The Baby Sitters Club #01: Kristy's Great Idea (Baby-Sitters Club (Paperback))

by Ann M. Martin

The Baby Sitters Club #01...

by
Ann M. Martin

book data

1,887 ratings, 3.75 average rating, 243 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		29%
4		27%
3		31%
2		8%
1		1%

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published

April 1st 1988 by Scholastic (first published 1986)

details

Paperback, 160 pages

setting

United States

isbn

0590419854 (isbn13: 9780590419857)

description

Follows the adventures of Kristy and the other members of the Baby-Sitters Club as they deal with crank calls, uncontrollable two-year-olds, wild pets…more

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Dec 13, 2007

Ariel rated it:

(review of isbn 0590224735)

recommends it for: Lovers of Life

I am firmly convinced that, years hence, when Ann M Martin no longer graces the mortal coil with her presence, scholars will reflect upon the deceptively simple narrative lines of the Baby-Sitter's Club #1 and will discover the singing truths of human experience encoded in the mundane details of affluent suburban youth.

Like so many heroines before, Kristy attempts to reconcile her desire for autonomy with the crippling social restrictions on young females with her suburban Connectic...more

Like this review? yes (9 people liked it)

2 comments

Jan 08, 2008

amandarocks Lee rated it:

(review of isbn 0590224735)

I am using the first Baby-Sitter's Club to represent the approximately, I don't know, 100 plus BSC novels I not only read, but owned, in my late elementary / early middle school years. I was in love with these novels and even belonged to the BSC Book Club, where two novels (in sequential order) were mailed to me every month (or bimonthly, I don't really remember). I was gifted the BSC board game, which was terrible, but amusing. My sisters and I even used these novels as "textbooks"...more

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Nov 13, 2007

Jessica added it (review of isbn 0590224735)

bookshelves: wee-ones-and-bored-teenagers

Read in January, 1989

recommends it for: maybe little girls who hate to read, if you're really desperate

I can't rate these books, because giving a bad rating would be a lie -- I was crazy about them when I read them -- but giving them a good rating would be misleading because it would lead you to believe that they were good, and they're not. I mean, in a way they must be or they wouldn't have been so popular, but they're definitely Lame, especially when you consider how much incredible children't fiction there is out there.

The closest thing to these books for me is the Doors, one of the ...more

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

23 comments

Nov 14, 2007

Lauren rated it:

(review of isbn 0590224735)

Read in January, 1993

I don't feel like taking the time to add the whole series. But C'mon, you know you read them...all 549085290 of them AND the spin-offs. Looking back, they were terribly written and not realistic at all...But that didn't stop us from dressing like Claudia or trying to start our own BSC.

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Jun 01, 2008

Tina Bryan is currently reading it (review of isbn 0590224735)

bookshelves: currently-reading

this book is great book, I wished there was movie out to watch it Tina Bryan in ca

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

1 comment

Jun 18, 2008

Sarah rated it:

(review of isbn 0590224735)

bookshelves: baby-sitter-s-club

Looking back I'm a bit ashamed to admit I enjoyed this series so much. By no means are the books well written; the characters are flat, the plots predictable. Everything is dressed in a neat and tidy bundle, all works out in under 150 pages. You can almost hear the sappy music as the book draws to a close. Even as a preteen I recognized this was not great literature, especially as the series rapidly expanded, Ann Martin and what must have been a slew of ghost writers turning out books at an alar...more

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3 comments

Feb 15, 2010

Jason Pettus rated it:

(review of isbn 0590224735)

bookshelves: age-10-to-14, age-7-to-10, chapter-book, character-based, children, for-girls-only, intermediate-grade, middle-grade, realistic, series

Read in February, 2010

(I now maintain a blog just for my kid-lit reviews. Find it at http://kidlit4adults.blogspot.com .)

A friend has convinced me to try my hand this year for the first time at writing children's literature; but I don't actually know anything about children's literature, so am starting the process among other ways by first reading a stack of existing books that have been recommended to me. Today's selections are my first foray into the world of "The Baby-Sitters Club," which durin...more (I now maintain a blog just for my kid-lit reviews. Find it at http://kidlit4adults.blogspot.com .)

