Adventures in Baby-Sitting

On 9 February 2001, BBC Two aired the Simpsons episode "My Sister, My Sitter" for the first time, where Lisa is inspired to start baby-sitting by The Baby-Sitter Twins books.

Precisely one week after that, on 16 February 2001, the one hundred and fifth Baby-Sitters Club book, Stacey the Maths Whiz,¹ was published in the UK... and would turn out to be the very last book in the series published over here, a relaunch to coincide with the publication of the 100th book the previous year (along with reissuing the older books as economy-price, 3-in-1 omnibuses) having failed to jump-start interest in the series. Whilst there are many examples of the show's free-to-air broadcaster airing stuff that was well out of date by the time they got the rights (elsewhere in this season, the BBC had to skip "Treehouse of Horror VII" from its initial showing because the "Citizen Kang" segment was so dated), them managing to get something in just before the deadline is perhaps more unusual. (As best I can tell, the Sweet Valley Twins books had stopped being published in the UK several years earlier, although curiously Sweet Valley High was still part of the Children's BBC schedule at this time.)

Anyway, that's a connection only I would think ever to make.

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1. Titled Stacey the Math Whiz in the US, naturally. ^↩

Reject All Cookies

Across the 1990s, various American mass-market monthly paperback series aimed primarily at 8-to-14-year-olds hit the United Kingdom; series such as Goosebumps, Animorphs and The Baby-Sitters' Club. The British versions had their own cover art providing a different spin to the US designs, and the books were also edited to change American English to British English: principally this would just be changing "mom" to "mum", but other modifications such as replacing brand names British readers would not be familiar with, and changing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, also happened. (Amusingly, references to Dennis the Menace were left unchanged, presumably with the line of thought that readers would assume it was the Beano character.) It was all a bit odd, since the stories were clearly still taking place in America, but I suppose understandable.

Sometimes, however, they rather missed the point.