Happy 24th Anniversary! The Baby-Sitters Club

[shannon86]

Well tomorrow is the 1st of August and it's the day way back in 1986 that Ann M. Martin and Scholastic published "Kristy' Great Idea!". I just wanted to wish a Happy 24th to the wonderful series that I grew up reading.

Share with us your memories on how you became a BSC fan.

[booboobrewer]

Aww, nice thread. I read my first Little Sister around '92. My sister was already reading BSC, so my mom started buying me LS books. She was like "look, you're a little sister, just like Karen!" So I was building my LS collection while borrowing my sister's BSC, and then eventually started buying ones on my own (well, my mom did.)

[zoar3]

I honestly don't even remember how/when I discovered the BSC. My only childhood clear memory is of reading SS1. Admittedly by Aug of '86 I was "too old" (newly 11) to be in the targeted BSC age group, but, must have enjoyed them anyway. When I re-discovered the Series a few years ago, I remembered a fair number of the books. Anyway, a used $1 bookstore instantly rekindled my BSC love and then this board set it afire. Now, having re-read the series a handful of times, I still get a goofy grin on my face and burst of an extra smile when beginning at the beginning with KGI, my favorite of them all.

[oldhickory]

a lot of the girls who went to my babysitter's house were reading the books and passed them along to me. also (to be fair) by the time i was old enough for chapter books, the bsc was pretty much everywhere. what's really funny is that the first book i remember reading was also SS1 :] i checked it out from the school library.

[anzuhana]

With LS, it was when I took read Karen's Witch at a library. With the BSC, I don't remember.

[fluffycakes]

I got into the books by first reading "Karen's Mystery" in the Little Sister series, since I had just learned to read. It was my first chapter book, and I thought Karen and company were pretty awesome. I grew out of those books pretty fast, and it wasn't long before I read "Beware, Dawn!" as my first BSC book. After that, I was hooked, and read them for years.

It's pretty amazing that 24 years later, the books are still around!

[celaeno]

My story is very similar to booboobrewer's. I probably started around 1992, and I started with the Little Sister books first. My sister was a year older than me, and she was reading the BSC books. She was in the book club, so she would get book(s) mailed to her every month. I probably didn't stick with the Little Sister books for long (we had maybe four LS books, compared to several dozen BSC books). Even back then I thought the LS plots were pretty lame. It wasn't long before I started reading the BSC, mainly because the cover of #9 The Ghost at Dawn's House looked sooooo freaking cool.

[Kylie90210]

The year was 1991, and I had just turned 5. A friend bought me two BSC books for my birthday, one being The Ghost at Dawn's House. I was hooked. Last year the same girl wrote on my Facebook wall 'Hey, remember how obsessed we were with the BSC?' I thought, 'Yes. Were.'

[firecausesburns]

My mother bought me a Little Sister book in 1996, when I was five or six years old. By the end of the year I was devouring both LS and BSC books like there was no tomorrow.

[candykane]

24 years! This calls for a pizza toast!

I was eight years old, in the third grade. The year: 1989. My mom and I were browsing the library and she picked up a copy of Kristy's Great Idea. She handed it to me and said "This looks like a good book." The rest was history.

[starlett2010]

I have no idea how I got into the BSC. I either got a book as a gift or my cousin lent me a book. Either way, I loved the BSC. I think I stopped reading after Abby's Lucky 13 but I did read a few CA diaries and a couple FF's.

[oldhickory]

i never realized that i was younger than a lot of you guys on this board. i feel so grown up :]

[wenonah4th]

I got a copy of #10 from my older cousin when I was 9, which would have been 1991.