Saturday, April 22, 2006
The idea is to appeal to preteen girls and young women.
NEW YORK (AP) -- It was love at first sight -- literally.
Nine-year-old Raina Telgemeier had discovered "The Baby-sitter's Club" book series.
"I read the first book at least 20 times throughout my childhood," the 28-year-old cartoonist says.
Now, 20 years later, Telgemeier has returned to the world of preteen friends Kristy, Claudia, Stacey and Mary Anne.
Her graphic novel adaptation of "Kristy's Great Idea," the first in author Ann M. Martin's hit series, is making its debut on Scholastic's Graphix imprint.
A modern, visual twist on an 1980s favorite, it's being marketed not only to 8-to-12-year-old girls, but women of Telgemeier's age who grew up with the original books.
Raised in San Francisco, Telgemeier identified most with Kristy, the scrappy 12-year-old who starts a club catering to parents in need of baby sitters.
"I was a Kristy girl. I was a tomboy, too," she says, laughing, in her Queens apartment. Framed comic strips and colorful posters surround her. She wears glasses and jeans, her hair in a loose ponytail. "I was interested in drawing, in playing outside, in having friends, not being a ballerina or a princess."
Telgemeier herself began baby-sitting at age 11.
Premise for books
Set in the small town of Stoneybrook, the books deal with lighthearted issues as well as serious subjects -- what Telgemeier calls "the three Ds: divorce, diabetes, death and sibling rivalry."
Stacey is the sophisticated New York transplant who at first conceals her diabetes. Claudia is the artsy one with a snobby older sister. Mary Anne is Kristy's best friend, a shy girl with braids whose mom died when she was young. Kristy's parents are divorced. A later character, Dawn from California, is laid back.
Scholastic launched the series in 1986, and it soon became a breakout hit. Offshoots followed, with more than 175 million "Baby-sitter's Club" books in print, and 132 books in the regular series.
"I wanted to create a group of friends who were very different from one another but could get along well," Martin said. "Mary Anne was based on me. Kristy was based on one of my best friends growing up. Claudia was somewhat exotic."
The series -- which inspired a television show in 1990 and a movie in 1995 -- officially ended in 2000.
About that time, Telgemeier was attending New York's School of Visual Arts for illustration and putting out her own 12-page autobiographical black and white mini comics, selling them "for a quarter to my friends," and to stores. The bubbly stories captured moments from her childhood -- from knocking out her two front teeth to the first time she drank tea -- and drew some attention.
In 2003, Scholastic, mining for graphic novel ideas, asked Telgemeier what she read as a kid.
"I said, 'Oh, I was a Baby-sitter's Club fan,' remembering it was Scholastic's property," Telgemeier says. "And they thought it was sort of a good idea. I was very skeptical, at first. ... Then I thought, 'Why not?"'
Adaptations
With Martin's blessing, Telgemeier worked on the first graphic novel for a year, finishing it last September as part of a two-book contract.
"This has been the biggest art endeavor I've ever done," she says. The adaptation of "Kristy's Great Idea" runs about 190 pages, compared to the original's 150 pages.
Telgemeier's second adaptation will be "The Truth About Stacey," coinciding with the series' third book, and is due out in November.
Translating the books into comic form have included a few challenges. Telgemeier solved how to illustrate 10-page conversations by making the girls move around instead of having them sit in a room, as in the book.
"That's where the internal filmmaker of a cartoonist comes out," she says, demonstrating with her hands how Kristy can't sit still, and how Mary Anne sits up straight.
When Stacey sees Kristy's older brothers, for example, her eyes widen with hearts instead of pupils. Mary Jane nervously chews her nails.
The original book was also very '80s -- "pink, purple sweat shirts and plastic jelly shoes," Telgemeier says. And though she wanted to capture that '80s flavor, she says her editors and Martin preferred something "more timeless."
To Martin, the point "was to keep the characters the same but update them, which was a difficult charge."
How she updated them
So Telgemeier gave punky Claudia a magenta streak in her long hair, and skull earrings. Yet the town of Stoneybrook still lacks modern-day technology such as computers and cell phones, in keeping with Scholastic's desire for timelessness.
"Nowadays the girls would just make a Web site," Telgemeier says.
However, she describes the graphic novel as "emotionally on target" and mostly faithful to Martin's text "because I care about the source material."
So will the graphic novels catch on like the series?
Joanna Sondheim, an assistant librarian at a private elementary school in Manhattan, thinks so. The 28-year-old, who also writes, got into the books at age 7, and says she's interested in reading the graphic novel to spark "memories."
"Graphic novels can be a really tough sell. In my library, at least, kids don't seem particularly drawn to them," she says. "But something like 'The Baby-sitter's Club' may work because there's a real story line."
As for taking the series out of retirement, Martin says there are no plans to do more books, "but I'll never say never."
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