I found this for 50c in one of the local Vinnie's shops this morning. I wasn't a die-hard fan of reading these when I was younger (I was very much at the upper age limit of the target audience when they first came out), but I read a couple of them and didn't mind them. The holiday house we stayed in recently had another one of the series on the bookshelf so I read that and was taken back to childhood days.
This one is the first one in the series, the one that kicked off over two hundred Babysitters Club books.
On reflection, I think that the hook-in for reading books like these lay in the whole "girls being best friends" dynamic. Reading them also takes you back to a time when community, helping others and spending time with kids were more highly valued. I'm not sure what young girls finding them for the first time in our current age of individualism and self-centredness would make of them now. I don't have much experience with girls in this age group these days, but I get the feeling they would probably see themselves as being a bit more sophisticated than Kristy and Claudia et al.
1 comment:
I read some of them when I was a kid too, and I get them if I find them at opshops. I liked them because they promoted responsibility (11-year-olds babysitting 8-year-olds and all that). They seemed very grown up having jobs and money. I agree that Claudia and Stacey would probably not seem that trendy to many kids and tweens now.
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