History Literature / TheBabySittersClub

There were at least three {{Spinoff}} series: ''Baby-Sitter's Little Sister'' (all narrated by Kristy's seven-year-old stepsister, Karen Brewer); ''Literature/CaliforniaDiaries'' (about Dawn and her friends in California after she moved back); and ''Friends Forever'' (in which the club had been reduced to its original four members after others left). As well as these and the main series, there were additional ''Mysteries'', a short autobiographical series for the eight grade members called the ''Portrait Collection'', and ''Super Specials'' books (where all the characters, as well as some others, narrate through one big event or trip together). The ''Little Sister'' series also had its own short spinoff, ''The Kids In Ms. Colman's Class.'' Many of the 300+ books were ghostwritten, although Martin wrote the original 22 books herself (and stopped writing altogether around book 58). A prequel, ''The Summer Before'', was released as part of the 2011 re-rerelease and focuses on the original four club members during the summer before seventh grade and showing what their lives were like right before they started the club.

There were at least three {{Spinoff}} series: ''Baby-Sitter's Little Sister'' (all narrated by Kristy's seven-year-old stepsister, Karen Brewer); ''Literature/CaliforniaDiaries'' (about Dawn and her friends in California after she moved back); and ''Friends Forever'' (in which the club had been reduced to its original four members after others left). As well as these and the main series, there were additional ''Mysteries'', a short autobiographical series for the eight grade members called the ''Portrait Collection'', and ''Super Specials'' books (where all the characters, as well as some others, narrate through one big event or trip together). The ''Little Sister'' series also had its own short spinoff, ''The Kids In Ms. Colman's Class.'' Many of the 300+ books were ghostwritten, although Martin wrote the original 22 books herself (and stopped writing altogether around book 58).

A prequel, ''The Summer Before'', was released as part of the 2011 re-rerelease, about the original four club members during the summer before seventh grade and showing what their lives were like right before they started the club.

* Dawn Schafer: stereotypical "California girl," becomes Mary Anne's stepsister. Eventually gets her own spinoff series after she moves back to California permanently. Alternate officer, then treasurer, then alternate again.
* Mallory Pike: Wannabe writer who comes from a huge family. Joined after Stacey left to New York. Junior member,
* Jessi Ramsey: the [[TokenMinority token black kid]] who experiences racism because of it, aspiring ballerina, and Mallory's best friend. Joined after Stacey left to New York. Junior member.
* Abby Stevenson: Final and latest SixthRanger; Jewish, twin, asthmatic, athlete, prone to cracking jokes that are [[SoUnfunnyItsFunny So Unfunny, They're Funny]]. Joined after Dawn moved back to California as the new alternate officer.

There were at least three spinoff series: ''Baby-Sitter's Little Sister'' (about Kristy's seven-year-old stepsister, Karen); ''Literature/CaliforniaDiaries'' (about Dawn and her friends in California after she moved back); and ''Friends Forever'' (in which the club was reduced to its original four members after others left). As well as these and the main series, there were additional ''Mysteries'', autobiographical, and ''Super Specials'' books. ''Little Sister'' also had its own spinoff, ''The Kids In Ms. Colman's Class.'' As you might suspect, many of the 300+ books were ghostwritten, although Martin wrote the original 22 books herself (and stopped writing altogether around book 58).

* {{Spinoff}}: The ''Little Sister'' and ''California Diaries'' series. ''The Kids In Ms. Colman's Class'' is a spinoff of ''LS.''

** Several books after Stacey is PutOnABus (from Stoneybrook to New York), Stacey's parents divorce, and most of the plot is about her choosing whether to stay in New York City with her father or move back to Stoneybrook with her mother. The title is ''Welcome Back, Stacey''.
** In a book, Jessi is asked to participate in a synchronized swimming competition. Almost all the book has Jessi practicing and being nervous about the competition... The title is ''Jessi's Gold Medal''.
** Stacey is excited to spend a week with her best friend from New York, Laine. By the title ''Stacey's Ex-Best Friend'', you can tell how much they will get along and in fact, by the end of the book, they are no longer friends.

!!The books provide examples of:

* Kristy Thomas: RagsToRiches tomboy with an endless supply of "great ideas".
* Claudia Kishi: Japanese-American, artistic, [[AsianAirhead defied]] the "Model Minority" stereotype by being [[BookDumb hopeless at school]].
* Stacey [=McGill=]: stylish kid from New York, resident math whiz, but most importantly...''diabetic''.
* Mary Anne Spier: AuthorAvatar and Kristy's shy best friend.
* Dawn Schafer: stereotypical "California girl," becomes Mary Anne's stepsister. Eventually gets her own spinoff series.
* Mallory Pike: wannabe writer who comes from a huge family.
* Jessi Ramsey: the [[TokenMinority token black kid]] who experiences racism because of it, aspiring ballerina, and Mallory's best friend.
* Abby Stevenson: Final and latest SixthRanger; Jewish, twin, asthmatic, athlete, prone to cracking jokes that are [[SoUnfunnyItsFunny So Unfunny, They're Funny]].

