Ann M. Martin Inspires a New Generation of Babysitters

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Ann M. Martin Inspires a New Generation of Baby-Sitters

by Melissa Fales, photos courtesy of Scholastic

The Baby-Sitters Club series was a literary staple of an entire generation of young readers. Ann M. Martin’s books about adolescent friends Mary Anne, Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, and their charges dominated bookshelves from the late 1980s through the 1990s, becoming one of the most popular young adult series of all time. “I heard from a lot of kids that the club members were like friends to them,” says Martin.

Martin grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. Her father drew cartoons for magazines like The New Yorker and her mother was a preschool teacher. “It was a happy, Leave-It-to-Beaverish sort of childhood,” she says. “I loved to write, and enjoyed any challenge put forth by my teachers, especially the wonderful Mr. Doherty, my creative writing teacher in junior high. Also, I wrote horrible poetry.”

While Martin was never a member of a baby-sitting club, she did her share of sitting. “I baby-sat my way from junior high through college,” she says. On her first day at Smith College in 1973, she met Claudia Werner, who would become a lifelong friend and lend her name to a main character in The Baby-Sitter’s Club books. Martin says her four years of college were some of the best of her life. “I double-majored in psychology and elementary education, both of which informed my writing, and I became particularly interested in children’s literature,” she says.

After graduation, Martin spent a year teaching fourth and fifth grade at a small, private school in Connecticut. “I had engaging, funny, hard-working students,” she says. “I enjoyed sharing my love of children’s books and reading and writing with them, but I could feel the pull of the publishing community. I wanted to work on children’s books myself, so I moved to New York City and began a new career.”

Martin worked for a number of major publishers, but yearned to be on the other side of that world. “My love of writing, even bad poetry, had never left, and as I became more involved in children’s publishing, I decided to try my hand at writing a novel of my own,” she says. “It was a middle-grade novel, Bummer Summer. The moment it was accepted by a publisher, I knew what I wanted to do, if not for the rest of my life, then certainly for the rest of my career.” It was published in 1983.

Shortly after Martin left an editor position with Bantam Books to write full-time, she was approached about writing a four-book series about a group of baby-sitters. “I was both relieved and intrigued,” she says. “I wasn’t sure I could make this work. So the offer of a four-book series, about baby-sitting, no less, was a relief. The series was middle-grade, the level at which I’ve always felt most comfortable writing, and I certainly had experiences to draw on. I was also intrigued. I’d read plenty of series books as a child, and had worked on several series as an editor, but hadn’t considered writing a series of my own.”

Martin’s first step in The Baby-Sitters Club saga was to create the characters. “That’s always my favorite part of creating a story,” she says. “I had set out to create a group of girls who were very different from one another but who worked well together and were friends, despite having divergent personalities and coming from varying backgrounds and family configurations.”

As real as the main characters came to feel to fans, only Kristy and Mary Anne were based on real people. “Kristy was based on my still-best friend Beth McKeever,” says Martin. “Mary Anne was based on me. As kids, Beth was the one with the big ideas, who was always starting clubs and coming up with adventures for us and our friends. And she was funny and outgoing. I was shy, but happy to follow her lead. Even now, 59 years after we first met, Beth organizes stellar baby showers, weddings, and birthday parties.”

All in all, the series ran from 1986 to 2000 and boasted a total of 131 titles, plus spin-off series and Super Specials. “While the books that were more funny or fanciful were fun to write, of course, I was always more interested in writing about serious topics,” she says. “My favorite stories were the more serious ones, such as Claudia and the Sad Good-Bye, written after the death of my grandmother, in which Claudia loses her own grandmother; Kristy and the Secret of Susan, in which Kristy sits for a girl with autism; and Jessi’s Secret Language, in which Jessi sits for a boy who uses American Sign Language to communicate.”

“I had set out to create a group of girls who were very different from one another but who worked well together and were friends, despite having divergent personalities and coming from varying backgrounds and family configurations.”

