Any former fans/readers? I loved them growing up-although by the time they really got popular I was too old for them. I recently re-discovered them and it's fun to re-read them. But then since most of my education/career experience as been as a teacher, I enjoy sometimes looking back at fav kids books.

Back to the BSC..anyone? Lol

Mona

Oooo I used to love that series! I think I started reading them when I was around... eight or nine? But I came in at book 30 or something.

My favorite character was Mary-Anne. For some reason I seemed to identify with her more :p

I think Kristy was my least favorite. She seemed a bit bossy for my taste... But of course, this was when I was younger

I loved those! I was around nine when I first read them and went up through book forty or so before I outgrew them.

ooo I used to read those. I'll admit I remember very little except they babysat and I wish we had a group like that in my neighborhood .

My oldest is 6. I'll have to get some for her before too long .
Carol

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Baby-sitters_Club_books

I was actually "too old" for them when they came at at 11 but I enjoyed a few anyway. As far as my favorite character...probably I am most like Mary Anne, too, in that I can be quiet and seemingly mysterious if I don't know you, also even though I'm still searching for my Mr. Right aka Clark, I'm a romantic at heart. Only thing against MA is I do not like cats at all! Dogs.

Lol, Catherine, yeah Kristy sure could be bossy but I admired her and thought that maybe deep down she was the one who most cared for kids. Also I'm a baseball fan and don't care at all for dressing up.

I think my least favorite would either be Dawn or Abby. Dawn, simply because while, like, her I do not eat meat, any kind in my case, and support animal rights, she sure was very annoying on "junk food" topic after a while. :p But then again, I am very pro cookies n ice cream Abby, now there was true loudmouth for you and maybe it was just me but she never seemed as genuine as Kristy did..I don't know..

That dollar bookstore I mentioned in the LAFF thread has a ton of BSC books.

Mona, whose looking forward to other's posts on this.

I LOVED those books! I love that they were in eighth grade for like 15 years! I had most of them up until I got too old to read them anymore, and the game, and the movie ... and of course, my friends and I tried to start our own BSC.

I liked Kristy (because she was a leader; come to think of it, I could see Lois being like that as kid, too) and Stacey (because she liked to shop!)

A couple of months ago, I somehow stumbled across a blog by a woman who grew up reading them and is now re-reading them. Her reviews are hilariously snarky.

http://claudiasroom.blogspot.com/

I grew up on those books! Someone from school was kind enough to give me all of her copies and I spent hours upon hours reading them.

I liked Mary Anne, but I also liked Dawn because I thought it was really kewl she was from California. It was also pretty need that she and Mary Anne became step-sisters...at least I think. It's been so many years. lol

God, I think I owned like twenty-five of those books . Kristy and Mary Anne were my favorites because I really related to both of them and I didn't like Stacey, who I thought was a ditz . I also liked the Babysitter's Club Mysteries.

I read those books as a kid, too. I think I still own a few. But I read them in Dutch. (At the age of 10, my English still sucked ) So the names you all mentioned mean nothing to me! I hate it when they change names in translations. But they are a great series I'd recommend to my kids one day.

Saskia

Ooh, I read them! I got up to 64 or 72 before I stopped. I was also older than the target audience, but I really enjoyed them. I'm not sure who I could pick as my favorite, since each girl had something I could identify with. I think my favorite book is the super story where they went to Disney World.

I think I finally gave them all away to my cousin when I was 18, which was about a year after I stopped reading them.

I used to read them to, but then I left the series and began reading Sweet Valley High which I throughly enjoyed. I did on occasion go back to reading BSC, but Sweet Valley was more my favourite. I eventually out grew both series and gave them away, I have recently wanted to read them again out of nostalgia, but it's rather hard to try to find the particular I liked as I really didn't too much enjoy the later books.

I read Sweet Valley High for a while, too. Probably more than the bsc as they were more age appropriate. All I remember about them was that one of the twins Elizabeth had one boyfriend names....Todd (I am truly pulling that name out of my memory hat) and they thought they'd be together forever until Todd moves and then she meets someone else maybe Jeff? No that was Dawn's brother, lol, and anyway they become majorly entwined until Todd returns and E realizes that he was meant for her all along. am I making this up?

As for the bsc, I honestly do not remember how many I had or didn't have just that when I was 17 my family ahd a huge yard sale and I ended up selling most all my children's books something I now regret but alas. I am starting to recollect the bsc for fun but moreso in hopes of sharing with my future kids one day.

Mona

P.s. Should I make a fav bsc poll?

No, you're not making it up. The other guy did start with a J... Josh? Maybe it was Jeff... He played soccer. A wiki says Jeffrey French . Todd Wilkens played basketball . Apparently a lot happened after I stopped reading. Sounds like a soap... He apparently had several flings with Jessica as well as going out with Elizabeth 4-5 times or something.

Personally, I was always more partial to Liz [hmmm... she was a reporter...]

I have vivid memories of some of those books... More so than BSC. More age appropriate as you said, I guess... I still have a few somewhere...

Carol

OMG I was obsessed with the BSC. OBSESSED. Even more than with Lois and Clark. I discovered them in second grade and even when I "graduated" to other books I still read BSC books all through high school and college. Even though my reading level had far outgrown them, I still loved the characters too much to let them go.

I had over 400 of the books until I finally sold them all last fall because I couldn't justify moving them from Seattle to LA with me. They've been out of print for years, so I've spent countless hours scouring used book stores for them. I had a list in my purse of which ones I still needed, and my goal was to own every book from whole series, including all the spin-offs.

