My second Goodreads-penned, spoiler free review has been published!
Graduation Day by Ann M. Martin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I’ll put it in perspective. When the first “Baby-Sitters Club” book was released, I was two months shy of my 4th birthday. By the time I started reading the series in 1992, there were 50 books published in the original series. I stopped in 1995, just shy of book #89. I had no idea there was a new member, that some of the club members departed, or that there were nearly as many books as their wound up being in the time between the last one I read and this final book being published. By the time “Graduation Day” was released, I was also taking a big step in my life…applying to college.
For both nostalgia purposes (and well, I wanted to see how the whole series ended), I felt I really needed to read this book. I know I’m 34 years old, but this book series connects me back to much of my childhood. If there was anything that piqued my love of reading that has carried across so many years, it was having the chance to read this series. So why not find out how it all ended?
That aside, this is the plot:
The girls of The BSC are (finally) preparing to graduate from eighth grade. It is the beginning of the end for the club, and the group is feeling the changes that will be happening as they prepare for the next big step in their lives – high school. And because things as they know it are changing, they want to be able to capture a piece of themselves in that very moment of their lives, so they create a neighborhood time capsule for their sitting charges. There’s also the “letter to yourself in four years” story. It all seems like alot, but the whole story wraps up rather nicely.
Sorry readers, no spoilers. You’ll have to read it yourself to find out exactly how the story unfolds!
I enjoyed this one. As I’m finding out with the books I didn’t have the opportunity to read once I stopped reading them, this series stayed strong till the very end. Ann M. Martin gave young girls a great group of girls to idolize, and if she inspired others to engage in lifelong reading the way she and her wonderful world of teenage baby-sitters did for me, then she did her job. And she did it right for 14 years. Yes, I’m aware she didn’t write ALL the books, but she was the reason this series started, and she helped bring it to its final chapters – the climactic “Chapter 15,” so to say.
Reading each girls’ thoughts as they prepare to move on to the next big step, while trying to hold on to what they value despite all the impending changes, was refreshing. My scope of The BSC world was always limited to the one person-centric novels (and the occasional Super Special), so to hear several points of view (Especially from “The Core Four”). To hear the story from each perspective, and how all those perspectives tied together made for a great ending.
I will admit, I did get a little misty reading Ann M. Martin’s final letter to the reader. Again, I’m in my thirties, but it means nothing when you realize that something you loved in childhood did eventually come to an end, but that person was able to reflect and thank the reader for their unwavering interest. This is a woman who gave a nice sizable part of her writing career to tell the stories of teenage girls and their entrepeneurial club, and that letter was the reminder that all great things come to an end. I was eighteen years old when this series wrapped, and this is symbollic of many of the life changes we begin to experience in our teenage lives.
I know this is asking for too much, but I would love a story that picks up four years later, when they are ready for the next big step…graduating high school.
After all, they were in eighth grade for what, like 10 years?
I’m currently reading “The Summer Before,” which backtracks all the way to that summer before all of this started – before Kristy’s great idea set off a fourteen-year journey in written form. Like all the other stories I’ve read (and am reading for the first time), I’m looking forward to seeing how this prequel set up the whole series…25 years after it actually started.
Seriously though, the girls…they’re in their forties now, right?
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