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The first cover of ''Kristy's Great Idea'' has her wearing a blue jumper over a striped pink blouse with a headband and kneesocks, and she's described as--like Mary Anne--wearing a blouse, skirt, and saddle shoes when they first meet Stacey. The 1995 reprint changes this to her wearing jeans and sneakers, with the cover showing Kristy in her now iconic turtleneck and sweatshirt, jeans, and visor.

* ''Kristy's Great Idea'' (1986) (1st graphic novel, illustrated by Raina Telgemeier.)

* ''The Truth about Stacey'' (1986) (2nd graphic novel, illustrated by Raina Telgemeier.)
* ''Mary Anne Saves The Day'' (1987) (3rd graphic novel, illustrated by Raina Telgemeier.)
* ''Dawn and the Impossible Three'' (1987) (5th graphic novel, the first illustrated by Gale Galligan.)
* ''Kristy's Big Day'' (1987) (6th graphic novel, illustrated by Gale Galligan.)
* ''Claudia and Mean Janine'' (1987) (4th graphic novel, illustrated by Raina Telgemeier. The last one to be illustrated by her before leaving for personal projects.)
* ''Boy-Crazy Stacey'' (1987) (7th graphic novel, illustrated by Gale Galligan.)

* ''Logan Likes Mary Anne!'' (1987) (8th graphic novel, the final one illustrated by Gale Galligan.)
* ''Kristy and the Snobs'' (1988) (10th graphic novel, illustrated by Chan Chau.)
* ''Claudia and the New Girl'' (1988) (9th graphic novel, illustrated by Gabriela Epstein.)
* ''Good-bye Stacey, Good-Bye'' (1988) (11th graphic novel, illustrated by Gabriela Epstein.)

* ''Jessi's Secret Language'' (1988) (12th graphic novel, illustrated by Chan Chau.)
* ''Mary Anne's Bad Luck Mystery'' (1988) (13th graphic novel, illustrated by Cynthia Yuan Cheng. To be released December of 2022.)
* ''Stacey's Mistake'' (1988) (14th graphic novel, illustrated by Ellen T. Crenshaw. To be released October of 2023.)

* BabysittersNightmare: Many examples. In particular, new children, who are introduced in different books, often start off as insufferable (the Feldman children, the Delaney children, Rosie Wilder, the Arnold twins, Betsy Sobak, etc.) but usually get better thanks to CharacterDevelopment. However, there are some examples who are consistently seen as nightmares throughout the series, like [[SpoiledBrat Jenny Prezzioso]] or [[WalkingDisasterArea Jackie Rodowsky]], who are recurring characters and nobody ever wants to babysit them (although multiple sitters mention that they all love Jackie and just don't want to deal with the disasters that happen to him, while most of them actively dislike Jenny).

* Averted with the girls' parents; they are [[ParentsAsPeople imperfect]], but are generally pretty good parents, and the sitters will not hesitate to take advice from them.

* AbusiveParents: At least once, with a dad who verbally and physically abuses his seven- and five-year-old. [[spoiler: Claudia is there to call in the cavalry and get the mom and kids the help they need.]]

* AdultsAreUseless: The girls' parents are [[ParentsAsPeople imperfect]], but are generally pretty good parents, and the sitters will not hesitate to take advice from them. Sometimes played straight in the ''Mysteries'' series if the girls going to an authority figure would break the plot. However, the parents of charges are frequently clueless about problems their children are having until the BSC members bring it to their attention. For example:

** Mrs. Prezzioso not noticing her older daughter Jenny's obsessive finicky behaviour and acting out (at least at first), as she's too distracted by becoming a pageant mom for her younger daughter Andrea in ''Mary Anne and Miss Priss.''
*** She and her husband don't do all that great a job of preparing Jenny for big sisterhood either. One of the most glaring examples is that they leave for the hospital while she's still asleep - ''without waking her up and telling her first''. Yeah, the kid [[SarcasmMode definitely isn't going to feel abandoned]] after that.

* AmbiguousDisorder:
** Alexis, Mallory's [[spoiler:initial roommate when she goes to boarding school]], clearly has some kind of disorder that leads her to behave in very unpredictable ways.
** The extent of Claudia's difficulties with school, particularly post-{{Flanderization}}, would seem to indicate some kind of learning disability or something else along those lines.
** A character in Super Mystery #3, a sixth-grader called Eileen, is described as a "social klutz". Likely unintentional, but many of her traits are in line with the level of autism that often goes undiagnosed. She is bullied heavily, and it is noted that she either makes no eye contact or does it too intensely; Mallory also notes that she often speaks up in class, but is quieter on the trip because of the bullying.