A friend has convinced me to try my hand this year for the first time at writing children's literature; but I don't actually know anything about children's literature, so am starting the process among other ways by first reading a stack of existing books that have been recommended to me. Today's selections are my first foray into the world of "The Baby-Sitters Club," which during the 1990s and '00s became one of the most successful kid-lit series of all time; between the original tales and the various spinoffs, there are now nearly 500 volumes set in Ann M. Martin's sleepy middle-class suburb of Stoneybrook, Connecticut, with collective sales of at least 250 million copies and a literal empire of supplemental merchandise, feature films and television episodes. (By the way, I've been quietly told by gossipy friends in the industry that dozens of these books were actually ghostwritten by other authors, with Martin simply slapping her name on them at the end for brand consistency, although I have no way of actually verifying that; for those who don't know, this is one of the types of employment I'm seeking within the YA industry, to be the ghost-author of such formula-driven, interchangeable chapter books, which is why I'm reading so many of them these days.)

And as you can expect, the BSC books follow a familiar formula down to a T (or at least the three I read -- #81's Mallory Pike, #1 Fan, #115's Jessi's Big Break, and #131's The Fire at Mary Anne's House), staring with just a massive amount of exposition, not even cleverly handled but literally as if you were reading an encyclopedia entry; in fact, each and every title in the series starts first with an entire chapter of that book's particular hero reading aloud her own Wikipedia entry, then a second chapter of them reciting the entry concerning the club itself (essentially a group of junior-high female friends who gather around a central phone every late afternoon, so that parents can call that "hotline" and have the most appropriate babysitter sent to their house later that night), a total of eight thousand words devoted to nothing but reminding people of all the various things that have happened in the hundreds of books that came before it. Like many chapter-book series, the "crises" that befall club members are usually pretty gentle in nature, and the books mainly exist as a way to teach non-controversial moral lessons to its readers. Each book is roughly 30,000 words total, pretty normal for the 9-to-12 age group they're designed for; but surprisingly, the main characters themselves are mostly aged 12 to 14, just a little older than most of the books' readers, which confused me at first until I thought back to my own childhood, and how I used to love at this age reading books about kids a little older than me, in that I felt like I was sneakily getting away with something.

To her credit, Martin tries to inject as much diversity into this white-bread environment as she can, and also introduces plenty of modern hiccups to the stereotypical nuclear family (the club members' backgrounds are filled with ugly divorces, single parents working full-time jobs, sudden moves into entirely new economic classes, adopted Asian siblings and the like); but to her detriment, these are the exact types of books that edgier YA authors are railing against, sickly-sweet tales where all conflicts are resolved by the last page, and where all the kids ultimately end up dutifully obeying the pronouncements of the all-wise adult authority figures around them. I mean, you can't argue with success, but the BSC books are definitely the ones helping to write the "rules" for chapter books to begin with, which is why they barely ever break the well-known rules we now think of when thinking about this type of literature (you know -- make sentences short and punchy, introduce lots of peril but very little legitimate danger, be sure to repeat important information several times, concentrate on the way that girls this age interact with each other, set many of the scenes in a school environment, try to get the parents out of the way as much as possible, always have a happy ending, etc etc etc). They're neither outstanding nor terrible, which I'm sure is a big reason they've sold 250 million copies by now, and I can see myself easily being able to churn one of these out from beginning to end in just two or three weeks. (less)

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Jan 03, 2010

Ciara rated it:

(review of isbn 0590339508)

bookshelves: kids-books, read-in-2010

Read in January, 2010

always a classic. i read this one for the first time on my birthday in 1986. that was the year i turned seven. being a precocious reader, i was the target audience for the babysitters club series. i have been reading them ever since...24 years now, i guess. i'm not going to bother finding that at all shameful. it's an accomplishment!

these early books are kind of a yawn, because ann wrote them, & she doesn't have the same flair for drama & middle school catfights as some of the later ...more

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Nov 12, 2009

Casey Brock rated it:

(review of isbn 0590224735)

bookshelves: paperback-series

Read in November, 2009

Reading level: 4th-6th grade

The illustrations on the front cover give a nice and warm feeling about the book. Just from looking at it, you can tell that the story is a mostly happy one, about a group of girls. The pictures show that the girls are around the age of the reading level, so it is appealing to the reader. The text in the story appears to be a little smaller than the earlier books and the spacing is getting smaller. The chapters are still rather short; less than 10...more

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Oct 21, 2009

Shannon rated it:

(review of isbn 0590224735)

bookshelves: childhood-favorite

Read in January, 1993

First, I want to start off by saying, it's very hard to be objective about this book and it's series.
I first read this book when I was in the third grade. As soon as I read the first one, I was hooked.

I highly recommend this series to any girl ages 9-12*. (or to parents with daughters this age) It should be noted that while this series is for kids and there are a lot of truly great "children's" books (like Harry Potter) that also appeal to a more general and even ol...more

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Sep 18, 2009

Andréa V rated it:

(review of isbn 0590224735)

Read in January, 1996

recommended to Andréa by: they had colorful covers. that's all it takes
recommends it for: 80s babies who are all now too old to be reading these

I'm terribly tempted to add all the BSC books to my goodreads for two reasons:
1. I'm at work doing absolutely nothing else.
2. It would make me look all badass with lots of books...until someone happened to notice that half of them are the Babysitter's Club books. My badass badge would then be taken away.

