Seen here with her most well-known series.
Ann M. Martin (full name Ann Matthews Martin, born August 12, 1955) is an American Young Adult and Middle Grade Literature writer who is best known for being the creator of The Baby-Sitters Club series.
In 2016, Martin came out as queer
, stating she had previously been in a relationship with her co-author on the Doll People series, Laura Godwin.
Bibliography:
Series:
- The Baby-Sitters Club: A series about a club of baby-sitting teens and tweens living in small-town Connecticut. Her most well known and longest running series (from 1986 until 2000), she also wrotenote its multiple Spin-Off series and was a consultant on both the 1990 HBO and 2020 Netflix series.
- California Diaries: The more mature spin-off series focusing on Dawn and her friends in California.
- The Doll People: The adventures of two different families of living dolls sharing a household, mostly focused on best friends 100 year old Annabelle Doll and modern Tiffany Funcraft. Co-written with former partner and author Laura Godwin.
- Family Tree: Follows a Maine-based family through four generations of mothers and daughters across the 20th and early 21st century.
- Main Street: Two orphaned girls move to a small town to live with their grandparents.
- Missy Piggle-Wiggle, an updated Spin-Off to the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series.
Short Series and Individual Works:
- Bummer Summer (1983)
- Inside Out (1984)
- Stage Fright (1984)
- Me and Katie (The Pest) (1985)
- Missing Since Monday (1986)
- With and Without You (1986)
- Just a Summer Romance (1987)
- Slam Book (1987)
- Yours Turly, Shirley (1988)
- Ten Kids, No Pets (1988) and its sequel, Eleven Kids, One Summer (1991)
- Ma and Pa Dracula (1989)
- P.S. Longer Letter Later (co-written with Paula Danziger) (1998) and its sequel, Snail Mail No More (2000)
- Belle Teal (2001)
- A Corner of the Universe (2002)
- On Christmas Eve (2006)
- A Dog's Life: The Autobiography of a Stray (2005) and the sequel Everything for a Dog (2009)
- Ten Rules for Living with My Sister (2011) and Ten Good and Bad Things About My Life (So Far) (2012)
- Rain Reign (2014)
Tropes about her writing and works include:
- Author Avatar: Martin has often said that Mary Anne Spier is the BSC member based on her, with Kristy being based on her best friend growing up.
- Author Usurpation: Chances are if you know her name well, it's as the author of the Baby-Sitters Club series before anything else.
- Creator Couple: Briefly with Laura Godwin to write The Doll People, though it was not confirmed until 2016 after they had separated.
- Massive Numbered Siblings: Ten Kids, No Pets and its sequel Eleven Kids, One Summer both focus on a large family; each chapter from each book is from a different kid's POV.
- Not Allowed to Grow Up: Regarding the Baby-Sitters Club series. The first ten books have the characters progress through and complete seventh grade and start eighth. But the passage of time stops after this, leaving the girls to spend literally dozens of birthdays, holidays, vacations, and summers forever in eighth grade (or in the case of Jessi and Mallory, sixth). They only finish middle school in the last book of the Friends Forever spinoff (which served as the Grand Finale to the entire series). In an interview with her in 2014, Martin explained that she had initially been contracted for a four-book run, but as the series became popular she ended up having to freeze their ages once the series showed no signs of slowing down. Having to lock the ages of the Baby-Sitters Club fueled the motivation for creating the California Diaries Spin-Off, which followed Dawn after she moved back to California and was allowed to have more mature situations than the BSC series even if it couldn't progress in age.