My favorite character for a long time was Kristy because she was the leader and she was bossy. She was the most like me. Then when they introduced Abby, she became my favorite. I liked her better because she wasn't quite as bossy as Kristy, so she was more like me. Plus she played soccer (I did too) and her sister's name was Anna.

Wow, this thread brings back memories.

~Anna

Ahh! BSC! How awesome to remember those!

My fav character was actually Claudia because she dressed so "cool" and loved junk food!

I was a bit younger when I started, so I got into the series through the Karen books, then graduated up. I still remember my mom coming into my room at like 11pm one night and forcing my to put a BSC book aside because I was up reading.

Todd Wilkins, baby!

I loveddddd Sweet Valley! I started reading the Kids, then the Twins, then SVH. (Actually, I tried to read the SVH ones when I was a little too young and my mom was like uh, no more for you, after I spent like three hours crying because Elizabeth got into a motorcycle accident and was in a coma. "Dear Sister," for anyone who cares; quite gripping. Ha.)

The funny thing is, I was so into Sweet Valley that my godmother bought me a BSC book and told me if I'd at least read it, she'd buy me another book. Turns out I loved BSC just as much, if not more, so I got another one of those.

Ah yes - and then she turned into Jessica only worse for a while. And went surfing and hung 10 iirc.

Jeffrey was blond. Todd was brunette. I think I liked Jeffrey better.

Isn't it weird what you remember?
Carol

Lol, this is a fun thread. If some of you folcs are coming to LAFF and want, I'll have to show you that dollar bookstore.

So Todd was the "first" boyfriend? If that's so, and I honestly have no memory of either him or Jeffrey, I remember being happy he came back.

Mona

I actually liked Jeffery better. I felt so sorry for him when Todd came back and ended up being dumped by Liz.

Todd was her boyfriend starting in like second grade, when they played soccer together. Ha. But yeah, he was the first one, then he moved to Vermont (I think) in high school and she started dating Jeffrey. I think he dated one of Elizabeth's former friends initially when he came back (gasp!) and maybe also dated Jessica?

I will add that I also read the Sweet Valley University series, in which Jessica ended up married and their brother shot her husband ... Todd ended up being kicked off the basketball team for excessive drinking. Elizabeth should have stuck with Jeffrey.

Oh my goodness, are you reading my mind/channeling my experiences? My babysitter gave me all her SVH books when I was... oh.. maybe 10 or so. Too young for them, and there was one called "All Night Long" and I remember I was wandering around the house with it and my mother was scandalized and moved them all into the basement. I really had no idea what it was about then... but then I read them all and loved them. I liked Elizabeth too... when she was with Todd. Even though thinking back on it, he was kind of an odd duck. But I've always picked a couple and then rooted for them the whole way. (Cue me being hysterical and throwing my pillow across the room when Buffy and Angel go their separate ways...) *thinks about this and is still angry* (Sorry, I'm working my way through season 4 and I'm pretty angry at the whole cast as of now... which is pathetic. and off topic.)

BSC was another fave for me and Mary Anne was my favorite as well. Wow... everyone on here seems to have been a Mary Anne or Kristy fan. Interesting.

And wow. Talk about books jumping the shark. I quit after SVH. I think I remember an Earthquake shattering the town?

I also read some of both SV and BSC me and my sisters did. I always liked Kristy.

The last I read in the SVU books was Jessica was gettng divc. and her ex was dating someone else I think it's been years ago. I think their brother's girlfriend was pregnant I can't remember if she lost the baby are not. It's been long ago. I wonder how the ended that series.

We used to have a SVH board game never I was like 9 and never could figure out how to play it so me and my sisters made up are up rules lol.

Did the same with a NKOTB game lol.

I had The Babysitter's Club Game, but the only thing I really remember about it, was getting sick one night and partially throwing up on it. lol

Laura! OMG! I am sitting here dying laughing ... my mom put mine in the garage when she confiscated them after the Elizabeth coma thing!

Loved those books when I was a kid I think I still have the five I got autographed by Ann M Martin somewhere, but I'm not sure where. The first one I read was the pet-sitter one with Jessi, I think, and I was very proud of myself for reading a book with such 'little' print ;p

I never really got into Sweet Valley. I only had a few books over the years. I remember reading a series about cheerleaders.. looking it up, it looks like it was the Cheerleaders series, mostly written by Caroline B. Cooney. There was another book I had that I only found books 1 and 6 for, but I wanted the rest. It had to do with six? young people who moved with their families to a new planet, but it turned out that there used to be another race that lived there, and left their imprint behind. I cannot remember the name of it right now.

I read the Sweet Valley High books too and I enjoyed them, but not as much as Babysitter's Club. Those stories I have an easier time remembering, the SVH stories are a bit fuzzy.

<who's tempted to pick them up again! lol>

That's cool that you got some autographed, Aria. Did you meet Ann Martin? And at first when I read your little print comment I thought you meant it as in Jessi's awful handwriting print which is kinda little. :p Yay you for reading a littler print book in general.

Mona

*Pulls a Mayson Drake*

STOP THE PRESSES!!!!

Who knew they made a TV show about SVH??? I didn't! I saw it at Half Price Books for 25 dollars and I just had to buy it.

The acting is awful, just excruating to watch. Literally, I think I might be a better actor and trust me... I suck.

But it's making me remember plots which is bringing back all sorts of funny/nostalgic memories.

I vaguely remember the show. lol

This thread is funny, because I was just thinking about these books the other day! I was absolutely obsessed with BSC when I was a kid. I started reading when I was about seven or eight, and read them up until high school. I own maybe about 75% of the original books (none of the spin-off series). They're packed away somewhere in my storage unit. I doubt I'll ever give them away or sell them off, I actually would love to finish the collection just to have it, even if I never read them again.