* BlessedWithSuck: Rosie in ''Claudia and the Genius of Elm Street.'' Being a ChildProdigy who's talented at everything isn't so great when your parents force you to take dozens of extracurriculars to "improve your skills", constantly push you to be perfect at everything you do (to the point that even things you enjoy doing are no longer fun), and you have no friends because everyone at school [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer either hates you or is jealous of you.]]

** Dawn has probably the worst example of this trope in ''Here Come the Bridesmaids!'' when her father is getting remarried. She all but pitches a fit because her stepmother-to-be doesn't want to have Mary Anne as a bridesmaid as well as Dawn. Remember, Mary Anne is Dawn's stepsister on her ''mother's'' side and is not remotely related to Dawn's father, let alone his new bride. Furthermore, Dawn ''never asked'' if Mary Anne could be a bridesmaid. She just assumed that Mary Anne would be sharing the moment with her and bought her a dress. To Dawn's credit, she never brings up her (frankly, stupid) assumption to her father or stepmother. But Mary Anne still ends up wearing the bridesmaid dress, because she assumed it'd be a church wedding, not a beach wedding, and didn't pack appropriately. One has to wonder just what Dawn's father and stepmother thought about that.
*** Even Mary Anne has a moment of this in the same event. She's watching the wedding and she just can't help feeling like she should be "up there with my sister, sharing her special day." But it's ''not'' Dawn's special day, it's ''Carol and Jack's''. They were nice enough to allow Dawn to invite a couple of her friends, which was more than they were required to do.

* ExtracurricularEnthusiast: Rosie Wilder's parents more or less try to force her to be this -- virtually anything and everything she shows the slightest bit of aptitude or interest for becomes a full-scale club, team, or recurring lesson, with predictably poor results. Rosie becomes this for real at the end of her first book after she finally talks things out with her parents and they agree that she can stop doing so many things and pick a few things to focus on instead; with the pressure gone and no longer constantly jumping from one thing to the next, she begins to enjoy her chosen activities (math club, violin, and art lessons).

*** In one of the Super Mysteries, the angels in a church Christmas pageant are described as wearing robes and thongs. Makes for some rather interesting (and slightly disturbing, considering that the aforementioned "angels" are all little kids) mental imagery in the 21st century, to say the very least!

%% ** Dawn's "I'm Awesome!" necklace.

* {{Jerkass}}: Kristy's father Patrick is portrayed this way in the ''Friends Forever'' book where he remarries, and even more so in the 1995 film. It's also hinted in ''Claudia's Book'', where she notes that as a little girl she seriously disliked Mr. Thomas.

** Some of the charges can be this.
*** Lou [=McNally=] and Sean Addison in particular both show shades of this, and some of the Pike kids (particularly the triplets) occasionally behave this way towards their siblings.
*** Betsy Sobak doesn't ''intend'' to be cruel, but is obsessed with practical jokes to the point where she often fails to consider the feelings of her targets. Unfortunately, Claudia is inadvertently injured by one of her pranks - Betsy doesn't tell Claudia that the chain of a swing is broken, thinking it'd just break immediately under Claudia's weight when she sat on it. Instead, the swing initially holds, and Betsy gets distracted and forgets about the chain, which finally gives out mid-swing. [[GoneHorriblyRight Claudia breaks her leg so severely, she has to stay in the hospital with the leg in traction]]. The club responds by joining forces with some of their other charges to get Betsy to stop playing pranks. She eventually seems to take the lesson to heart, and her later appearances don't mention prank-playing.

* TheKlutz: Jackie Rodowsky, AKA "The Walking Disaster"

** Downplayed with the Watson-Brewers due to them being a blended family. Kristy is 11 years older than Emily Michelle, and her brothers Sam and Charlie are a decade or more older than Andrew, and Emily (and in Charlie's case, also Karen and David Michael.)
*** David Michael was this to some extent, as he's six years younger than next-youngest sibling Kristy, with an even bigger age gap to Sam and Charlie. It's particularly noticeable before his family blended with the Brewers, since he was the only member of the family that far away from everyone else's ages.

* BarelyThereSwimwear: In the second book, Stacey's swimsuit is described as "it was skimpy (and we're talking ''very'' skimpy) and yellow, with tiny bows at the side of the bottom part". Claudia even mentions that "the top part was filled out pretty nicely".
* BathroomStallOfOverheardInsults

* {{Bookworm}}: Mallory, and Jessi to a lesser extent.

* ClassTrip: Several, most notably the school-wide ski trip.

* CondescendingCompassion: Stacey toward a new girl in one book.

