Comeback Planned for Girls’ Book Series

Photo left by Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times
Ann M. Martin, original author of the “Baby-Sitters Club” books, in her New York apartment.

By Motoko Rich
Published New York Times, December 30, 2009

Taking a page from Broadway and George Lucas, Scholastic Inc., the children’s book publisher, is trying for a revival — with a prequel attached.

In April the company plans to reissue repackaged and slightly revised versions of the first two volumes in one of its most successful series, “The Baby-Sitters Club,” in the hopes of igniting enthusiasm in a new generation of readers. And just as Mr. Lucas brought “Star Wars” back with a whole new arc of stories that began before the original series, Scholastic is publishing a newly written prequel, “The Summer Before,” by Ann M. Martin, the original author of “The Baby-Sitters Club” books.

The move follows Scholastic’s 2008 resuscitation of “Goosebumps,” another of its most popular series. For now Scholastic and Ms. Martin only have plans for the one prequel, although the publisher will release three more reissues of the original series later next year.

“The Baby-Sitters Club,” which ran from 1986 through 2000, garnered an ardent following among preteenage girls throughout its run of 213 titles, with the publisher ultimately printing 176 million copies. The series, which followed the baby-sitting adventures and friendships of four 12-to-13-year-old girls — Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia and Stacey (the cast expanded to eight main characters later in the series) — spawned several spinoffs, including a mystery series and a collection of books about Kristy’s little sister. All of the books are now out of print.

David Levithan, the editorial director at Scholastic and an editor of “The Baby-Sitters Club,” said the publisher decided to bring back the old series because of requests from fans who wanted a comeback.

“This whole generation of girls who had grown up reading ‘The Baby-Sitters Club’ were now teachers, librarians or mothers,” Mr. Levithan said. “And at any opportunity they had, they let us know they wanted them back. We couldn’t go to a convention without having women come up to us and say, ‘You’ve got to bring these books back.’ ”

The publisher had also seen how well the formula had worked with a new “Goosebumps” series, “HorrorLand”: there are now 3.5 million copies in print of the 12 books it has published since April 2008.

Ms. Martin, who wrote more than 60 of the books in the original “Baby-Sitters Club” series, has written several stand-alone novels and started another series for young girls called “Main Street” (also published by Scholastic) since “The Baby-Sitters Club” ended.

Recently, though, she started to miss the books that propelled her writing career for so many years. “When I started to think about the books with a certain amount of nostalgia, I was happy to revisit them,” Ms. Martin said.

She proposed the idea of a prequel to Scholastic, tracing the original characters through the summer that precedes the school year covered by the earlier series. “I have had many suggestions from fans over the years for reunion books that take place far in the future,” Ms. Martin said. “I was more interested in exploring the characters and what led them up to the beginning of the series.”
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