Barbie and Friends Book Club is a chapter book series based on the Barbie doll line. It was published from 1998-2000 and follows Barbie on different situations, using scenes of real dolls making up stills for the pages.
Books in the series
- A Change of Direction (Careers)
- A Place Called Home (Adventures)
- A Ride for Freedom (Fantasies)
- A Sea of Friends (Fantasies)
- A Special Ballerina (Careers)
- A Stitch in Time (Mysteries)
- Best Birthday Party Ever (Adventures)
- Clawman's Warning (Mysteries)
- D Is for Different (Adventures)
- Double Trouble (Adventures)
- Friendship, Not for Sale (Adventures)
- Girl's Best Friend (Adventures)
- High Sea Adventure (Fantasies)
- Little Sisters Keep Out (Adventures)
- Mystery at the Snowy Woods Inn (Mysteries)
- Mystery of the Emperor's Teapot (Mysteries)
- Rescue of the Unicorn (Fantasies)
- Safe and Sound (Careers)
- Secret of the Three Teardrops (Mysteries)
- Shooting for the Stars (Careers)
- Skipper's Baby-sitting Blues (Adventures)
- Skipping a Beat (Adventures)
- The Class Act (Careers)
- The Clue in the Haunted Library (Mysteries)
- The Front Window (Fantasies)
- The Giant Panda Problem (Careers)
- The Legend of the Pink Pearl (Mysteries)
- The Lucky Skates (Mysteries)
- The Peasant or the Princess (Fantasies)
- The Pyramid Adventure (Fantasies)
- The Search for the White Star (Careers)
- The Show Must Go On (Adventures)
- The Silver Deer (Fantasies)
- The Turquoise Trail Mystery (Mysteries)
- Three Cheers for Becky (Adventures)
- Voyage to Rados (Fantasies)
Tropes:
- Babysitting Episode: Skipper's Baby-sitting Blues revolves around Skipper trying to take care of Stacie, Kelly and Janet while Barbie goes out to attend a 50's party with Ken.
- Baby Talk: Since this is set around Kelly's toddler years, she can only talk in limited 2-3 word sentences.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: The color of the ribbon stretching across the binding and back cover determines the genre of the book:
- Green: Basic everyday adventures featuring Barbie, her friends Theresa, Christy, Kira, Ken, and others, and her sisters Skipper, Stacie and Kelly, who often have a problem going on and Barbie must help them resolve it.
- Pink: Fantasy, or role-playing stories which take place in different time periods, such as Victorian times, post-Ice Age, or the future, and placing Barbie and her friends in appropriate roles like princesses or mermaids.
- Blue: Stories involving Barbie solving a mystery of some sort, such as something going missing, or a lost treasure.
- Purple: Stories in which Barbie takes up a special career or job, usually with some difficult task which can only be accomplished by learning the moral of the plot.
- Feud Episode: Friendship, Not For Sale involves Stacy and her friends getting into a rift with each other when Whitney announces she's moving.
- The Future: Voyage to Rados is set in the year 2190.
- Gay Paree: "The Lucky Skates" takes place in Paris, where Barbie is coaching the World SuperSkate Championship.
- I Did What I Had to Do: In "The Lucky Skates", Meg was revealed to be responsible for the disappearance of Allie's lucky skates, admitting she stole them so she could skate better. Because of this, Barbie was forced to take her off the team.
- Halloween Episode: "Friendship, Not For Sale" focuses on Stacie and her friends preparing for Halloween and making a special caterpillar costume for their school's costume contest. Provides the main conflict for Whitney, who is moving the day after.
- Laser-Guided Karma: A minor one. When Meg admits near the end that she stole Allie's lucky skates so she could skate better, she is taken off the team and is therefore ineligible to compete in the championship.
- Magic Feather: Allie's eponymous "lucky skates" in the book of the same name.
- Moving Angst: The main conflict of Friendship, Not For Sale. Whitney's dad gets a new job and her whole family has to move to another state the day after Halloween, which puts a strain on her friendship with Stacie, Katie and Janet.
- Mystery Episode: Any story marked with a blue ribbon feature Barbie trying to solve a mystery of some kind.
- Performance Anxiety: Amy's issue in Three Cheers for Becky, which also causes problems for the squad's pyramid.
- Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Inverted with the Modons in Voyage to Rados; the boys have purple skin, and the girls have blue-green skin.
- Show Within a Show: Skipper's Baby-sitting Blues gives us the movie "My Brother is a Two-Headed Alien", which Stacie and Janet want to watch.
- Slumber Party
- Three Cheers for Becky begins with Skipper having a sleepover with her friends Amy and Courtney.
- In Skipper's Baby-sitting Blues, Janet comes to sleep over at Barbie's house.
- In Friendship, Not For Sale, Stacie and her friends have a sleepover as they plan their caterpillar costume.
- The Unreveal: At the end of Three Cheers for Becky, Skipper's cheer squad True Blue ends up placing second at the cheerleading competition, while a squad named Spirit Sisters places third. The first place winner is never mentioned.
