Reviews Literature / The Baby Sitters Club

Wow, even when you were 7, that moral struck you as horrible. How'd that get published?

Being autistic (diagnosed as an infant) myself, I can tell you that I did spin the wheels on cars and I do have memory of that - it was just a pleasant repetitive activity. Heck, I loved swinging on the swing, and to a lesser extent, still do. I've seen Temple Grandin (the autistic woman who invented the modern cattle corral) describe swings as "drugs for autistic people".

Before I could talk at the age of 3 (yes, 3), I built a toy dragon out of these large lego-like blocks and pulled it around on a string. I definitely had an imagination and a personality.

I think the author of this book shouldn't have wandered into totally unfamiliar territory and then attempted to portray something she clearly doesn't know.

Wow.

This book sounds amazing with the sheer amount of Unfortunate Implications.

Don't trust reviews so gullibly.

The ending was somewhat of a downer. Kristy was NOT happy about Susan getting sent away. Although the information about autism in this book only applies to extremely severe cases, but the book was written in the 1990's.

Don't trust reviews so gullibly.

? The point is that the reviewer read the work in question. Reviewers can make mistakes and miss details, like the fact that Kristy herself wasn't happy about Susan being sent away - which would indicate heavily that the author disagrees with Susan's parents, though at the same time, it's hard to tell, as main characters are flawed too and it could be hinting that Kristy is wrong to think that way, which would definitely make a Family Unfriendly Aesop - if that were either the intent, or what people thought the message was. There's implications, and there's also inferences, and if readers get the wrong inferences, the author could be said to have failed at conveying their intent.

I've made mistakes in reviews before. And people disagree with reviewers all the time.

Anyway, if the book made it clear that it was an extreme case of autism, then that might be better. But I was diagnosed in the early 1980s, and I wasn't that "extreme case" depicted there.

More severe autism is a lot different from Asperger's, please keep that in mind. I'm not sure if the whole spectrum thing had been discovered back then.

That being said, leaving a 13-year-old with a severely autistic kid probably isn't a good idea. Of course this is the series where an 11-year-old was going to be left alone for a weekend with an eight-year-old sister and a brother who wasn't yet two. And seven kids were left alone with two babysitters when a snowstorm was predicted. WITH VERY LITTLE FOOD. I'm not sure how realistic it's supposed to be.

Or maybe everyone in the babysitters club universe looks past age and noticed that these are actually some pretty responsible and mature 11-13 year olds?

I seem to remember Susan was not only non-verbal, but pretty much what the most severe depictions of autism in media.

"Don't trust reviews so gullibly." But why would we doubt it when we haven't seen any indication that it's wrong? It's not gullible to believe someobody who shows no signs of being factually incorrect.

Interesting. The parents having another child and naming it Hope sort of reminds me of Flowers For Algernon, where Charlie's parents literally named their second child Normal. I wonder if they were intentionally referencing FFA, or if it really was a Family Unfriendly Aesop in that manner.

Are we brain twins? Your review sums up every problem I have with this book's handling of autism. I don't expect 100% realism in a bunch of kids' books, especially ones written before Google was readily available and the spectrum had yet to be researched much, but this was still pretty bad even for its time. And the ending left a bad taste in my mouth, too. They basically cheered over having a new baby so they could replace their "broken" kid.