The Baby Sitters Club: Difference between revisions

There were at least three spinoff series: ''Baby-Sitter's Little Sister'' (about Kristy's seven-year-old stepsister, Karen); ''[[California Diaries]]'' (about Dawn and her friends in California); and ''Friends Forever'' (in which the club was reduced to its original four members). As well as these and the main series, there were additional ''Mysteries'' and ''Super Specials'' books. ''Little Sister'' also had its own spinoff, ''The Kids In Ms. Colman's Class.''

 

* [[Aesop Amnesia]]: A number of examples, but one that stands out in particular is the relationship between Claudia and her genius sister Janine. There were many books where the two of them bonded over junk food, had a heart-to-heart talk, and realized that the two of them were [[Not So Different]]. By the next book, their relationship was [[Reset Button|back to where it was]].

** Also a feature in many Little Sister books, where Karen learns not to be a brat only to promptly forget it by the time the next book comes around.

* [[Always Identical Twins]]: Abby and Anna, Marilyn and Carolyn, Mariah and Miranda, not to mention the Pike triplets.

* [[Ambiguously Gay]]: Ducky, in the ''California Diaries''. His best friends are all platonic teenage girls, and his last scene in the series has him buying a ton of books from a bunch of gay authors.

* [[Amicably Divorced]]: Watson and Lisa

* [[Arc]]: Some plotlines spread over a couple of books, such as Kristy adjusting to her stepfamily. At the end of the series {{spoiler|Mary Anne's house burned down}}, which was the background for the ''Friends Forever'' spinoff.

** They even ''assume'' that they will be taking a [[Busman's Holiday]] wherever they go, such as when Dawn goes to visit her dad in California and remarks that she may babysit for some of her old clients while she's there. You know, because their parents wouldn't have found new sitters since she left the state, and would be so thoughtless as to intrude on her two weeks with her non-custodial parent by asking her to work.

* [[Butt Monkey]]: Poor Mallory! [http://community.livejournal.com/bsc_snark/39867.html Here's a list.]

* [[Child Prodigy]]: Naturally the kid gets paired with [[Book Dumb|Claudia]].

* [[Christmas in July]]: The BSC throw a "Christmas in Summer" party for sitting charge James Hobart, who is Australian, to cheer him up when he has a broken leg. This happened again at summer camp.

** [[Teen Genius|Janine]] and [[Book Dumb|Claudia]].

* [[Disappeared Dad]]: Kristy's father, Patrick Thomas, abandoned his wife and four children and almost never calls or writes.

* [[Does This Remind You of Anything?]]: The whole plotline about Stacey's diabetes and the associated stigma leading to her moving away from New York lest she lose all her friends. In retrospect, the series' origins in the late eighties makes it likely the diabetes stood in for [[The Disease That Shall Not Be Named|something else]].

* [[Drunk Driver]]: One of their classmates, Amelia, is killed by a drunk driver in ''Mary Anne and the Memory Garden''.

* [[Everyone Loves Blondes]]: There are two out of four white girls from out of state: Stacey, the sophisticated New Yorker, and Dawn, the breezy Californian. Lampshaded in one book where Kristy reminisces about how she first met Shannon (whom she intensely disliked at first) and snarks about the trope in relation to Shannon and her friends, who are all blonde.

* [[Everytown, America]]: Stoneybrook

* [[Extruded Book Product]]: What eventually happened to the series.

* [[Failure Is the Only Option]]: The BSC were allowed to succeed ''most'' of the time, but once the problems got big, like trying to keep an autistic savant from being sent [[Off to Boarding School]] or reform a racist family, the [[Aesop]] was always along the lines of You Can't Make A Difference When You're Thirteen Years Old. ''Little Sister'' was even worse about this, with Karen failing at nearly everything she tried to do because You ''Really'' Can't Make A Difference When You're Seven Years Old. The only time Karen actually succeeded was during a [[Whole-Plot Reference]] to ''[[The Secret Garden]]'', since you can't very well have your Mary Lennox surrogate not shake things up.

* [[Lost Wedding Ring]]: One book involves Stacey being accused of stealing a valuable ring. As it turns out, it was the cat's fault.

