“The Baby-Sitters Club” Author Ann M. Martin Reveals Surprising Original Plan for Iconic Series in Rare Interview (Exclusive)

“I didn’t count on that ‘The Child-Sitters Membership’ could be greater than a four-book mini-series,” the creator tells PEOPLE

When creator revealed the primary guide in her beloved collection The Child-Sitters Membership in August 1986, she had no inkling that the characters she created would go on to look in additional than 200 volumes, spinoffs, tie-ins and graphic novels — not to mention two and a 1995 movie.

“I didn’t count on that The Child-Sitters Membership could be greater than a four-book mini-series within the Eighties,” Martin tells PEOPLE solely. “However 38 years later, right here we’re.”

A former editor for Scholastic, Martin, now 69, had already revealed 4 younger grownup novels by 1986. She was 30 years outdated, residing in a studio condominium in New York Metropolis and had just lately left kids’s guide publishing to focus full-time on writing when Jean Feiwel, a writer she knew from her time at Scholastic, approached her to launch a brand new collection.

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“She informed me she was searching for a four-book collection a couple of group of women who babysit, and she or he had a title for the collection: The Child-Sitters Membership,” Martin explains. “We talked concerning the membership being a enterprise, and I created the 4 unique characters — Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne and Stacey.”

“From the start, I wished characters who have been very completely different from each other however who fashioned sturdy friendships and labored properly collectively,” Martin says.

She additionally had a transparent imaginative and prescient for the books. “I wished the collection to be about babysitting, after all, however particularly about how the women develop, strengthen their friendships and grow to be problem-solvers and unbiased thinkers,” she explains.

Martin and her editors have been “shocked” when a Child-Sitters Membership novel first hit the nationwide bestseller listing. “This was after we started to appreciate that the collection was greater than we had imagined,” she says. “We started publishing six books a yr as a substitute of 4, and never lengthy after that, one guide every month.”

Martin’s unique imaginative and prescient for the collection didn’t change as The Child-Sitters Membership grew in recognition, however, she says, “I wished the forged of characters to grow to be extra various and their experiences to grow to be extra reflective of these of the readers. I started receiving a whole bunch of letters every week from children who lived in every kind of cities and got here from every kind of households, and they might ask for tales about children like them, or about issues that had occurred to them or their pals.”

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Her unique forged of 4 included two characters who got here from single-parent households — Kristy, whose mother and father are divorced, and Mary Anne, whose mom died earlier than the collection started. There was additionally Stacey, a Manhattan transplant with kind 1 diabetes, and Claudia, whose household was one of many few of Japanese descent in Stonybrook, the collection’ fictional Connecticut suburb.

Because the collection went on, Martin steadily added extra characters, together with Jessi, the membership’s solely Black member within the books, and Logan, a Kentucky-born jock who was as nurturing and attentive a babysitter because the collection’ feminine characters.

“We addressed lots of the points that readers have been dealing with and speaking about on the time, together with divorce, racism, consuming issues, grief and neurodiversity,” Martin notes. “However after all, 1986 was very completely different from 2024, and I really like that the extra modern diversifications of the BSC, just like the graphic novels and the Netflix present, have been in a position to handle many different subjects and introduce extra range to the tales.”

From the start of the collection, Martin says, readers related strongly together with her characters, typically writing to her about which members of the membership they most recognized with. And she or he continues to get comparable messages immediately, each from adults who grew up studying the collection and from a brand new technology of younger people who find themselves persevering with to find The Child-Sitters Membership.

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“Because the tales are character-driven and revolve round timeless themes — particularly household and friendship — and since my editors and I made a decision to maintain the collection ‘time impartial,’ the tales, each outdated and new, resonate with children immediately,” she says of the collection’ enduring attraction.

“I wouldn’t thoughts residing on this timeless time myself,” Martin jokes.

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Almost 40 years and a whole bunch of novels later, Kristy, Claudia and the gang have remained perpetual center schoolers — although a 13-book spin-off collection, The Child-Sitters Membership: Associates Perpetually, revealed from 1999 to 2000, noticed Martin’s unique 4 characters making ready to transition to highschool. The creator, who has continued to supervise the collection — together with the latest graphic novel diversifications — since turning The Child-sitters Membership over to ghostwriters within the early ’90s, revisited the characters in a 2010 prequel, The Summer season Earlier than.

However followers proceed to marvel the place the members of the BSC could be of their lives as adults.

“It is a query I’m incessantly requested, particularly by grownup followers of the books,” Martin says. “They need to know who the characters grew as much as be. I may give you eventualities, however I’m extra interested by what readers may give you!”

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