The Baby Sitters Club Author Ann M Martin Update

One of the best part of having kids of your own is getting to relive some of the most amazing parts of your own childhood and adolescence. Sure, we can share our favs with our kids, but if we wait long enough, everything comes back around at some point, right? We don't have to pull out the bins of our old clothes to show them the fashions back in our day - those fashions are what are being sold in all the hippest stores right now. Old favorite movies? Streaming services have made it such that our kids will probably find them and fall in love with them all on their own.

But every once in a while, something we loved as a kid gets a face lift for a new generation, and we have the opportunity to relive it with our kids and fall in love ourselves all over again. If you were a kid in the 80's and 90's, you probably considered yourself an honorary member of The Baby-Sitters Club. We DEVOURED those books back in the day! Now, with a new Netflix show based on the series on the way, we're inspired to pick up our dog-eared copies of our favorite ones from the series and share them our kids. And it's also piqued our curiosity about what the author of the series, Ann M. Martin, has been up to these days!

Ann M. Martin is one of the most iconic YA authors of our generation.

The book in The Baby-Sitters Club series, "Kristy's Great Idea", came out in 1986, and it was an immediate success. From 1986 to 2000, Scholastic published a whopping 213 Baby-Sitters books, including books that were part of the series, mysteries, and Super Specials. At one point, they were churning out a book a month!

The Baby-Sitters Club was all Martin's idea. And most people assume she was responsible for writing all the books in the series. But Martin actually didn't write them all! In fact, out of the hundreds and hundreds of Baby-Sitters Club books, Martin estimates she only wrote about 60-80 of them. But that doesn't mean she wasn't part of the publishing process from start to finish. Even with books written by ghostwriters, Martin was heavily involved: developing outlines, editing the finished books, and ultimately approving them before publication.

Since her success as a YA novelist, Ann M. Martin has enjoyed "semi-retirement".

The original series ended in 2000, but Martin continued to write. After the end of BSC, Martin wrote and published a number of novels, including "Rain Reign" in 2016. She's been asked several times about writing a reunion book of sorts, bringing Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia, and Stacey back to together one last time. And while there's nothing in the works (yet!), Martin hasn't completely ruled out the possibility.

But she seems to be enjoying her "semi-retirement", and spends her morning writing, her days reading, and even watches after her neighbor's poodle, Piper. She says that she'd like to break into fantasy writing for her next venture, but is taking her time and enjoying her slowed-down lifestyle for now.

But for a semi-retired writer, 2020 is shaping up to be a pretty busy year for Ann M. Martin!

In 2019, Netflix announced that it would be adapting a 10-episode series based on The Baby-Sitters Club books. The whole gang is getting back together in the live-action series, to win over an entirely new generation of entrepreneurial kiddos. Rachel Shukert, known for her work on Glow and Supergirl, has been tapped as showrunner. And none other than creator of the BSC, Ann M. Martin, signed on as a producer. Which makes sense! We're sure no one knows the BSC quite like Martin, and millions of us will be watching the series to make sure they get all the details right.

Netflix released a promo image from the show recently, and although they haven't set an official release date, we're ready to block our a day or two in our calendar to stream it as soon as it drops.

In the meantime, we'll be rereading some of our favorite books from the series with our kids, and encouraging them to pick them up and get started. There are even graphic novels based on the series now! Martin really did create something for everyone.