It's been more than 30 since the first novel hit bookstores, but the beloved baby-sitters of Stoneybrook, Connecticut are finally making their audiobook debut. That's right, the Baby-Sitters Club audiobooks are coming out this year.
On Tuesday morning, Audible announced that 131 books in Ann M. Martin's beloved Baby-Sitters Club series will be released in audio form on Aug. 13, exclusively on Audible. (They're available for pre-order now.) The first five titles will be narrated by actress Elle Fanning, and the remaining books will be read by a cast of actresses including Brittany Pressley, Ali Ahn, Emily Bauer, Lauren Fortgang, Bahni Turpin, Erin Moon, Stephany Einstein, and Vanessa Johansson.
The iconic books, which were published by Scholastic between 1986 and 2000, famously follow the adventures of four core baby-sitters — Kristy (founder and president), Mary-Anne (secretary), Claudia (VP), and Stacey (treasurer) — plus their on-and-off boyfriends (ugh, Logan) and a few other baby-sitters (ugh, Mallory) who appear later in the series and in the supplemental books. The novels dealt with themes of friendship, empowerment, first love, chronic illness (who could ever forget when Stacey learns she has Type I Diabetes?), identity, and more, and spoke to the feelings and concerns of girls and young women in the '90s in a way that few pop culture markers did at the time. All in all, the franchise — which encompasses The Baby-Sitters Club, Super Specials, Baby-Sitters Little Sister, The Baby-Sitters Club: Mysteries, Super Mysteries, and The Baby-Sitters Club: Friends Forever — includes 300 novels. That's a lot of books, and at one point in their publication years, Scholastic released two Baby-Sitters Club books a month.
In an Audible press release, Ann M. Martin said she was "excited" to "bring the books to life in a new format for the next generation."
Bringing the books to life for the next generation appears to be the major mission of the author in recent years. In 2006, Scholastic re-released Kristy's Great Idea as a graphic novel illustrated by Raina Telgemeier with text edited by one of the original editors of the series, David Levithan. Since then, Scholastic has re-released the first six novels as graphic novels, with a seventh due to be released in September.
Kristy, Mary-Anne, Claudia, and Stacey are also coming to Netflix this year. The books, which were originally adapted for television in 1990, are being adapted into a 10-episode contemporary series. So, basically, I'm saying that you're going to have plenty of ways to enjoy the Baby-Sitters Club in the coming year.