* DeathGlare: Kristy's "Look"

* EarPiercingPlot: In ''Mallory and the Trouble with Twins'', Mallory negotiates with her parents for permission to finally get her ears pierced. They agree on the conditions she pays for the piercing, takes care of them properly, gets only one hole in each ear, and [[TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers doesn't stick to small simple earrings]] (as she'd offered to do) because, as her mom says, part of the fun of pierced ears is wearing wacky earrings sometimes. (Behind the scenes, Jessi similarly makes a similar negotiation with her own parents, as she and Mallory get their ears pierced at the same time. Other members also get their ears pierced: Dawn (who spontaneously gets two in each ear) and Claudia who gets an exra one in one ear, giving her two in one and one in the other.

* EggSitting: One book focuses on this.

* EverytownAmerica: Stoneybrook
* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: {{Lampshaded}} by Jessi in ''Hello, Mallory,'' when she snarks that naming a babysitting club "The Baby-sitters Club" is incredibly obvious.

* ExtrudedBookProduct: What eventually happened to the series.

* FoodPorn: Especially prominent in Dawn and Claudia books.
* ForWantOfANail: Much of the drama of ''Baby Sitters' Island Adventure'' would have been avoided if the group had secured Claudia's boat after arriving on the island. Had they had a boat, they could have sent a couple of people back to the mainland once the storm let up to tell everyone what happened and send a boat directly to the right place to pick up the others. Instead, they're stranded on the island with no way to communicate, so a full-blown grid search has to be mounted to find them.

* FriendToAllChildren: Obviously all of them, especially Kristy.
%%* FrozenInTime: The girls spent literally dozens of birthdays, holidays, and summers in eighth grade. At one point Claudia was demoted to seventh grade, but the others stayed in place. They finally finished middle school in the last book of the ''Friends Forever'' spinoff.

** And in the Super Special where they go to camp, one girl has a pronounced lisp.

* GenkiGirl: Abby and Karen.
* GirlPosse: Grace and Bebe for Cokie Mason; Jannie and Leslie for Pamela Harding.

* HotBlooded: Kristy.
* IAlwaysWantedToSayThat: Jessi says this in regards to "Follow that cab."
* IAmNotPretty: Mallory doesn't regard herself as good-looking.

** Dawn's "I'm Awesome!" necklace

* KidDetective: There was an entire spinoff ''Mystery'' series based on this trope.

** Averted with ''Jessi's Secret Language''; while it does feature a new family with two children, one hearing and one deaf, the kids become recurring characters afterward, since Matt becomes a close friend of the Pike triplets and Haley is friends with Becca and Charlotte.

* LongRunningBookSeries: At ''least'' one book a month for more than ten years!

* MeatVersusVeggies: The Schafer-Spier family deals with this a lot.

* MsImagination: Karen, Kristy's stepsister.

* MyBelovedSmother: In the early books, Richard Spier is a male version as he's ''extremely'' overprotective of Mary Anne, to the point of dictating (in extremely rigid terms) what she wears, how she styles her hair, and how she spends her baby-sitting money. He relents somewhat after Mary Anne proves, by way of her solid handling of an emergency while baby-sitting, that she's more mature than he gave her credit for, though he's still stated to be a bit more restrictive than the other girls' parents.

* NaiveEverygirl: Mary Anne and, to some extent, Mallory.
* TheNamesake: The title club is sometimes the only thing its members have in common.

* NoPeriodsPeriod: It's plausible for a thirteen-year-old girl not to have started her period yet, which makes a reasonable justification for each of the girls individually, but it's decidedly less plausible that ''none'' of them would have started menstruating by that age, especially since some of them (Stacey in particular) are mentioned to be fairly well-developed, suggesting they've been in puberty for a few years already. Presumably it's not mentioned because the target age range for the books was a bit younger than thirteen, and Scholastic didn't want to freak out the kids (or their parents).
* NotAllowedToGrowUp: The first few books have the original five progress through and complete seventh grade and start eighth, but once that's happened, the passage of time stops and the girls spend literally dozens of birthdays, holidays, and summers in eighth grade.[[note]] At one point Claudia was demoted to seventh grade, but it was still during what would have been her eighth grade year.[[/note]] They finally finished middle school in the last book of the ''Friends Forever'' spinoff (which is really the GrandFinale to the entire series).

* OnlySaneMan: Jessi and Mallory in some of the later books.
* OneSteveLimit:
** Two characters are named Sabrina Bouvier - a child beauty queen that BSC meets in ''Little Miss Stoneybrook... and Dawn'', and later a classmate at SMS.

** Abby and her twin sister Anna. Anna is musical, bookish, and introspective; Abby is athletic, noisy, and enjoys babysitting. About the only things they have in common are that they both have scoliosis (although Abby didn't need it corrected by a brace while Anna did) and poor eyesight. Interestingly, this never creates a conflict between them - when they first realized they had branching interests as little girls, their initial reaction was to panic and double-down on making sure they had identical ''everything.'' They did grow out of that, because while they liked being identical, they didn't like being treated as a single entity and didn't want to chain themselves down to being ''completely'' identical when they realized that having separate interests wouldn't create a break between them.
*** It is worth noting that Anna also enjoys babysitting, like Abby, but she sees violin as a higher priority, causing her to turn down the invitation to join the club.

