The Stoney So Far... The Baby-Sitters Club #11-20

Ann M. Martin's initial goal for The Baby-Sitters Club was to be ten books. Ten books that focused on a year in the life of a group of girl friends who form a babysitting club. I doubt that anyone, even Martin herself, could have imagined how big of a success the series would end up, as it wouldn't take long for the plan to change. The series would continue, now with the characters locked at their current age, though still going through holidays and other seasonal events. Predating The Simpsons in terms of being trapped in same-age purgatory. But with ten books deep into a series as it is, what else could be done with these characters? Well the answer turned out to be massive status quo shifts that change the series drastically. It's time to talk about what went down with the part ten books, along with the first series spinoffs. How did these books go, what changed, and what books were the best and worst of the bunch? It's time to continue the story in Stoneybrook and cover everything that went down between books 11 and 20. 

The year is 1988. The Baby-Sitters Club series exits and enters its second and third year of publication. It also finally becomes a monthly series, with the series now a massive success for Scholastic and Ann M. Martin. Now with the series ongoing past the initial ten book plan, it was only a question of what Martin had planned for the series and the characters going forward. And the answer was for a lot of major status quo shifts, including one that caught fans of the series completely off guard. The series would also spin itself off twice. First starting with the Super Special series. Longer books narrated by all of the girls which focuses on vacations. The second being Baby Sitters Little Sister, a book series aimed for an even younger audience which focuses on the adventures of Kristy's stepsister Karen, the old woman harassing agent of chaos herself.

To recap the previous batch of books, we start with Kristy. She has a hard time fitting into her new neighborhood since moving to Watson's mansion. Mainly dealing with snobby Shannon Kilbourne, who has a grudge on Kristy for taking baby-sitting jobs that usually went to her. But, more concerningly, the Brewer/Thomas family dog Louie is dying. And despite every attempt to prolong his life, he is ultimately put down. Shannon apologizes for her actions and gives Kristy a puppy which they name Shannon. Kristy later manages a baseball team of the local kids which she calls Kristy's Krushers. She also falls in love with Bart Taylor, the coach of Bart's Bashers. Despite the best efforts of the kids, including the constantly clumsy Jackie Rodowsky, the kids ultimately lose to the much more efficient Bashers, but come out of it with great attitudes and a vigor for the sport. Kristy and Bart also start to form a relationship.

Claudia is wowed by the new student Ashley Wyeth, who is an incredible artist. The two become friends and things go well at first. But Ashley becomes more of Claudia's art teacher than her friend, with her wanting Claudia to quit baby-sitting full-time to focus on her artwork and an upcoming art contest. Ultimately, Claudia chooses the club, but remains friends with Ashley who wins the art contest because, I mean, she's pretty good at art. Later, Claudia babysits Betsy Sobak, a girl who is super into practical jokes and pranks. One prank goes too far and Claudia ends up with a broken leg. She again has a crisis of whether she should stay babysitting or not. If the job is too dangerous and if another accident would injure her hands or wrists, ruining that potential art career. Ultimately she chooses again to stay with the club and Betsy is taught that pranks are fun, but too many can be too much and they can be embarrassing. So not a major amount of character development, but given her next book, it feels like a brace for impact.

Stacey learns that her father has to return to New York for his job, which means that she has to leave Stoneybrook. Everyone is devastated, especially Claudia and Charlotte Johanssen, her favorite kid to sit. The moving day comes, the group sell off some of her stuff in a yard sale and they hold her a going away party as Stacey leaves Stoneybrook for now, which was a choice that didn't go too well with the fans, though Ann M. Martin promised that this wasn't the end of Stacey. Case in point her next book. Now in New York, Stacey invites the girls to help her babysit. It doesn't go great as Kristy is a bit mouthy, Mary Anne is an excited tourist, Dawn is paranoid, and Claudia fights with Laine Cummings, Stacey's New York BFF. But eventually everything calms down, the girls get along with Laine, and everyone has a better New York trip at the end than in the beginning as the series leaves Stacey for now. 

Dawn's conflict is less her own and more her brother Jeff's. Jeff hates living in Stoneybrook and wants to move back to California to live with his dad. After several books of build to it, Mrs. Schafer ultimately allows Jeff to stay. Dawn is upset about this, feeling Jeff is breaking up the family further, but there's no convincing Jeff otherwise. He boards the plane and returns to California where it turns out he actually is having a better time there. Meanwhile, Dawn and the others help some of the girls they sit with the Little Miss Stoneybrook pageant, where they ultimately get outclassed by girls who have been doing the pageant stuff for a lot longer, which leaves the club acting very, very petty. Mary Anne doesn't continue a chain letter and gets a bad luck necklace around Halloween. She and the girls start to experience bad luck. But soon she discovers the necklace isn't actually bad luck, and it was sent by a pair of mean girls who were jealous of her relationship with Logan. And that's really it for Mary Anne as we have little to no continuation of Mr. Spier and Mrs. Schafer's relationship.

