Is New York as good as they’ve always dreamed? YOU BET!
Ann M. Martin is a YA MVP: she got her start as an editor and in-house writer for Scholastic, publishing in the Wildfire romance imprint and authoring a few topical stand-alone novels, before conceiving one of the most iconic, long-running series of the era: The Baby-Sitters Club debuted in 1986, and would run 131 volumes (Martin wrote “60 to 80” herself, the rest being farmed out to ghostwriters), spawn innumerable spin-off series, a theatrical film, two TV series, an AOL-era video game and then be rebooted as both graphic and traditional novels for the 21st century.
Background: I feel slightly silly even explaining the premise of the series- is there anyone who doesn’t know? I always think of myself as being slightly too old for the target demographic when the series came out, but looking back I read an awful lot of them.
Set in the very Martha Stewart suburb of Stoneybrook, Connecticut, the series follows (initially four, later up to 10) enterprising middle-schoolers who harness the power of a landline telephone to consolidate the town’s baby-sitting business. Each novel is told from the point of view of one of the members (Bossy tomboy Kristy, shy half-orphan Mary Anne, artsy Claudia, big city sophisticate Stacy, etc.) as they navigate various adventures with their baby sitting charges and tween crises.
The first sub-series to be spun off were the Super Specials, longer books that usually involved some sort of out-of-town travel (a cruise, summer camp, Hawaii) and are told from multiple points of view.
The Plot: I know I said back in 2024 that I don’t really care for the multiple points of view (and also that some of the characters are pretty annoying), BUT, there is a saying that the best era to live in New York City is the one right before you moved there, (which probably accounts for my fondness for the David Dinkins administration), so I could not resist picking up this one to see what long-lost landmarks of 1991 the BSC are going visit (obviously, my pick would be the Automat, which closed forever in the spring of that year) and also bet on who was going to act like the biggest yahoo (my money was on Kristy, but I was wrong!)
It is again one of the many summer vacations for our perpetual 8th graders, and dyslexic candy-junkie Claudia has somehow convinced her parents to attend two weeks of art classes at Fine Arts League of New York. Native New Yorker Stacey’s absentee workaholic father has moved back to the city, so they can just stay with him! Also 6th grader Mallory aspires to a career as a children’s author and illustrator, and reasons “I needed to learn how to draw cats wearing clothes.”
And then before you know it, all seven of the BSC have decided that they have their own REASONS for going to New York… how big is Stacey’s dad’s apartment? Well, the surplus teens and tweens can go stay with Stacey’s friend Laine and her family because they live at The Dakota (where else?) Which I wonder about because wasn’t Laine mean to everyone when she came to visit Stonybrook? Well, whatever, an hour on the Metro North and the gang is pulling into Grand Central, and Dawn starts acting really squirrely:
Maybe good old NYC wouldn’t have such a bad reputation if so many awful things didn’t go on there… Robberies, snipers, muggings, bank hold ups, that’s what.
“Duck!” I shrieked. “It’s a car bomb!”
Even for a book with seven narrators, this volume is really scattered, plot-wise. Immediately upon their arrival at The Dakota, Stacey and Mary Anne get hired as babysitters for a couple of sailor suit-wearing British children right out of Village of the Damned; Claudia and Mallory become fiercely competitive over the attention of their celebrity art teacher, McKenzie Clarke; Jessi plots ways to get around her parents’ rule that she can’t go out in NYC alone because she is literally 11 years old; Kristy finds a stray dog in Central Park and hides it in Laine’s parents guest room (!!!); and Dawn refuses to leave Stacey’s dad’s apartment, convinced that burglars are lurking on the fire escape all night.
11-year-old Jessi comes off as the most mature and level-headed of the bunch, wanting to escape the BSC scrum in order to go immerse herself in some freaking culture for once: a serious ballet student, she’s off to see Swan Lake the first chance she gets, while everyone else is shrieking about the Hard Rock Café and Bloomingdales. At the performance she meets an age-appropriate boy named Quint, who has to make a big decision about going to Julliard in spite of the kids on his block teasing him about being a “boy ballerina”.
Meanwhile, Stacey and Mary Anne start to notice a strange man following them and their very proper charges, Allistaire and Rowena, everywhere they go. The parents are diplomats… could somebody be trying to kidnap the children and/or use them to smuggle microfilm? Should they TELL AN ADULT????
Meanwhile, Claudia is annoyed that the great McKenzie Clarke is a harsh taskmaster towards her, while being awfully chummy with Mallory, despite the fact that have not drawn even one mouse wearing a vest. Claudia responds by taking this out on Mallory.
Kristy spends the first few days “babysitting” Dawn as she stands guard in the apartment, ever vigilant against intruders, but eventually skips out on that in favor of I REPEAT HIDING A STRAY DOG IN LAINE’S APARTMENT. Laine’s parents are unbelievably understanding about the matter when the dog is inevitably discovered, and the rest of the Kristy plot involves her finding a local family to adopt the dog.
Sadly, this volume is very low on long-lost landmarks (they don’t even go to the World Trade Center!) and instead they stick to Central Park, South Street Seaport, FAO Schwarz, Tavern on the Green, the Hard Rock Café (incredulously described as “Stacey’s favorite restaurant”), the American Museum of Natural History, etc.
Dawn eventually encounters Richie, another age-appropriate boy who lives in the building and is recovering from a broken ankle. When he finally gets a walking cast, he convinces Dawn to come on a geographically improbable whirlwind tour of the city, and she admits that maybe “snipers” aren’t as much a danger to her as she feared.
Also, it turns out the mysterious man following Stacey and Mary Anne is just the children’s bodyguard. Seems like someone could have mentioned that to them.
Mallory and Claudia make up when McKenzie Clarke tells Claudia he’s been tough on her because she has real talent while Mallory will never move beyond drawing ducks wearing waistcoats.
Kristy finds a family to adopt the dog.
Everyone seems to have forgotten that Jessi isn’t allowed to wander around the city by herself, and she goes with Quint to see a performance of Coppelia, an age-appropriate date for egg creams, and also over to his family’s home to watch Fred and Ginger movies. She keeps up a low-key campaign for him to take the Julliard audition, which is eventually fruitful:
I’m sure Quint’s parents thought we were going to tell them we wanted to get married, or something equally serious. They looked awfully worried…
When Quint said “It’s about my dance lessons,” his parents lost around twenty pounds, just by letting their breath out.
In a late-breaking plot development, it is revealed that Laine’s father is a big-time Broadway producer, so he sends the whole gang in a limousine to a Broadway musical… but it is not revealed which one. Cats? Miss Saigon? Notorious flop Nick & Nora? (obvs my choice).
Then everyone has to go home to Stonybrook, their New York adventures to never be referenced again.
In a brief epilogue, a series of letters to newfound pen pals reveal that Richie is getting his cast off, Quint aced his audition, Allistaire and Rowena made it back to the village of the damned, etc.
The one surprise in this book is at the end, in which it is revealed that the illustrations were done by Henry R. Martin, Ann’s father and a longtime New Yorker cartoonist!
Stylin’ Department:
Stacey would be packing black leggings (some with stirrups on the feet, some without) and baggy black and white and red tops.
Also, at the beginning Claudia explains the latest thing is to say something is “chilly” instead of “cool”, hence Dawn’s description of Richie’s coiffure:
His hair was brown and longish. He’d let the back grown into a very chilly little tail.
Lost Classics of Teen Lit: 1939-1989 