* PungeonMaster: Abby
* RealMenHateSugar: In one of the books, Nicky Pike and Buddy Barrett refuse to help bake cookies after having been teased for attending a "girly" sewing class. Becomes a partial inversion when they decide they are not averse to EATING said cookies.

* SameSexTriplets: Adam, Byron, and Jordan Pike

* SchoolPlay: One of the specials was about the club members and babysitting charges appearing in a musical. Another book involved the girls trying to put on a Thanksgiving play with the elementary school, only to end up having problems because their idea was a more creative version (a modern girl going back in time to the first Thanksgiving) and some of the parents pitched a fit at the idea of anything but a traditional Thanksgiving play.

* SelfDeprecation: Claudia and Mallory, for very different reasons, are the most prone to this. Claudia thinks poorly of her academic abilities and intellect, while Mallory is convinced that she's ugly, so the books from their points of view often contain references to these opinions.
* SeriesContinuityError: Thanks to the various writers over the span of over a decade, the series has its slip-ups:
** In the Super-Special ''Baby-Sitters Summer Vacation'' Kristy gets the idea for them all to go to camp after watching ''Film/TheParentTrap'' and mentioning that she's never been to camp. Apparently she forgot that she went to softball camp when she was ten as there was a whole chapter of it in ''Kristy's Book''

** Melody Korman (one of the kids in Kristy's new neighborhood) is mistakenly named Maria in one book.
*** Melody isn't the only Korman to be the victim of writer goofs either - her baby sister Skylar is mistakenly referred to as her and older brother Bill's baby "brother" in another book (though in this case the writers at least had somewhat of an excuse; Skylar is, after all, a unisex name).
** In ''Starring The Baby-Sitters Club'', the play is supposedly specifically a collaborative SchoolPlay for the three main Stoneybrook public schools, not an open community production; but both Karen Brewer and Matt Braddock take part despite the fact that they don't attend the schools in question (Karen is in private school, and Matt goes to a special school for the Deaf). Potentially it could be some kind of sibling exception, since both of them have a sibling/step-sibling who go to Stoneybrook Elementary, but you'd expect it to at least be mentioned.
** In ''Kristy and the Snobs'', Shannon Kilbourne says that both she ''and'' her younger sister Tiffany baby-sit. Tiffany's sitting career is never mentioned again after this point, and she actually becomes one of the BSC's ''charges'' (even though she's eleven, the same age as Mallory and Jessi).[[note]]It's indicated in ''Shannon's Story'' that Tiffany is still in fifth grade rather than sixth, which could explain why the BSC sees her as different than Jessi and Mallory, but it still doesn't explain why the Kilbournes would call someone else in to baby-sit Tiffany, or why they need to call a babysitter at all if it's just Tiffany and younger sister Maria at home -- presumably Tiffany can baby-sit her own sister.[[/note]]
** Also from ''Kristy and the Snobs'' Kristy has to call Claudia near the end of the book to tell her she can't make the meeting and Dawn has to take over as President (shortly before they learn they have to put down Louie), but in another book one character says Kristy never missed a meeting!

* SettingUpdate: Mildly with the graphic novels. The technology level implies they take place in the 1990s or ''maybe'' the early 2000s. For example, the ''Mary Anne Saves The Day'' book was released in 1987; however, the graphic novel has a reference to DVD players and the 1998 ''Film/{{The Parent Trap|1998}}'' film.
** The [[Series/TheBabySittersClub2020 2020 Netflix Series]] is a more blatant example.
* ShoutOut: ''The Truth About Stacey'' is dedicated to Dr. Claudia Werner. The series features characters named both "Claudia" and "Dr. Werner." The Perkins family is also based on friends of the author's; at one point, it's noted that they own a lot of children's books because they have a friend who writes and edits them.

* ShrinkingViolet: Mary Anne, Kristy's little stepbrother Andrew, and Charlotte Johanssen. Jessi's sister Becca is this to a certain extent as well.
* SiblingYinYang: Claudia and Janine, Abby and Anna, Karen and Andrew
* SickEpisode: Most notably ''Stacey's Emergency'' (in which Stacey's diabetes lands her in the hospital), ''Get Well Soon, Mallory'' (in which Mallory has mononucleosis), and the subplot to ''Dawn's Wicked Stepsister'' (in which, thanks to a series of bizarre coincidences, ''every member'' of the Pike family gets sick[[note]]Mallory, the triplets, Margo, and Claire[[/note]] or injured [[note]]Vanessa, Nicky, and both parents[[/note]] within a span of a couple of weeks).
* SixthRanger: Dawn, Mallory, Jessi, Abby.

* SnoopingLittleKid: You'd be hard pressed to find a book in the ''Mysteries'' series that doesn't feature at least one instance of this.