Martin received letters from devotees with personal requests for stories about specific topics such as bullying or losing a beloved pet. “I took all these things into consideration,” says Martin. “Later in the series, after I received a number of letters requesting a story about the dangers of drunk driving and also a story about the death of a peer, Mary Anne and the Memory Garden was published, which tackled both of those topics.”

The Baby-Sitters Club series was incredibly popular, with over 176 million books sold. Martin believes it’s because fans felt so genuinely connected to the club members. “Early on, I saw that most young readers felt drawn to one or more of the main characters, and that pulled them into the series,” she says. “Also, I wanted to create a group of kids who were independent, entrepreneurial problem-solvers. The members of the Baby-Sitter’s Club knew that the adults in their lives were there to help, but they generally took matters into their own hands. They were energetic creative-thinkers (who, frankly, pulled off something that wasn’t exactly realistic), but they were also relatable.”

The members of Martin’s Baby-Sitter’s Club remain perpetually adolescent. “What eventually became a problem for my editors and me was the fact that after the first few books, the characters didn’t age,” says Martin. “None of us had expected that the series would be published for nearly 15 years and that there would be hundreds of books in the series. The characters aged one year in the first ten books, and then we realized

we needed to stop time. If we hadn’t done that, the Baby-Sitter’s Club members would have been nearly 30 by the time the series concluded. So it was the fact that the series couldn’t change much over the years that eventually led to its end.”

The Baby-Sitter’s Club has continued in the form of a television show, a movie, and most recently, graphic novels by Raina Telgemeier and Gale Galligan based on Martin’s original stories. Later this month, there will be a special edition release of the first six books of the series in a collectible The Baby-Sitter’s Club tin case.

Martin has continued to write, including A Corner of the Universe (a Newbery Honor Book), Here Today, A Dog’s Life and Everything for a Dog.

Currently, she is taking a break and spending her time sewing, doing needlework, fostering homeless cats, and working on the Lisa Libraries, the foundation she started in 1990 in memory of children’s editor Lisa Novak. The Lisa Libraries collects new children’s books to create libraries for underserved children, including those who are in foster care, shelters, or visiting incarcerated parents.

In January, she released Rain Reign. Again, her creative process started by developing the main character. “I started thinking about a young girl living on the outskirts, both geographically and emotionally,” she says. “She had quirky interests and a troubled relationship with her father. Eventually, I realized she might be on the autism spectrum.”

While Martin was cultivating the character of Rose in her mind, her editor asked if she wanted to write another book about a dog. “The story about Rose and Rain didn’t come together, though, until Hurricane Irene hit our area,” she says. “As in the book, the storm wasn’t supposed to affect us, but it took an inland turn and did a great deal of damage in the northeast. After the storm, as I walked my dog Sadie up and down the street and saw the ruined homes and roads, I thought about pets that had become separated from their owners. The story came together quickly after that—a story about love, and about doing the right thing, even when the right thing is very difficult.”

It’s ironic that Betty MacDonald’s Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books were some of Martin’s favorites growing up. With the full blessing of MacDonald’s greatgranddaughter, Annie Parnell, and the guidance of two trusted editors, Liz Szabla and Jean Feiwel, who proposed the idea of The Baby-Sitter’s Club to Martin all those years ago, Martin has already published two books featuring a new character, Missy Piggle-Wiggle, the great-niece of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. The third book, Missy Piggle-Wiggle and the Sticky-Fingers Cure will be released in September. “Like her great-aunt, Missy lives in an upside-down house … with lots of animals, including a talking parrot, and a pig so polite that children learn good manners from him,” says Martin. “Parents go to Missy seeking her humorous but effective magical cures for such problems as a child who won’t help care for the family dog, a boy who gets hooked on chewing gum, a brother and sister who won’t stop whining, and in the case of The Sticky- Fingers Cure, a boy who can’t help but pilfer anything that attracts his attention.”

Martin admits that developing a new character and series based on such a beloved classic was a little intimidating. “It was daunting to attempt to follow in the footsteps of Betty MacDonald, but thinking of funny problems and cures made sitting down to write each day a pleasure,” she says.

For more information about Ann M. Martin and her books, visit scholastic.com/annmartin. •