* [[MacGuffin]]: In some of the ''Mysteries'' books

* [[Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane]]: Appears pretty much whenever the girls deal with something weird. They usually get a mundane explanation that covers most--but not all--of what's been going on. Particular examples would include ''The Ghost at Dawn's House'' and ''Mary Anne's Bad Luck Mystery.''

** Also, the first book in the Little Sister series, where the only undebunked evidence Karen has at the end is that she saw the lady she thinks is a witch flying on a broom... and that might have been a dream.

* [[Name's the Same]]: Two characters are named Sabrina Bouvier - a child beauty queen that BSC meets in ''Little Miss Stoneybrook ... and Dawn'', and later a classmate at SMS.

** [[Lampshaded]] in ''Here Come the Bridesmaids!'' where the narrator acknowledges that both the BSC and the W♥KC have a regular sitting charge named Ryan DeWitt, and no, they're not related.

* [[Non-Human Sidekick]]: Several, although Mary Anne's cat Tigger is probably the most frequently showcased -- partly because Mary Anne, unlike the others, is an only child.

* [[No Periods, Period]]: It's plausible for a thirteen-year-old girl not to have started her period yet, which makes a reasonable justification for the trope, but it's decidedly less plausible that ''none'' of them would have started menstruating by that age.

** Presumably it's not mentioned because the target age range for the books was a bit younger than thirteen, and they didn't want to freak out the kids (or their parents). One has to wonder, though, how it was deemed allowable to mention bras and bra shopping.

** Kids would know what a bra is ("It's like a double-barrel slingshot!"), but it would be unlikely that their parents would have had the talk with them. Or maybe they do have periods, [[Too Much Information|but it's just not mentioned.]]

* [[Off to Boarding School]]: {{spoiler|Mallory}}, although this was actually HER decision.

* [[Official Couple]]: Mary Anne and Logan. Kristy and Bart are an official sort-of-couple, and Stacey's part of a few.

* [[Only Sane Man]]: Jessi and Mallory in some of the later books.

* [[Playing Pictionary]]: It is suggested that one say something along the lines of "What a nice picture! Can you tell me about it?" when confronted with a child's drawing, because "you don't want to say 'what a lovely elephant!' and have it turn out to be a picture of their grandmother."

** Similarly, Mary Anne's late mother was named Abigail in the fourth book, but later books identify her as Alma. This is also fixed in reprints.

** There was a short spinoff series where each of the girls writes an autobiography. They must have been written by different writers, because Kristy, Mary Anne, and Claudia have conflicting memories of their elementary school years (when they all knew each other).

* [[Rouge Angles of Satin]]: Claudia frequently writes like this.

* [[The Rival]]: Cokie. Also, one book featured the girls facing off against a rival babysitting club.

* [[Secret Santa]]

* [[Shrinking Violet]]: Mary Anne; Kristy's little stepbrother Andrew is presented this way too.

* [[Sibling Yin-Yang]]: Claudia and Janine, Abby and Anna, Karen and Andrew

* [[Sixth Ranger]]: Dawn, Mallory, Jessi, Abby.

* [[Teen Genius]]: Claudia's sister Janine

** Janine suffers from most [[TV Genius]] symptoms, including [[Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness]], [[Intelligence Equals Isolation]], [[Nerd Glasses]], and [[Omnidisciplinary Scientist]], and she [[Improbably High IQ|has an IQ of 196]].

* [[Theme Twin Naming]]: Marilyn and Carolyn Arnold, Abigail and Anna Stevenson, Mariah and Miranda Shillaber, Terri and Tammy Barkan, Ricky and Rose Salem. Averted with the Pike triplets Adam, Byron, and Jordan.

* [[Token Minority]]: Jessi.

* [[Very Special Episode]]: Several books showcased a particular social issue, including racism, hazing, eating disorders and single parenting. They did not deal with topics like illicit drugs and sexuality, and only briefly touched on alcohol, which might have been considered inappropriate for the target audience.

* [[Viewers Are Goldfish]]: The main characters got repeatedly introduced and described in every book. [[Lampshaded]] by the various snark communities as being the standard contents of chapter two.

* [[Wedding Day]]: Kristy's mother and stepfather, Mary Anne's father and Dawn's mother, Dawn's father and stepmother, two sitting clients, Kristy's father and stepmother...

* [[When You Coming Home, Dad?]]:

[[Category:Long Running Book Series]]

[[Category:Children's Literature]]

[[Category:Literature]]