Cameron Chaney's Reviews > Kristy's Great Idea

Let me start off by saying that I had never read The Baby-Sitters Club as a kid. I was much more into the spooky stuff like Goosebumps and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, while my sisters read books like The Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley. Back then, you had your books for boys, your books for girls, and your books for both. The Baby-Sitters Club definitely rested in the "girls category".

I know, its frustrating that it would be that way. Why can't kids just read whatever they want? Because you would get teased if you were a boy reading a "girls book". Even girls would tease boys for reading them. I once got teased by a girl for reading a Nancy Drew book in elementary school: "Isn't that a girl book? Are you a girl?" It was a thing back then, so even though I was always curious about The Baby-Sitters Club because the series often featured books involving ghosts and mysteries and spooky stuff, I stayed away. It was bad enough being bullied for reading a lot, so I had little desire for the extra attention.

But now that I am an adult, I can read whatever the hell I damn-well please, so I read the first book in The Baby-Sitters Club series and I damn-well liked it. This brought me right back to those days of being a kid in the '90s when, yes, you had to deal with bullies, but at least those bullies had the guts to say what they thought to your face instead of hiding behind Twitter handles. On a better note, those were the days when I could read in the shade of a tree for hours on end without the desire to check my phone, when I had adventures in my neighborhood on my bike, and made movies with my dad's VHS camcorder, and watched way too many Nicktoons. It was the last great decade to be a kid, in my opinion, and this book totally brought me back to that. I loved the easy-breezy prose, the characters, the heart, and I can't wait to read even more.