The Babysitters’ Club is 30 YEARS OLD – here are 5 things you never knew about it

Just in case you haven't had enough nostalgia lately

Baby-sitters club film

by Natasha Preskey |
Published on

Children of the '80s and '90s, brace yourselves. You might think that you've managed to regain your youth by playing Pokemon Go and listening to Blink 182, but you are oh SO wrong.

It has officially been 30 years since the first BabySitters' Club book was published. Yup, you heard right. THREE-ZERO. Grab your slippers and ditch those contacts for reading glasses, it's all over.

While you recover from that little news flash, here are some cool things you never knew about the series.

1) The baby-sitting gang are actual fashion icons

OK, so they might not be hitting the runway in Milan, but the baby-sitters have provided tonnes of inspo for one devoted fashion blogger.

fashion blogger
©Ruth Barabe

New Yorker Ruth Barabe runs a the BabySitters' Fashion Club blog in which she properly gets her '80s and '90s on by dressing up as an adult version of the characters. We approve.

2) The film cast reunited last year and they are now a gorgeous woman squad

Twenty years after the film was released in 1995, director Melanie Mayron and stars Bre Blair (Stacey), Rachael Leigh Cook (Mary Anne), Larisa Oleynik (Dawn), Schuyler Fisk (Kristy), Stacey Ramsower (Mallory) and Marla Sokoloff (Cokie Mason) all got together for an anniversary screening of the movie in Austin, Texas. N'awww. Look, they're real people now see?

3) The series has been updated to reflect the grim realities of our millennial lives… TWICE

Two cartoonists, Siobhan Gallagher and Kate Gavino, have stolen the naïve joy from the books by adding in a bit of Tinder, Netflix and 21st century despair.

alternate cover
©Tumblr/Kate Gavino

Pretty cool though, huh? We'd def rather be jaded quitters than baby-sitters tbh.

4) The girl who played Stacey McGill in the TV series is now a hot-shot lawyer

stacey mcgill
©Scholastic Corporation

Child stars have a terrible rep (cheers, Li-Lo) but never has the phrase 'Why don't you get a proper job?' been taken more deeply to heart than by Jessica Prunell, who ditched all the razzmatazz and silliness of the acting world to become a successful lawyer in New York City.

Jessica Purnell
©Hogan Lovells

Jessica, now 39, is a commercial litigator at global firm Hogan Lovells. Fancy.

5) The original author published a prequel long after the main book series ended in 1998

Book cover
©Amazon UK

For anyone who just can't let it go, author Ann M. Martin published 2010 prequel The Summer Before which tells the story of, err, the summer before the first book.

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