Author Ann M. Martin revealed how The Baby-sitters Club grew from four books into a 40-year phenomenon, along with stories and memories that have stayed with her along the way.

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In August of 1986, Kristy's Great Idea was published, eventually launching hundreds of titles, spin-off series, movies, graphic novels, and television adaptations.

Growing up, I loved immersing myself in the town of Stoneybrook. Ann built a rich world within these 176-page novels, filled with oodles of drama and a main cast of characters that felt like old friends. 

Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, Stacey, Dawn, Mallory, Jessi, Logan, Shannon, and Abby each had distinct voices that allowed the series to grow as its storylines evolved. And speaking of storylines — who could forget Mary Anne and Logan's breakup, or Dawn and Claudia getting stranded on a deserted island?

Walking into the Scholastic office always hits me with a blast of nostalgia, but seeing a setup of Claudia's room in the front lobby was an extra-strong dose. 

The Scholastic team paid special attention to the details (do you spot Claudia's Kid Kit on the shelf, Kristy's president's chair, and the landline on the night table?), and the more I looked, the more fun things I noticed.

Everything from first editions to calendars and board games — you name it, they had it!

$0.95! Brought me back to the good ol' days!

It was a treat to sit down with Ann and David and ask them everything I've ever wanted to know about BSC.

Here are all the fun stories we unpacked about four decades of The Baby-sitters Club.

Note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Ann: In the beginning, it was only going to be four books — one each for the original four characters: Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, and Mary Anne. I think they all came out over about a year, or maybe a little more. Scholastic signed up for two more books, very cautiously, and I believe it was book number six [Kristy's Big Day] that wound up on what was then the Waldenbooks bestseller list.

At that point, Scholastic and I began to realize that it was maybe a little bit bigger than we had thought. Not too long after that, we began publishing one book every other month, and then one book a month. Somewhere along the way, it dawned on all of us that this was not only bigger than we thought, but really big. And that was very exciting.

Ann: One of my most vivid memories from working on The Baby-sitters Club was in 1992. I had been a huge fan of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade when I was growing up, so when I found out that there was going to be a Baby-sitters Club float, that was pretty exciting. 

I got to be on the float, along with the actresses who played the characters in the HBO series. It was very fun.

Ann: What I wanted to do, without hitting anybody over the head with a message, was to present a group of friends, girls, who were very different from each other. They're flawed. They're not perfect, but they are kind to each other. There's an attitude of acceptance, and I wanted that to shine through.

One book I just looked at this morning was Keep Out, Claudia! [where Claudia is discriminated against by a new babysitting client]. In the story, the other members of the club start looking at their own backgrounds and questioning, "What might somebody find that they think is 'wrong' about me?"

They examine that aspect in themselves, and then realize, "We're all who we are. We're proud of ourselves." That's a nice message.

David: I was 19 years old, between my sophomore and junior years of college, and by sheer coincidence, the editorial assistant for The Baby-sitters Club had just left. The editor, Bethany Buck, basically recruited me as an intern.

Ann was the first author I worked with, and I just dove right in. It was just Bethany and me in this small cubicle, sharing it, working on all the books together. And I haven't left Scholastic since.

When I started, it happened to be the time that The Complete Guide to the Baby-sitters Club was being put together. I was the 19-year-old boy reading The Baby-sitters Club on the subway with a highlighter, because I had to pick up all of the "facts" from the books and compile them so we could be consistent.

How many earrings does Claudia have in each ear? Is the cinema next to the bakery? I was literally just going through the books, reading them as if they were nonfiction, and putting together the guidebook for this fictional town. That was really fun. 

David: We also had fun coming up with ideas for the mysteries. I was a big mystery fan. Even when I went to college, I would go to the one girl on my floor who had a fax machine and fax Bethany notes for some plots we could do. 

I remember feeling that, for the mysteries, we needed to have a bad guy who was actively working against the club.

So we invented Cary Retlin, who was named after my best friend. He became this arch-enemy and a conduit for mischief in Stoneybrook.

Ann: Well, of course, I can't choose one. There were two: Kristy and Mary Anne. Kristy is based on my best friend Beth from when I was growing up — we're still friends — and Mary Anne is me. It was so easy to put myself right back into seventh grade and be Beth and me again.

