Hello, I'm Richard Nimz, prospector of the written word and literary explorer extraordinaire. OK, by show of hands, who remembers The Baby-Sitters Club books? A series of books centered around the eponymous Baby-Sitters Club... OK, I've got nothing else. I never read them as a kid: blame my Y chromoso...well, maybe, maybe not. Anyways, when the graphic novels based on this book series showed up on the list of options, I decided that I'd take this opportunity to see what 'the other side' was reading. So therefore, this is my review of The Baby-Sitter Club #2: The Truth About Stacey, originally written by Ann M. Martin and adapted by Raina Telgemeier.
Citation: Telgemeier, Raina (2006).
The Truth About Stacey. New York: Graphix.
Summary: The Baby-Sitter Club is in crisis. Due to the four girls' youth, they are getting passed over for jobs in favor of older children. Even worse, a competitor, the Baby-Sitter Agency, has sprouted up offering nothing but older children. Though the members of the Club are coming up with great new ways to compete, the number of calls they get per week soon falls through the floor. Meanwhile, Stacey, one of the girls in the club, has to deal with frantic parents trying to find 'the best' treatment for her diabetes, even if their daughter has it well in hand.
Impressions: On reflection, this was a pretty decent book. The characters and artwork are alright, you don't have to have read the first book to read this one, and the story involving Stacey's diabetes actually felt like something I'd be willing to share with other people, although you can tell the source was written in the eighties based on the fact that several kids in the book didn't know that diabetes wasn't contagious (seriously, I knew that when I was in fourth grade). A more pertinent complaint of mine involves the other plot, where it turns out that the Agency is staffed by terrible people who don't care at all about the kids they babysit. Yes, it makes a good point that children should be able to voice concerns about who watches them when their parents aren't home, but I think it also cuts the legs out from under the story by making it clear that this competitor isn't going to last 'til the end of the book. If you can overlook that, though, I'd say check this book out, even if you're a boy. I'm not the only one who thinks it was good, according to Dave Baxter of Broken Frontier:
"[T]he entertainment value of the book is off the charts. Recall: I am a boy. I am not prone to liking stories that involve preteen girls sitting in their bedrooms in small groups and talking about all the other preteen girls at their junior high school. Baby-sitting, as a job or even an experience, is not something I have any interest or personal investment in; in short, this story, on a surface level, connects with me not one iota. Yet it did. The characters are instantly likeable, the plot appealing and winsome. There have, in the history of my life, been only three girl-oriented properties that have been this perfectly suited to my very male-centered tastes (and thus marking them as possibly universal, gender-wise) – Anne of Green Gables, the My Little Pony animated movie, and now The Baby-Sitter’s Clubgraphic novels."
Come to think of it, this book actually has a myriad of uses. On the one hand, I could show this to parents, to encourage them to take their children into consideration whenever they make plans about their children. On the other, I could use this as part of a competition to try and break down the gender barrier by making it part of the reading list for boys, saying that whoever can read the most 'girl books' (including this one), will win a prize of some sort. However I use it, I don't doubt that whoever I show this book to will appreciate it.
Auxiliary sources:
Baxter, Dave (20 Nov, 2006). The Baby-Sitters Club: The Truth About Stacey GN - Broken Frontier - Comic Book and Graphic Novel News & Community | Reviews. Broken Frontier. Retrieved from: http://old.brokenfrontier.com/reviews/p/detail/the-baby-sitters-club-the-truth-about-stacey-gn
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