A TV reboot of The Baby-Sitters Club, based on Ann M. Martin’s hit book series, is headed to Netflix.

(Courtesy of Scholastic)

The 10-episode order will center around five teenage girls–Kristy Thomas, Mary Anne Spier, Claudia Kishi, Stacey McGill, and Dawn Schafer–who form a babysitting business in the fictional city of Stoneybrook, Connecticut.

Each episode will explore coming-of-age issues, including school, sibling rivalries, jealousy, and divorce.

Scholastic
(Courtesy of Scholastic)

Following the news that Netflix is rebooting The Baby-Sitter’s Club as a new series, Mental Floss has compiled a list of 15 facts you probably don’t know about the original book series. Here are 10 of them (see full list at the link):

  1. A Scholastic editor came up with the concept of the series. Jean Fiewel joined Scholastic in 1983 and came up with the idea after noticing that a book called Ginny’s Babysitting Job was a top-seller month after month. She then approached Ann M. Martin to write the series.
  2. Martin drew from her own friendships to write the books. Martin, who worked briefly as a teacher, revealed, “I was also thinking of the kids in my classroom who came from really different kinds of backgrounds.”
  3. It was intended to be a four-book miniseries. The idea was that each book would focus on one of the four original characters–Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia, and Stacey–and have a run of 30,000 copies.
  4. The covers were painted by Hodges Soileau–and one featured Kirsten Dunst.Soileau worked from photographs of models and painted covers for more than 300 books. “My first cover was a book in the Baby-sitters Club series, Claudia Gets a Phantom Phone Calls,” Dunst told Parade in 2008.
  5. The handwritten portions in the book were created by one employee. “The handwriting for the girls–all of them!–was done by one person in Scholastic’s art department,” Martin reveals.
  6. At the beginning, Martin wrote all the books herself. When the series debuted, Martin was writing each of the books herself at the rate of one a month.
  7. The creation of several spin-offs required that ghostwriters be hired. To keep consistency, the editorial team created a BSC “bible” full of details like each character’s eye color, hobbies, and habits.
  8. The hardest book for Martin to write was Claudia and the Sad Good-Bye. The book, which deals with the death of Claudia’s grandmother, was written shortly after Martin lost her own grandmother.
  9. Reading about Stacey’s diabetes helped some readers diagnose themselves.Martin admits, “I would hear from so many readers who actually recognized the warning signs of diabetes and diagnosed themselves based on Stacey’s story.”
  10. When Stacey was written out of the series, fans freaked out. “Since Stacey hadn’t grown up in Stoneybrook, I thought it made sense that she might have to move back to New York City,” Martin once said about book #13, Good-bye, Stacey, Good-bye. 

 

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