In the course of things adults are reduced to two-dimensional cutouts, particularly Dot’s mother, a hippie who acts like a walk-on from “I Love You Alice B. Sure, the Baby-Sitters Club books have been successfully adapted into graphic novels that today’s kids gobble up, but given that “Best Babysitters Ever” plays off some serious ’80s nostalgia, a question lurks: Is the book bound to entice parents and librarians who harbor dear memories of cuddling up with their own super-special editions, more than it will speak to children? Happily, Cala manages to provide hilarity that both the intended audience and the snooping adults will appreciate on their own levels.įrom the start of this debut novel, Cala flexes her prodigious comedic muscles, managing to render the three friends both as sympathetic heroines and as the victims of lives more humorous than they would like.
But how do you adapt a text from an era of corded phones and inexplicable loafer/vest combos to a world of babysitting apps, viral videos and parents wanting to pay via Venmo? Martin’s classic Baby-Sitters Club books, it’s not long before she’s roped her buddies Dot and Bree into updating the outdated concept. When Malia Twiggs (named after a former first daughter and aware it “sounded kind of bootleg”) stumbles on an ancient, crumbling edition of “Kristy’s Great Idea,” the first of Ann M. To the three friends in Caroline Cala’s BEST BABYSITTERS EVER (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 256 pp., $13.99 ages 9 to 12), there’s nothing funny about being broke and filled with an overwhelming desire to pull off the greatest mutual 13th-birthday party in history. Three funny new novels do precisely that, appealing to kids’ inclination to laugh at others’ foibles and, maybe in the course of things, themselves. Rather than encourage average kids’ bloodthirsty instinct to cheer for the downfall of their friends and neighbors, let them delve into the fiascos of fictional characters. True schadenfreude is built on seeing your fellow humans fail with epic splendor. Yet the freshest fears yield the greatest comedic bounty. Teetering on the cusp of adolescence, many kids feel that compared with the threat of embarrassment, walking into an open sewer is rather enticing. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die.” When you’re 12, though, the line between comedy and tragedy can thin to the point of translucence.
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