So I'll just add the first one. These books get five stars for the sheer entertainment value of 7-10 year old Andréa. I thought those girls were SO COOL. Stacy and ...more

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Jan 20, 2010

Beth rated it:

(review of isbn 0590224735)

bookshelves: childhood-faves

I'm not going to attempt to list all of the Babysitter's Club books I read when I was in about 4th and 5th grade, but I certainly loved them at the time. They appealed to so much about who I was then. The girls seemed so grown up and wonderful to me as I was about 9 years old reading them. And this one in particular, the first one, evokes such a specific memory for me of sitting curled up on the end of the couch in the living room of my old house, reading by the light of the lamp on the end tabl...more

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Jan 22, 2008

Candise rated it:

(review of isbn 0590224735)

bookshelves: ya-lit

Read in January, 1989

recommends it for: feminist rulers and horse girls

When asked to name a childhood hero at a recent Feminist Club meeting, I instantly knew who to name: Kristy Thomas. Kristy is a tomboy, an alpha female, and totally gay (well, she gets a boyfriend later, but he is totally a beard). This book is girl love at its finest.

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Oct 11, 2007

Heather rated it:

(review of isbn 0590224735)

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: Kids

I used to read this series all the time when I was younger. I wanted to read one again to see what it was like. This book was pretty boring. I'm amazed that these books were able to keep me entertained. I really can't believe that I read so many of these books.

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May 14, 2009

Kristen rated it:

(review of isbn 0590224735)

bookshelves: favorite-childhood-books

Ok, I have no deep thoughts on this series. I will however say that when I was about ten, I told my mom that if I was to die, my wish was to be buried with my babysitter’s club books. All 10 million of them. That’s how important they were to me as a kid. I would wait anxiously for that month’s book order to deliver my new BSC book, upon which I would devour it voraciously with in three hours holed away in my bedroom. I would then be disappointed of course that I had to wait another mon...more

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Aug 06, 2008

Kate rated it:

(review of isbn 0590224735)

Read in January, 1987

This is my favorite series from when I was younger!

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Aug 16, 2009

Melacynthe rated it:

(review of isbn 0590224735)

I'm too lazy to click on every one of the billion or so BSC books, but when I was a kid I read pretty much every single one of them. I used to go through 2-3 of them a day and couldn't get enough.

Honestly, I have no idea why considering I didn't like kids and I refused to babysit... *laughs* The series did cover a lot of things pre-teen, teen, etc type issues. There were a few situations that I managed to avoid because I remembered it not going well for the girls in the books.
...more

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Feb 23, 2008

Heidi rated it:

(review of isbn 0590224735)

bookshelves: chick-lit, childrens, fiction, fluff, series

Read in January, 1992

I was introduced to the BSC during the Summer Reading Program between 4th and 5th grade. Prizes were awarded according to number of books and I was just out-growing my reading difficulties. So I needed something fast and easy to read, and available. So once a week I went to both libraries and grabbed every BSC and BSC Little Sister book that was in which I hadn't read, yet. Looking at the list, my estimation would be that I read at least 60 BSC and 30 BSC Little Sister. There could be more--they...more

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Jan 22, 2008

Erin Fairchild rated it:

(review of isbn 0590224735)

Read in September, 1987

recommended to Erin by: sparse elementary school library shelves & the feminist sisterho
recommends it for: 10 year olds who are fascinated by girls in charge

My friend Candise Branum took my words directly out of my mouth. I was obsessed with these books in about 4th grade, and i totally had a crush on Kristy AND Claudia - I think I actually wanted them to hook up. Today, as a nanny, I wonder how much influence these books have on me. What would I do if there were a phantom caller mystifying and frightening me as I tried to make "ants on a log" with my young charges? I certainly hope that I would devise a code word for one of my babysit...more

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6 comments

Apr 21, 2009

Shawnte rated it:

(review of isbn 0590224735)

bookshelves: elementary-school-favs

Read in September, 1994

when i was in the 4th grade i'd usually finish my assignments faster than the rest of my class, and my teacher would let me read at my desk. She had a lot of the babysitters club books on her shelves, and that's how i found them, and absolutely loved them!

it's a series about four friends who decide to start a babysitting company, when Kristy (the club president) see's her mom having a hard time getting a sitter for her little brother.

i haven't read this book in years and...more

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