With Stacey gone, the girls need a new member. They choose Mallory Pike, the eldest of the Pike clan. However, they give her nearly impossible tasks to succeed in that she fails at. She chooses not to join the club. She also meets Jessica "Jessi" Ramsey, and her family. A black family in a predominantly white town, who haven't had the best time fitting in yet. But Jessi and Mallory get along and decide to form their own baby-sitting club. Eventually the girls realize they were too harsh to Mallory with their tasks and give her another chance to join, which Mallory accepts so long as Jessi joins as well. Jessi soon gets tasked with a new babysitting charge in Matt Braddock, a deaf boy. She soon learns sign language, as do many of the other kids in the neighborhood, so Matt and his sister Haley soon find new friends in town. Also the girls (save for Jessi as the story predates her debut) go on a cruise to the Bahamas and Walt Disney World and that was okay too. Also Karen bothers her neighbor some more and breaks her wrist leaping over two coffee cans. 

With the central cast now ballooned to seven, it means that not everybody gets two books. Kristy, Claudia and Stacey still get two books, while Mallory, Mary Anne, Dawn and Jessi all get one. So like I said before, the whole even split concept would pretty much be dead and buried after the first ten books. We get a good mix of character development stories, while also getting some that do feel like fillery fluff. But what book was the best of this batch? Let's rank the books to find out. I'm not counting the Karen books here because it does count as a separate series, plus I've only covered two so far. The Super Special will count in the list too since it does fit into the main series far easily.

#11: Hello, Mallory (#14): It sucks to put this one in last. It debuts Jessi and she's such a great character. And her chemistry with Mallory is fun. But I put this book in here because the club is absolutely frustrating in this book in ways that they really haven't been beforehand. It makes sense they want to make sure that Mallory is the best babysitter she can be but the challenges are frustrating and there's no fun to be had with them. It also makes no sense that they're more harsh on Mallory then they were for Logan, or Shannon or even the two Babysitting Agency members who joined to screw them over. And the ending doesn't feel as well earned for the club and if Jessi and Mallory turned them down then it would be for their own good. It's such a shame that a book with a pivotal debut is such a letdown.

#10: Claudia and the New Girl (#12): I just found this one annoying. Ashley is annoying. Her relationship with Claudia starts okay but it just gets bogged down with Ashley treating Claudia like a student and not so much a friend with the book hinging on if Claudia will really turn down the club for a deeper pursuit of Art. So most of the book slogs its way until we finally get Claudia doing the logical thing and calling Ashley out for her nonsense. It doesn't help that the girls are also awful and jealous, but at least in their case I understand. Though they did break their friendship and the club over petty stuff in the past, so it just proves that the club is a constant powder keg ready to go off at any second. 

#09: Little Miss Stoneybrook ...and Dawn (#15): Oh Dawn. I'm sure you have a good book in this series but this wasn't that. And it's not really Dawn's fault here, it's the pageant plot is kind of just okay. The best stuff coming from the girls helping the kids with preparing for the pageant. The pageant itself is just there. But it doesn't help that, again, the girls call a child not pretty because she won a beauty pageant. Again, Sabrina may have been more fake but she at least seemed to want to help the kids with the pageant jitters and yeah, she's going to win because she's experienced with this unlike the Stoneybrook kids. Poor situation or not, sour grapes from the girls or not, I just do not buy them ever being this awful to a child. They're not even this bad to the kids they usually don't like sitting for. It dragged the book down for me. Sorry Ann, I know you like this one. It didn't land with me.

#08: Claudia and the Bad Joke (#19): Claudia didn't get two great books this time around, and I think a lot of that is because both ultimately are the same plot. Something happens that makes Claudia consider quitting the club to preserve her future art career. In this case it's breaking her leg from a prank gone wrong. I will say what makes this book work better than the prior Claudia book is the prank stuff is more fun and the main prankster Betsy Sobak does get embarrassed and learns her lesson in the end. Granted, I'd have preferred in a more exciting finale, but what we get works. I also liked more interaction with Claudia and Mimi which again is going to make the next Claudia book a rough one to go through. It's her only book in the next ten so it should be more interesting than these two.

#07: Baby-Sitters on Board! (SS): The super special books are mostly Superfluous Clay. They're vacation stories without much that really matters in the long run. But this one is still fun. Not every story lands, namely Byron's, and Dawn and Claudia's stories feel too similar. But I did really enjoy Stacey and Marc's story and enjoyed most of the Mary Anne story though it resolves itself in ways that it honestly shouldn't. The latter half is just an ad for Disney World but damn if it ain't the most effective ad for the park there is. For a first try on these special editions, this book does what it needs to do and is a fine enough read. 

#06: Stacey's Mistake (#18): Losing Stacey in the main series sucked. And while I know that Ann M. Martin had her ideas for the series, it's clear that this wasn't as well thought out an idea as it could have been given it did bother fans. But thankfully we get two Stacey books in this batch with one being in New York. So we get a quick New York adventure story with the rest of the club in New York. Of course everything goes wrong, mainly thanks to Claudia sniping at Laine, and the stuff with Mary Anne's tourist stuff and Dawn's paranoia does sort of grate by the end. It also does lead to what does feel like too much of a super happy ending. But for a quick book about New York, and a follow-up on Stacey, it all does the trick for a solid book. We're still a while away from Stacey coming back so that absence is still going to be there for some time to come.