* SpellMyNameWithAnS: It's Stacey, Jessi, and Mary Anne - not Stacy, Jessie, and Mary Ann/Marianne/Mariann/Maryann/Maryanne/Mary-Ann/Mary-Anne/etc.

* SpoiledBrat: Jenny Prezzioso; to many fans, Karen Brewer also qualifies.

** In a book, Stacey is excited to spend a week with her best friend from New York, Laine. By the title ''Stacey's Ex-Best Friend'', you can tell how much they will get along and in fact, by the end of the book, they are no longer friends.

** When the [=BSC=] goes crazy testing Mallory about whether she's a good enough sitter, she and Jessi start up "Kids Incorporated."
** When Dawn tells Sunny, her best friend in California, all about this great new babysitting club she joined, Sunny loves the idea so much that she starts the We (Heart) Kids Club with a couple other friends of hers, Maggie and Jill. Kristy is alternately flattered and annoyed, both because she thinks Sunny and her friends are too casual and disorganized... and because they got a ''lot'' more positive publicity than the [=BSC=], even getting interviewed on television (and subsequently so overwhelmed with new business that they adopt several of Kristy's innovations, including regularly scheduled meetings).

** In ''Hello, Mallory'', when the girls don't allow Mallory to join the club (at first), Mallory and Jessi start their own baby-sitting service called "Kids' Incorporated". Unlike the unrealistically successful BSC, Mallory and Jessi's only clients are their own families asking them to babysit for their younger siblings. This is probably what would have happened to the BSC itself in real life, since we are talking about twelve/thirteen-year old girls, and Mallory and Jessi are even younger.

* SwitchingPOV: And the "I" in this book refers to...

* ThemeTwinNaming: Marilyn and Carolyn Arnold, Abigail and Anna Stevenson, Mariah and Miranda Shillaber, Terri and Tammy Barkan, Ricky and Rose Salem, Tasha and Terry Hoyt. Averted with the Pike triplets Adam, Byron, and Jordan.
* ThoseTwoGirls: Mallory and Jessi.

** Jessi and her dancer boyfriend Quinn, who is black. Outside of dating her, he's rarely seen.

** At one point in the series, Stacey falls in with a "bad girls" group.

* TwinSwitch: Identical twins Marilyn and Carolyn did it once while Mallory was babysitting, just to mess with her. When Claudia replaces Mallory once, they switch again to prank Claudia, with Carolyn going to piano lessons pretending to be her sister (when their mother learns about it, she blames ''Claudia''). They get better by the end of the book, when they start to express their individuality and stop pranking the sitters.

* VerySpecialEpisode: Several books showcase a particular social issue, including racism, hazing, eating disorders, and single parenting. They do not deal with topics like illicit drugs and sexuality, and only briefly touch on alcohol, which might have been considered inappropriate for the target audience.
** By far the heaviest issue touched upon is child abuse. In one book, Claudia is horrified to discover that her two new sitting charges are being both verbally and physically abused by their father.
* ViewersAreGoldfish: The main characters get repeatedly introduced and described in every book. {{Lampshaded}} by the various snark communities as being the standard contents of chapter two. This is done so that the books can be easily read out of order or so that new readers don't have to go track down a copy of #1 to understand what's going on. Face it -- you haven't read them all.

** ''Claudia and the Sad Goodbye'' has a subplot in which the sitters begin taking care of the Addison kids, who are constantly forced to attend extracurricular classes and sports activities. Their parents are basically selfish flakes, and all they ever want is time for themselves, so they shuttle their son and daughter off to every extracurricular possible (their first introduction to the club is them asking Claudia to teach their daughter art, in order to give her another recurring commitment).
*** The last example becomes particularly painful in ''Mary Anne and the Library Mystery'', when Sean Addison starts ''lighting books on fire'' in the trash cans of the crowded library because of how much he hates all of the activities his parents are forcing him to do. It's particularly scary because the library has just started a program encouraging kids to read, so there are dozens of small children in the building during all of the fires. The next time the Addisons call the club, they ask for a regularly scheduled once-a-week sitter, and the club won't commit to it until they discuss it amongst themselves, mentioning that the Addisons, while incredibly ballsy to call them again, have been getting counseling. Sean has gotten to the point where he resents them because one of his classmates is bullying him for always needing to be babysat, and it's not until Stacey calls the classmate's father (with Sean listening on the extension) and pretends to offer [=BSC=]'s services, only for him to thank her and reassure her that his son loves being babysat by his niece, that Sean realizes his classmate is just bullying him for no reason and he starts to behave better once he gets to tell him off.
* WhereTheresAWillTheresAStickyNote: Mimi in ''Claudia and the Sad Goodbye''.

