Can't Hardly Wait: A Sort Of Review of the Fourth Baby Sitters Club Graphic Novel
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Review by Scott Tingley, July 16, 2009

I have given one of my students from this past school year a summer task that I am not sure I could have handled at nine years old. I have told her she has to wait until she reads three books before she can read a comic book.

I would have had to cheat.

To clarify, I loaned one of my grade three students from this past year the first six Baby-Sitters Club novels to read over the summer. She is an excellent reader, but she only became interested in them near the end of the year, and although this student had also read a great many of the class' comic library she never bothered with the Baby-Sitters Club comic adaptations by Raina Telgemeier (and published by kid's book giant, Scholastic) .

So, on the last day of school I sent this student off with a pile of novels and the graphic adaptation of book 3 in the original series (book 2 in the comic series), entitled T he Truth About Stacey . I recommended that she not read the comic before the novel because while the graphic novel does a great job focusing on the main plot, there will be other things in the novel that should not be missed. She figured it would be good to get the whole story before reading the shorter version.

But, boy is she in for a treat when she finishes that novel.

Telgemeier does a terrific job in adapting this cherished series – I can't imagine it being done any better (but I can imagine it done much, much worse). The art perfectly fits the tone of the stories; Telgemeier's art has a sort-of manga feel to it, but it is a style all her own.

Book four in the graphic novel series is out now, and that is it. There are no more planned at this date and Telgemeier is not currently working on one. That's too bad, but graphic novel vol four, Claudia and Mean Janine (an adaptation of novel #7) is as good as the first two (I never did have the chance to read #3) and together the four books make a set perfect for readers that loved the novel series (one of the editors the comic version had to go through is BSC author Ann Martin ) and great for kids that are not interested in reading the novels (or novels in general); reading comics = reading. It is a shame that there are only the four books, but each one puts the spotlight on a different girl from the main cast, so that was well thought out at least.

This started out as a review of book 4, but it turned into a just-letting-you-know-it-exists kind of piece. I have seen the series at the big book store in town at both libraries I frequent and in the Scholastic Book Club order forms, so the books are not that hard to find

As I've said before, I'm not exactly in the BSC demographic, but I thought it was a lot of fun.

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