Literary Inspirations - BSC - Kristy's Great Idea - Stacey

"Stacy had on a pink sweatshirt with sequins and a large purple parrot on the front; short, tight-fitting jeans with zippers up the outsides of the legs; and pink plastic shoes."

Some things are so 80s that they should just be left there. Like a pink sweatshirt with sequins and purple parrots. And Stacey's supposed to be the grown up, boy crazy one.  Also, pink plastic shoes. Like jelly shoes? Because crocs weren't around back then and I'm blanking on what else that could mean.

Stacey was always way above me in coolness factors as a kid. I never wanted to be her because I couldn't identify with her, although I always thought she had some of the best clothes (after Claudia of course). However, I liked that she had diabetes (as weird as that sounds) because my aunt has it and it was something I could understand as a child. The boy crazy thing, not so much. I never could understand how Kristy's brother Sam, a freshman, was so into a seventh grader. But hey, Stacey was grown up. I'm pretty sure I was still playing with rocks in seventh grade.

Literary Inspirations - BSC - Kristy's Great Idea - Mary Anne

"I glanced at Mary Anne. She and I were still in our school clothes....Mary Anne was wearing a skirt and saddle shoes. Mary Anne's hair was, of course, in braids."

Poor Mary Anne. Her crazy dad made her keep her hair in braids and wear little kid clothes because he had issues after his wife/her mother died. For the first couple of books Mary Anne gets the short end of the stick when it comes to fashion descriptions. In fact, I think they mostly gloss over her and her pleated skirts and saddle shoes. I live for the day where I get to that book where she chops her hair and goes to the mall and tries on all the clothes that "new Mary Anne" would look great in. (Also, how do I remember that?!?! I haven't read that book since 4th grade - I don't even know which one that is!) But for now, it's simple shirts, skirts, and braids. Hang in there girl!

Literary Inspirations - BSC Kristy's Great Idea - Claudia

"Claudia answered it again, this time wearing a baggy yellow-and-black-checkered shirt, black pants, red jazz shoes, and a bracelet that looked like it was made from a telephone cord. Her earrings were dangling jointed skeletons that jumped around when she moved."

On to the fun outfits! We covered Kristy first last week in honor of her being president of the BSC, but Claudia is vp, so she's up next. As I said last time, Claudia is my favorite for a variety of reasons - mainly her sense of style and her affinity for junk food. My kind of girl. For some reason though, this outfit seems tame. I seem to remember really insane combos like mismatched shoes on purpose and stuff like paper mache snakes braided into her hair. Or something like that. Maybe in the next book...

Literary Inspirations - BSC Kristy's Great Idea - Kristy

"I glanced at Mary Anne. She and I were still in our school clothes. I was wearing jeans and sneakers......and I was wearing a blue hair band."


And we're back with another nostalgic run of the Literary Inspiration series. I had so much fun doing the American Girl books a few years ago that I decided to turn to another one of my favorite childhood series - The Baby-Sitters Club books!

Did you love these as much as I did? They were apparently very polarizing books in the 3rd and 4th grade, and you either loved them and pretended to be the characters or hated them. Clearly, I loved them. It was my dream to be Claudia because she had the best outfits, was super artistic, had her own phone in her room, and had junk food hidden everywhere. The fact that I wasn't asian or the least bit artistic was apparently not an issue, and I was determined to be just like her. Only maybe with better grades.

One of the best parts of the books were the outfit descriptions. All the main characters got one, and if you were really lucky, sometimes there would be two or three outfits for one of the girls. Usually it was Claudia or Stacy, which is fine because they always had the best outfits anyway. And even though I want to start out with one of their outfits, I'm going to start at the beginning with book #1 - Kristy's Great Idea, and the founder herself, Kristy Thomas. Right now the plan is to do a set for each girl as described in the first book and then move on to the next book. I know there are like 200 of these things, so I have no idea how long this will last (or how many of these books I can find at the library).  But we'll try for the first 4/5 books and then see where we're at.