The Baby-sitters Club

The Baby-sitters Club (BSC) is a series of novels written by Ann M. Martin and published by Scholastic between 1986 and 2000, that sold 170 million copies. Many of the novels wereghostwritten, including 43 by Peter Lerangis.[2] However, Ann M. Martin wrote the first 35 novels.

The series is about a group of middle school students living in the fictional town of Stoneybrook, Connecticut. They run a business called the Baby-sitters Club that helps parents find babysitters from the club who are available for jobs by calling during their club meetings. The club starts out with four members Kristy Thomas, Mary Anne Spier, Claudia Kishi, and Stacey McGill, eventually expanding to ten. Most of the main characters are thirteen years old. When the club was founded (1986), the four members were in the seventh grade, but ten novels later (1988), they are promoted to the eighth grade. From there, they are frozen in time until the very end of the series (2000), in which they graduate from middle school. A notable facet of the series is that each book contains at least one subplot dealing with different issues the girls face. These issues can range from moral conflicts to underage prostitution.

As of December 31, 2009, the Baby-sitters Club series was out of print. However, in April 2010 the series was re-released with updated versions of certain volumes of the original series, as well as a newly written prequel.

In 1990, The Baby-Sitters Club spawned a thirteen episode TV series, that aired at various times on HBO, Disney Channel, and Nickelodeon, and was later released to video

A movie based on The Baby-sitters Club novels was released in 1995 which starred Schuyler Fisk, Rachael Leigh Cook, Larisa Oleynik, Bre Blair, Tricia Joe, Zelda Harris, and Stacy Linn Ramsower. The film's stories included stories adapted from Kristy's book "My Real Father" where Kristy's father comes back to town and she is forced to keep this a secret.