The Baby-sitters Club Fan Edition: Baby-Sitter Summer (by Ann M. Martin et. al.)

Well, my nostalgia would not allow me to pass this one by - a new Baby-sitters Club book, formatted like a Super Special, with authors like Becky Albertalli and Emma Straub each writing a different BSC character. And I have thoughts.

My hope was, of course, that this would finally cover the summer after eighth grade. But no, they are still in the same time warp they have always been, and this takes place during the original series (although no actual timeline makes sense if you think about events that are referenced, but I got mostly used to that when reading the original series.  I did think mentioning Hamilton was pretty egregious, though, if you're still not going to let cell phones exist.  Like either Hamilton exists and so does texting, or it's still the 90s. You can't have it both ways. 

Speaking of Hamilton, Dawn's storyline is the worst - for once, not because I hate Dawn, but because it makes absolutely no sense. Dawn is at a theater camp directing a musical featuring songs she has apparently written? If anyone is going to be a secret random Broadway fan shouldn't it be Stacey? But it turns out there is a character who is a songwriter, from the California Diaries series... but it's not Dawn. So the going theory is the author of this section (a longtime BSC ghostwriter) just got Dawn confused with Maggie. And then somehow nobody pointed out that Dawn being into musicals and songwriting makes no sense. 

The absolute best storyline is Kristy's because they let her be gay and kiss a girl. Like yes, finally queerness exists in the BSC world! This is why it needs to be the summer after eighth grade, because we can actually explore this and they can just be in a time warp at age 15 and they can do a new series of specials and the characters can actually evolve and it will be totally fine!  

As for the other stories.... Mary Anne's and Stacey's were basically retreads of half of their books. Mary Anne is shy and Stacey ditches her friends for a boy (although the story was a retread, the writing on this one was particularly well-executed).  I loved that they had a Japanese-American author write Claudia and a Black author write Jessi - and have Jessi visiting an HCBU with her mom.  Their racial identities felt a lot more authentic and it was handled more naturally.  Again, I'd love for this to continue. 

(Total sidebar that the title of this sucks. Try to find it by googling "Baby-Sitter Summer" and you'll see what I mean.  I love to go find reviews on Goodreads and it took me forever to find a Goodreads link.  Like, sloppy work from the team there.) 

I just realized I forgot Mallory. She's very in character, she goes to Ireland and rides horses, it's fine. I never really loved the Super Specials even though I read every other book in the series.  I never enjoyed the format of all the club members being split up and it felt disjointed because you only get short snippets from each of them. This book has the same issue.  But a series reboot set after graduation but not told in depressing Friends Forever style and keeping this writing team would be awesome.  Oh sorry, I mean, it would be totally dibble.