* WritersCannotDoMath: The number of bedrooms in Watson's house never seems to add up. Kristy says his house has nine bedrooms, which should mean one each for Watson and Elizabeth, Kristy, Sam, Charlie, David Michael, Karen, Andrew, Emily Michelle and Nannie. However, in another book Kristy says that each of her brothers could have a whole suite of rooms if they wanted, and occasionally they've had entire families stay over with no discussion of people moving or sharing rooms. It may be that the "nine bedrooms" refers only to the bedrooms on the first and second floors. It's mentioned that there is a third floor and an attic that are never used ([[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial which is most certainly not because the ghost of Ben Brewer haunts them]]), so her brothers ''could'' have suites, but would have to move to the upper floors. Presumably, these upper floors are where guests are quartered for the duration of their stay.
** In book #13, ''Goodbye, Stacey, Goodbye'' The girls are debating wheather they should let Mallory join the club, amd Stacey says Mallory is the oldest of 8 and could probably diaper a baby better than any of them. Mallory even says in the next book that she known how to change diapers and mix formulas. For the record, Mallory is 11 and her youngest sister, Claire, is 5. That means Mallory was only 6 when Claire was born! Who would trust a 6 YEAR OLD to diaper a baby, or to actually mix a formula?! True, you could give the 6 year old the formula in the bottle and tell her to shake it, but what 6 year old would be called upon to actually MAKE it themselves?!
** And if you consider the Pike kid's ages, the parents were having a baby (or babies) almost every YEAR except for Claire, who might have been a surprise seeing as how she's the only one born two years apart from the others instead of one.

* YokoOhNo: A platonic version in the book ''Claudia & The New Girl'', the very tagline of which is "Claudia might give up the Club — and it's all the new girl's fault!". As indicated by the title, Claudia befriends Ashley, a new student at school, and begins spending more time with her than her other friends, as Ashley, like Claudia, is an artist. Eventually, enough tension rises that both Ashley and the other club members demand that Claudia choose one or the other. By the book's end, Claudia makes it clear that she will not give up either ''and'' that both parties were out of line to ask such a thing. Ashley reappears in several books, and while she never again suggests that Claudia give up babysitting or the club, it's still obvious that she holds them and it in contempt.

* YouMeddlingKids: The basic plot of the ''Mysteries'' specials
* YourTomcatIsPregnant: Shows up in one book when Jessi pet-sits a hamster.

** In ''Shannon's Story'', Shannon's mother is often overbearing, wanting to be involved or have a say in ''everything'' while seeming to have difficulty grasping the idea that they're old enough to do some things on their own. From the specific actions, it seems like she's trying to build closeness and a bond with her daughters, but is oblivious to the fact that she's annoying them by never giving them space to develop on their own.

* SecretTestOfCharacter: In ''Poor Mallory!'', the Delaney siblings start to wonder if their supposed friends are just using them because they have a pool. With Mallory's help, they devise a scheme where they tell their friends that their parents have forbidden them from going in the pool while they're being babysat but that the friends can still come over and do another activity. To their pleasant surprise, almost all of their friends accept; however, one girl does tell Amanda flat-out that she doesn't want to come over if the pool isn't available. After a little while, Amanda and Max claim their parents relented on the rule and they can use the pool again, but the girl who made it clear she was only coming over for the pool is no longer invited.

%%** Tiffany Kilbourne has this.

** Stacey's parents, especially her mom, can be a little overprotective too. In their case, it's somewhat {{Justified|trope}}, given that the situation involves a major medical condition that requires a large amount of ongoing maintainance, and that this is a fairly recent development at the start of the series. As everyone involved becomes more used to the reality of her diabetes, they start to let up.

** In ''Kristy and the Snobs'', Shannon Kilbourne says that both she ''and'' her younger sister Tiffany baby-sit. Tiffany's sitting career is never mentioned again after this point, and she actually becomes one of the BSC's ''charges'' (even though she's eleven, the same age as Mallory and Jessi).[[note]]It's indicated in ''Shannon's Book'' that Tiffany is still in elementary school rather than middle school, which could explain why the BSC sees her as different than Jessi and Mallory, but it still doesn't explain why the Kilbournes would call someone else in to baby-sit Tiffany, or why they need to call a babysitter at all if it's just Tiffany and younger sister Maria at home -- presumably Tiffany can baby-sit her own sister.[[/note]]

** One book is based around the club babysitting for the Arnold twins, whose mother insisted on dressing them identically and trying to treat them as one person, despite their completely different interests and personalities (Marilyn is bookish and quiet while Carolyn is more outgoing and tomboyish). This gets better at the end of the book, with the twins finally allowed to express their individuality. In later books, they struggle with sharing a bedroom, and finally convince their mother to let them have separate rooms.

