenile... "My name is Karen Two-Two because I have two of everything?" Come on, kid, you're older than 3, act like it.

SVH and SVT were also a favorite of mine. I think those 4 series of books took up most of my reading. Did anyone do those Scholastic book clubs in elementary school? My teacher refused to do it for us in 4th grade and I got so upset that I got my parents to call the school and ask if I could order it through one of the other 4th grade classes. That would have meant that I would have missed out on the newest BSC book! But Liz was my favorite, because she liked writing and was a nerd (let's face it). I never got to the SVU book where she got fat... that's hysterical! I did however, like that she and Todd broke up because he wanted a piece of ass and she wouldn't give it up. Seriously, after dating for all of junior high and high school, you're going to have at least TALKED about it... it shouldn't be a surprise!

So funny.

My school had the Scholastic book club thing. My friends and I were all addicted to the series books, including "Sleep Over Friends" (anyone remember this? It was in the late 80s-early 90s...I also read "Girl Talk" for a while. I think it was a spin off of the game, Girl Talk. There were five girls in that series and they were in 7th grade) There were four (or was it five) girls who had a sleepover club, and they would rotate houses each Friday night.

I was literally obsessed with the Baby-sitters Club in early elementary school. When my sister got in trouble, she wasn't allowed to watch her favorite TV show, but when I got in trouble, I was banned from BSC books for a day.

I have the VHS tapes of the series that used to air on the Disney Channel. During finals, my friends & I watched them, and they are seriously the cheesiest things ever. This summer we discovered a BSC drinking game....

- drink whenever Claudia is described as 'exotic, with her almond-shaped eyes'
- drink whenever Stacey & Dawn get crackers instead of Snickers at a BSC meeting.
& more stuff even cheesier than that.

And on the SVH topic, my favorite was definitely 'The Evil Twin.' Oh, Margo, you crazy girl.

(wow, this is so sad)

Your boyfriend and Kiki's . . . I swear, sometimes I wonder. ;)


Another hilarious thing about Sweet Valley High: NOBODY HAD SEX. Ever. I think it was mentioned once in the entire series and of course it never happened. That one girl, Annie, was a "slut" because she made out with a lot of guys. Anything beyond kissing was pretty much off-limits, although in the earlier books I think Bruce Patman was always trying to go for second base.

And omg, the Margo storyline. That was just ridiculous . . . this girl that looks just like the twins wants to take over their lives! Except then she dies! But she doesn't really die -- she escapes out of the ambulance on the way to the mental hospital! And then she tries to do it again! And then it turns out that SHE has a twin sister too! And then they both try to take over the Wakefields' lives!

I think that was about the time that I stopped reading SVH . . .

I lovveeeddd the BSC! Whenever we went to the Price Club, I would always get the latest box set. I have the upstairs in my parents house and I have thought about giving them to the girls I babysit, but I just can't part with them. :(

I too was a BSC fan. I had all of the books including the Super Specials, Little Sisters. I also collected Sleepover Friends, Sweet Valley High and Sweet Valley Twins.

I only had 1 BSC movie but I had the Jessi doll. Oh the memories,lol.

Or how about drink whenever it's mentioned in the Sweet Valley series that the twins have shoulder-length, sun-streaked blonde hair, sparkling blue-green eyes the color of the Caribbean, cameo skin, and perfect size-six figures? I think that book is responsible for the reason why our generation has such a complex about body fat and blonde hair.....

I donated all my Babysitters Club books to the local library. I seriously had every single one including all their Super Specials. They still had all my books up until a few years ago when they moved the library into a bigger building and got new copies of all their books.

y'all are making me want to head over to the library and take out some bsc and svh books. i loved these things growing up and would re-read them all the time. until my parents moved my freshman year of college and got rid of them all. it was sadness.

I am seriously thinking about reading SVH and SVU books now...thanks a lot :p

And to think i was going to devote my weekend to my national boards and cleaning, HA!

I got those Girl Talk books too and I thought they were sooo good! I was in love with reading at that age, now it's something I so rarely get to do for enjoyment!

i loved the babysitters club books. i didn't have a ton tho because i was outgrowing them as they were first coming out. i still read them tho. i loved svh! i read some of the twins ones, but i didn't read nearly as many. as a child, i was in so many book clubs it was crazy. sometimes i would stay up all night reading (even on school nights) and would get in so much trouble!!! i also read a ton of nancy drew's too. when my mom would take me to kmart, i would go to the book section and read a book until she was finished shopping. of course, then i had to buy the book so i could finish reading it! lol...and those scholastic orders, i am sure i helped my teachers furnish their classroom libraries with all of the books i ordered.

*gasp* Someone else had read these books? I inherited them from my cousin, along with the BSC books and such. I had the Sleepover Friend's Sleepover Guide and tried to convince my mom to throw one of the parties it had in there.

But I never knew anyone else that read them. How funny.