#05: Kristy and the Walking Disaster (#20): Kristy got two decent books in this batch. The latter being the weaker of the two, but it's still a strong book. If you like baseball then this might be the BSC book for you as it's a story of Kristy turning a bunch of kids into baseball players in the classic underdog story. Granted said underdog team doesn't win, but hey, neither did Rocky in the first movie. I like Jackie Rodowsky's character being this constant bumbling disaster and how the book writes him to eventually be able to succeed for the team. I like how the opposing Bart's Bashers turn out to kind of suck but their coach Bart Taylor doesn't. And the budding relationship between Kristy and Bart is cute. And sometimes all you need to make me like a book in this series is to make me go "well that's nice." A short and sweet book that succeeds in what it sets out to do. Good stuff.

#04: Mary Anne's Bad Luck Mystery (#17): This book is total filler fluff. There really isn't much that matters in the story. But sometimes you can still get a fun book out of a filler story. I like the book for the Halloween setting and the general horror vibe that comes with this story of supposed cursed necklaces and supposed chain letter-based bad luck. I will say what holds the book back is the mystery. It's very obvious what's going on and who are the ones that have been setting Mary Anne up with the bad luck necklace and what their motives are. But it never bothered me like, say, some of the worst cases of Stine making things way too obvious. This book definitely feels like the prototype for the eventual BSC Mystery series that we're still a good while away from, so that's also a plus in its favor.

#03: Kristy and the Snobs (#11): This book isn't super high on account of the stuff with Kristy and Shannon Kilbourne. It's fun stuff, but also very basic. A bunch of silly prank calls is the extent of this before the whole beef is quashed. What makes this book rank so high is the Louie subplot because it does feel heart-wrenching. How Louie becomes unable to walk, defecates on the floor, the constant attempts to prolong his life until the family decides to put Louie to sleep. It feels like a genuine emotional moment with how the entire Brewer/Thomas family has to come to terms with the impending death of Louie, especially David Michael who was the most attached. I also like the addition of the new puppy Shannon in the end, being presented as not trying to replace Louie, but rather to keep his legacy alive in a way. It's a solid book and does both of its plots well enough to fit into the third place spot.

#02: Jessi's Secret Language (#16): I like Jessi. As a protagonist, she's especially great and her first book as narrator is a great showcase as to why that is. But what makes this book work for me is Matt and Haley Braddock. Moreso Haley, who we learn has a hard time constantly having to be there for Matt who is deaf. And how she feels about it, even having feelings of wishing he was never born. In any other context that would make for a terrible character but here, it's believable. How it makes her feel like she has to focus her life on him and not have much of a life of her own. I think what makes Ann M. Martin's books work, at least so far, is how so many of the characters feel real. And this would be how a lot of kids would feel if they were in a similar situation to Haley. I also just really like the finale with the ballet performance and her inviting the deaf class to it. It's one of those saccharin, mega happy endings that actually manages to make me happy. I also like that the book doesn't make Jessi and her family's issues in Stoneybrook the focus of her character. That these are still issues, but Jessi isn't just that and she has her own goals that she wants to work on. It makes me optimistic for more books with her as the lead. 

#01: Goodbye Stacey, Goodbye (#13): Speaking of emotional books. Losing Stacey sucks. I've already harped on that. But I will say I really love how they sent her off for now. Stacey's emotions in having to move away, her relationship with Charlotte Johanssen and not wanting to upset her over the move. How the girls work together to make sure that she gets a worthy sendoff. This book succeeds in not feeling like the ending of a character's story, but the beginning. That even if perhaps Ann M. Martin had other plans in mind with Stacey in New York, this wasn't the end of Stacey McGill as a primary character in the series. This feels like a gamble. To get rid of a central character so soon is a risk. But it was a risk that I do feel ultimately pays off in the end. It's going to be a while, but by the time we get to the next Stoney So Far blog we'll have Stacey back and the gang will be whole. Just seven more books to get through before then. 

I think overall this was a strong ten books. Not every one landed, but there were far more hits than misses. If anything, it feels like it shows that Ann M. Martin wasn't afraid of shaking things up. And that her shakeups often came with at least a strong idea as to what she has planned for said shakeups. That we're not just messing with the status quo for no good reason. Every reason has its purpose. Whether its debuting new baby-sitters or having an established character move away. It shows that this series is always moving forward and that even if you think you know what's coming next you probably don't. It gives me optimism with this project as I feel that it means we're in for some good books in the near future. 

And what do we have in the future? We have more baby-sitting jobs, a death in the family, a returning character, maybe we finally return to a budding romance? The next ten books look to be some interesting stuff. And 20 books deep, this series has earned my trust. Can't wait to see what's in store.