** Claudia's difficulties with school. At the beginning of the series, she's not exactly a ''good'' student, but she's not a terrible one either; she comes across as someone who probably gets around a B or C average, it just seems worse because of the contrast with ChildProdigy Janine. As the series progresses, she's in perpetual danger of failing her classes and is even demoted briefly to seventh grade. Making it worse is the fact that ''Claudia's Book'' {{retcon}}s her as having struggled with school all along, so it can't even be put down to an issue specific to the transition to eighth grade. Her bad spelling also gets this treatment; it goes from occasional mistakes (often in an understandable way, like forgetting a silent/double letter or mixing up a homophone) to misspelling practically every other word, including easy words and even ''people's names'', and to a pretty extreme degree (like having two ''different'' misspellings of the same word in close proximity to each other).

** Claudia's difficulties with school. At the beginning of the series, she's not exactly a ''good'' student, but she's not a terrible one either; she comes across as someone who probably gets around a B or C average. As the series progresses, she's in perpetual danger of failing her classes and is even demoted briefly to seventh grade. Making it worse is the fact that ''Claudia's Book'' {{retcon}}s her as having struggled with school all along, so it can't even be put down to an issue specific to the transition to eighth grade. Her bad spelling also gets this treatment; it goes from occasional mistakes (often in an understandable way, like forgetting a silent/double letter or mixing up a homophone) to misspelling practically every other word, including easy words and even ''people's names'', and to a pretty extreme degree (like having two ''different'' misspellings of the same word in close proximity to each other).

* TrainingFromHell: A comparatively mild case (but still significant, given the age of the trainiees who are 6-8 years old) occurs in the ''Little Sister'' book ''Karen's Swim Meet''. Karen joins a summer swim team at a local community center--but despite it being pitched to the kids as a low-pressure, fun situation, the coach turns out to be obsessed with winning. He frequently yells and barks at the kids over every little thing, belittles them for not working hard enough, and at one point forces Karen to do consecutive flip turns until she's dizzy. The last straw comes when--on a day when the weather is clearly unsuited for swimming in an outdoor pool--the parents catch him trying to force the kids to do so anyway even though they're visibly shivering and miserable. After a long talk with the community center leaders, both sides agree that there was a mismatch in expectations (the community center just wanted to put on a fun summer activity for the kids and wasn't concerned with outcomes, while the coach assumed that any competitive team would be focused on winning above all else as he himself was) and the coach resigns.

* TrainingFromHell: A comparatively mild case (but still significant, given the age of the trainiees who are 6-8 years old) occurs in the ''Little Sister'' book ''Karen's Swim Meet''. Karen joins a summer swim team at a local community center--but despite it being pitched to the kids as a low-pressure, fun situation, the coach turns out to be obsessed with winning. He frequently yells and barks at the kids over every little thing, belittles them for not working hard enough, and at one point forces Karen to do consecutive flip turns until she's dizzy. The last straw comes when--on a day when the weather is clearly unsuited for swimming in an outdoor pool--the parents catch him trying to force the kids to do so anyway even though they're visibly shivering and miserable. After a long talk with the community center leaders, both sides agree that there was a mismatch in expectations (the community center just wanted to put on a fun summer activity for the kids, while the coach assumed that for a team competing at meets, the main objective would be competitive success above all else) and the coach resigns.

* TrainingFromHell: A comparatively mild case (but significant, given the age of the trainiees who are 6-8 years old) occurs in the ''Little Sister'' book ''Karen's Swim Meet''. Karen joins a summer swim team at a local community center--but despite it being pitched to the kids as a low-pressure, fun situation, the coach turns out to be obsessed with winning. He frequently yells and barks at the kids over every little thing, belittles them for not working hard enough, and at one point forces Karen to do consecutive flip turns until she's dizzy. The last straw comes when--on a day when the weather is clearly unsuited for swimming in an outdoor pool--the parents catch him trying to force the kids to do so anyway even though they're visibly shivering and miserable. After a long talk with the community center leaders, both sides agree that there was a mismatch in expectations (the community center just wanted to put on a fun summer activity for the kids while the coach wanted to have a winning team above all else) and the coach resigns.

There were at least three spinoff series: ''Baby-Sitter's Little Sister'' (about Kristy's seven-year-old stepsister, Karen); ''California Diaries'' (about Dawn and her friends in California after she moved back); and ''Friends Forever'' (in which the club was reduced to its original four members after others left). As well as these and the main series, there were additional ''Mysteries'', autobiographical, and ''Super Specials'' books. ''Little Sister'' also had its own spinoff, ''The Kids In Ms. Colman's Class.'' As you might suspect, many of the 300+ books were ghostwritten, although Martin wrote the original 22 books herself (and stopped writing altogether around book 58).

The original series itself started getting reprints (not including the 1995 revamps during ongoing publication). The first was from 2001 to 2002 (first three of the original series and selected Little Sister books), 2010-2011 with stylized covers (through the first eight books), and 2020 (along with the Little Sister's series and initially advertizing the the [[Series/TheBabySittersClub2020 Netflix series]] with new cartoon style covers and is ongoing as of 2023.

* TokenMinorityCouple: One of the Super Specials introduces a Japanese guy solely to be a love interest for Claudia.