The Baby-Sitters Club
Small Screens
Join the Club Calling 90s girl-power fans: Stoneybrook’s greatest girl gang is back for the Netflix generation. by Kylie Maslen @kyliemaslen
Kylie Maslen is a writer and critic from Kaurna Yerta/Adelaide. Her first book – Show Me Where It Hurts: Living With Invisible Illness – will be released in September.
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he prestigious women’s history archives at Smith College in Massachusetts house papers from literary luminaries such as Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and Ann M Martin. While the first two names are widely known, the third may only ring a bell to fans of 1990s girl-power nostalgia. Yet Martin’s body of work – more than 131 novels published between 1986 and 2000 – remains a feminist force and enduring cultural phenomenon. Yes, it’s The Baby-Sitters Club series, and it’s back for a new generation. I came to The Club as a pre-teen, when the world around me seemed flushed with pink and my friends were experimenting with make-up and fashion. Kristy Thomas – the leader of The Baby-Sitters books – showed me through her daggy “mom” jeans and normcore looks that I wasn’t alone in being a tomboy. Importantly,
the series’ depth of characters and personalities gave many readers a chance to see that it was okay to express themselves differently, too. The entrepreneurial middle-schoolers of Stoneybrook, Connecticut, sparked spin-offs and special editions, merchandise, a cult HBO series in 1990 and a poorly realised 1995 film. Their novels alone boast sales of US$180 million. Mega-fan actor Natalie Portman – posting a gushing Instagram of a signed original edition in 2019 – described queuing for hours as a child to meet Martin at her local bookstore. Last year, the series was released by audiobook platform Audible, with the first batch voiced by Elle Fanning. Now, The Club has been reimagined by streaming giant Netflix. The five original members are all here: Kristy Thomas is the sports-mad and sometimes bossy founder; Claudia