Last weekend I was feeling anxious, so I tucked into bed with The Baby-sitters Club Super Special #7: Snowbound.
I am 30 years old.
Now, there are tons of blogs out there who re-read and re-analyze those oldie-but-goodies (like The Dairi Burger and What Claudia Wore) and they do it better than I could, so I’m not going to try. But I do want to thank those blogs, because my latent love for all things BSC (and, to a lesser extent, Sweet Valley Twins – not High, she said adamantly, Twins titles are far superior – not to mention Taffy Sinclair and Sleepover Friends and Girl Talk and Sunset Island andIcouldgoonbutwhybother,therearejustsomanygreatonesfromthe80sand90s) didn’t rear its pretty little Stoneybrook head until the internet came along and forced out my memories. And now here I am, with a recaptured collection of middle grade and young adult books, forgoing the large stack of to-be-read (TBR) titles by my nightstand to re-read Snowbound for the 50th time. (Yes, that is my best estimate.) Teen lit, it’s a helluva drug.
Anyway, there’s a reason I re-read books like Kristy and the Walking Disaster, and it’s not to get fashion ideas. It’s more like a form of comfort food. So instead of inhaling a bag of, say, Doritos, I can pick up Little Miss Stoneybrook…And Dawn and get my fix. So of course, I had to be the one to write the BSC post on my company's corporate blog when the big news came out. And wouldn't you know it, but a not-so-secret childhood dream of mine came true, when Ann M. Martin actually read the blog and sent us a note saying she liked it. (Would it be weird if I pasted her words, verbatim, here? Probably. I will refrain.)
Ann M. Martin, like, likes me. This is what dreams are made of, people.
*This quote from Snowbound has always stuck with me. It's from the man who saves Stacey and her mom when they're stuck in their car; they accept his invite to his house to ride out the storm, and he and his wife have already decorated for the holidays, even though it seems to be only early November. Sorry; I'll stop now.
...The Real Real by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus.
The greatness that is this book snuck up on me. There I was, reading it for the past few days, sort of ho-humming my way through it (though I think reading on my Kindle has something to do with that - that's fodder for another post), when BAM! The Real Real became fabulous. I can't put it down.