David: It would be truly hard to pick a favorite character's books to edit. I would say the most challenging ones were the Claudia books. There would be long descriptions of her clothing, and I'd be thinking, I'm so lost right now. I can't edit this. I'm just taking this on faith.

Keep in mind, this was before the internet. These descriptions of outfits would come in, and I'd be like, "What the heck are Capri pants? I have no idea what she's wearing." I'd have to assume that Ann had been looking at the catalogs and knew exactly what kind of clothes girls were wearing at the time. So that was very funny.

Ann: I like working with big casts of characters and writing about an entire town full of people. Not only could I picture the houses where the characters lived, but I also had a "map" of Stoneybrook in my head, which eventually led to an actual map. Some of the characters, like the Perkins girls, Mariah, Gabby, and Laura, are real people. They are my goddaughters, and they're all in their 40s now. It was a lot of fun for me to write about them. 

I'm a huge believer in outlining, and I like to outline before I begin a book. The outlines would always include a description of what will happen in each chapter. At the beginning of working on the series, I would also do character sketches. If the setting was going to be very important, then a sketch of the setting as well.

In the beginning, it was just about keeping track of the original families. But then, as David said, eventually we had to create the guide. That became something that everybody relied on. 

David: I had a college friend with younger sisters, so he was also immersed in the Baby-sitters Club series. I remember saying to him at one point, like, "Oh, that's such a Kristy thing to say." 

After a while, you're in Stoneybrook for so long that you're thinking, Oh, this is a real place. I know these people. It's as if you're remembering your friends or the shopkeeper you go to every week. It becomes part of your memory.

Ann: I was inspired by books that I had read and loved growing up. The island adventure is one example [when Claudia and Dawn are stranded in Super Special #4]. That one was inspired by Carol Ryrie Brink's Baby Island. I'm pretty sure Snowbound was ignited by my love of the Betsy and Eddie books by Carolyn Haywood, and in particular Snowbound with Betsy.

David: As we would plot and talk about, "Oh, what should the storylines be?" Bethany and I always had our shorthand. We knew it would be time to finish if one of us said, "Baby-sitters in space."

(Laughs) We were like, if we ever start asking, "How do we get them into space? Will they go to Space Camp, and maybe they can be astronauts?" then it's time to end the series.

I'm happy to say that at no point in any of the books have the Baby-sitters ever gone higher than an airplane flight.

Ann: A lot of the themes are timeless. Friendship, family, school — those are the things kids care about most in their lives, back in the '80s and still today.

I also think readers identified very strongly with one particular character or a group of characters. I would get lots of letters from kids explaining why they were like a particular character, or why they identified with that character so strongly.

David: The girls have agency. They have to plan. They have to take responsibility. One of the most interesting dynamics is that they're not just empathizing with other kids their age. They're also showing empathy for their babysitting charges. When there were challenges or issues with the kids, they acted out of care.

I think readers really love that — thinking of themselves not as the one being taken care of, but instead as the one doing the caring.

Ann: I hope that The Baby-sitters Club gave readers a world that is kind and accepting, and that they brought those feelings with them as they grew up.

I hear more and more from adults now. I hear they found things in those books that they felt passionate about. Now they're librarians, teachers, writers, actors — and I love that they found something in The Baby-sitters Club to carry with them.

BuzzFeed: I definitely did. So you accomplished your mission!

Raina: I was nine years old in 1986, and the BSC meant the world to me then. Twenty years later, I got to introduce a new generation of kids to Stoneybrook through my graphic novel adaptations. Now some of THOSE kids have kids — and the cycle repeats! 

It has been one of my life’s greatest joys to share Ann’s stories with new readers (and some who are my age!) through my illustrated versions. Returning to the series for Baby-sitters On Board, collaborating with Gale Galligan, drawing my favorite girls again, seeing the excitement on readers’ faces…nothing could be more dibbly fresh! 

Gale: One of my favorite things about this job is that I get to meet a lot of young BSC readers. They're so excited to talk about their favorite characters and story moments! They tell me that these books helped them love reading, that they've reread the books thirty times, that they're reading the prose books and graphic novels side-by-side to see what's different. And they show me the stories and comics that they've been inspired to make in turn. 

It's incredible, and I'm so grateful to be a part of it. I couldn't think of a better way to celebrate The Baby-sitters Club than by adapting a book together with friends!

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