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For a children’s series that’s been out of print for a decade, The Baby-Sitters Club has an enormous, wildly devoted fan base. It just happens to consist of 20- and 30-year-olds.

So in December, when Scholastic, the publisher, announced that the author Ann Martin had signed on to re-launch the series—which primarily follow the baby-sitting adventures of seven 13-year-old girls—these diehards, using computers instead of kid-kits, had much to say.

It’s difficult to estimate how large a role Raina Telgemeier’s graphic-novel adaptations of four books in the series (2006-2009) played in this decision. They were well-received critically, and according to a librarian quoted in the aforementioned article, popular with beginner readers. 

Telgemeier’s b&w, 9” X 6” gns, at the very least, tested the waters. In a pitch meeting, Telgemeier had described how much she admired the books, and was contracted to do four. Martin herself was initially contracted to do four — although not the same four that Telgemeier adapted. Eventually, Martin and a small team were putting out about one a month.

I always wanted to be Stacey from the Baby-sitters Club. Kristy was too bossy. I knew I wasn’t cool enough to be artistic, funky, junk-food loving, pre-hipster Claudia. But Stacey I could aspire to. Stylish and sophisticated, the treasurer of the Baby-sitters Club dated high school boys, was good at math, grew up in New York City, AND had the fabulous luck of being an only sibling. Stacey got her hair permed and dotted all her “I”s with hearts and had diabetes, which all combined to make her kind of glamorous. However, like most fervent fans, in reality I was more of a Mary Anne, the club’s meticulous secretary—bookish and shy and sensitive and a good listener (that exact description probably appeared somewhere on my fourth grade report card).

Last Thursday, Scholastic released The Summer Before, a prequel to Ann M. Martin’s Baby-sitters Club series—with 176 million books in print, one of the most successful series in publishing history. The Summer Before follows Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia, and Stacey through the summer before seventh grade—when the club was created in the original series’ first book, Kristy’s Great Idea. Kristy grapples with her parents’ divorce, Mary Anne struggles with her overprotective father, Claudia has her first major crush (on a ninth grader!), and Stacey moves to town from New York, where her best friend turned on her after she developed diabetes.

There’s really only one thing that gets ladies of our generation more nostalgic than Jesse Spano’s caffeine pill addiction: the Baby-Sitters Club. 

Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia and Stacey guided us through adolescence. They taught us that it’s OK to have diabetes. Or a deadbeat dad who ran out on your family. Or a single father who’swaaay overprotective. Or even to wear two different earrings at the same time.

Kristy may have had the “Great Idea,” but she was kind of bossy, right? And Stacey was all “sophisticated,” but sometimes her popularity was scary, like she was going to abandon the club again for her cool friends in New York, which Mary Anne or Mallory — say what you will about them — never, ever would have done.

We are speaking, of course, of “The Baby-Sitters Club,” the 132-book mondo series chronicling the adventures of seven industrious friends who ran a babysitting business in somnolent Stoneybrook, Conn. The BSC eventually spiraled into seven spinoff series, a feature film, a graphic novel, an HBO series — altogether more than 300 titles selling 176 million copies from 1986 to 2000 when, after 14 years in middle school, the members of the club finally graduated from eighth grade.

In 1986, author Ann M. Martin introduced readers to a girl named Kristy Thomas and her Great Idea. Originally meant as finite series, The Baby-Sitter’s Club became a middle-grade publishing phenomenon, running from 1986 to 2000, and inspired several spin-offs, a movie and a short-lived television series–not to mention numerous real-life counterparts.

Women who grew up reading the books can still tell you which babysitter they most wanted to be like (Boy-Crazy Stacey, anyone?). “As I was touring for other books I’ve written in the last few years, I began to meet more and more older fans–fans who were in their twenties and thirties–who read the books when they were kids and said, ‘We loved the Baby-Sitter’s Club books but we can’t find them anymore’,” said Martin.

It’s not often that you get to encounter someone famous that you admired growing up, which is why it was such an honor for me to meet Ann M. Martin, author of the Baby-Sitters Club series, last night.

The Baby-Sitters Club was created 25 years ago, and spawned several spin-offs and sold millions of copies worldwide. The books were about friendship, growing up, and – of course – baby-sitting. Readers were first introduced to the original four BSC members (Kristy Thomas, Claudia Kishi, Stacey McGill and Mary Anne Spier) in Kristy’s Great Idea, and over the years the club expanded to include more sitters from diverse backgrounds – including a boy!

Dear Ms. Martin,

It has come to my attention that you recently admitted that you have no “strong feelings” about my future. Well thank effing Christmas crackers, because you didn’t do me any favors in the past!

For years I’ve waited for the opportunity to give you a piece of my mind, but I had to go through a decade of intensive therapy before I could even get my mind together enough to figure out what I was going to say. Do you have ANY idea what my childhood was like? Oh wait! Of course you do! YOU CREATED IT!