Raina Telgemeier And Gale Galligan On Board For Baby-Sitters Club 40th Anniversary Special

Double the BSC Fun in a Super Special Graphic Adventure

“I don’t know if I’ve ever had more fun drawing a graphic novel in my life and I’ve had the most fun career ever,” said Telgemeier in a joint interview with Galligan conducted by Zoom last month. Telgemeier first brought BSC to comics format in 2006 and adapted the first four graphic adventures before moving over to her own best-selling graphic novels including Guts, Smile and The Cartoonist’s Club. “I had a big smile on my face every single minute that I was working, so I’d like to believe that every minute of every page, you could feel that as a reader.”

“It is by far the largest Baby-Sitters Club book,” said Galligan, who succeeded Telgemeier and drew the next four books in the series. “It is twice the size of a Baby-Sitter’s Club book. Every single character is having an adventure, sometimes in the background of the pages of another BSC character’s adventure. There is so much fun stuff going on in this book where we both really got to flex our drawing muscles aggressively. It is so visually fun.”

Telgemeier and Galligan said they divided the chapters between them and collaborated closely on the pacing, costume continuity and staging. Since the adventure takes place on a cruise ship and a theme park instead of the BSC’s traditional stomping grounds in (mythical) Stoneybrook, Connecticut, it gave both artists an opportunity to create new settings for Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, Stacey and the cast to explore.

“Gail and I got to invent our own new theme park from scratch,” said Telgemeier. “We had a very good time doing that!”

Spanning Generations of BSC Fans

Telgemeier became a BSC fan as a nine year old in the mid-80s; Galligan discovered the books as a child in the 90s and eventually became the second cartoonist to carry the series forward. Now, celebrating this milestone, the two creators recognize they are part of something special: a series that connects mothers, daughters, and maybe even some granddaughters.

“I have this really fond memory of doing a signing with Raina and Ann pretty early in my time on The Baby-Sitters Club,” said Galligan. “We had lines coming up to us, people my age, Raina’s age, walking up to Ann like, ‘Here is my crumpled book. You changed my life. I love you so much!’ And then kids coming up to us like, ‘Hey, I love your comic book!’ It’s so cool that these stories get to connect grownups and kids like that. It’s very special.”

From best-selling series to groundbreaking graphic novels

For Telgemeier, who is celebrating her own 20^th anniversary with the BSC, the continued success of the graphic novels alongside the prose books validates the experiment that Scholastic undertook back in 2006, when editor David Saylor launched the Graphix imprint and took a chance on the first BCS adaptation.

“Girls loved comics, loved manga, loved anime and television. It’s just that no American publisher had really thrown down and said we’re going to put our money behind a series aimed at girls, starring girls, created by women, and we’re going to hard launch this,” Telgemeier recalls. “I don’t think they had any data to support that, but it just seemed to be a magic moment. Someone just had to throw the first pebble in the pond and make it happen.”

In the ensuing 20 years, graphic novels have gone from being a questionable format for middle-grade publishing and a risky bet to expand the reach of comics to one of the industry’s most important engines for creating young readers and a diverse audience. Scholastic has been the biggest beneficiary of that transformation.

Galligan says there is still plenty of room for innovation in the space. Publishers should be more willing to take chances: “Continue to make strides for inclusive storytelling, both on the page and behind it. Continue to trust kids. There are so many weird and wacky and wild stories kids would love if publishers and gatekeepers trusted kids that were willing to read them.”

Changing with the times but staying grounded

BCS has remained popular for four decades across various media, including adaptations into streaming media and podcasts as well as comics, by evolving to fit the times while staying true to its characters and values. Ann Martin continues to innovate, introducing new twists for the cast and introducing a broad range of characters that readers could see themselves in.

“A lot has changed, but kids still wonder, ‘do other people like me? Do I like other people? Why are we fighting right now?’” observed Galligan.

Telgemeier added that BCS is about more than friendship. It’s about girls organizing themselves, assigning roles, solving problems and making money, while learning to see things from different perspectives.

“There’s a universal quality to Ann’s writing, and the fact that each book is told from a different character’s point of view means you get to see everyone’s side of the story,” she said. “It was a great way to empower your own girlhood by having all these empowering girl role models.”

Future meetings of the “Baby-Sitters Club club” ahead?

Now that the big 40^th anniversary collaboration is about to appear, is there any chance of a future collaboration between the “Baby-Sitters Club club?” or do readers have to wait for the 50^th?

Telgemeier and Galligan, close pals with great mutual respect for each other’s work outside of their first formal collaboration, seemed to relish the idea as our interview came to a close.

“It was so much fun to have someone to have someone to bounce ideas back and forth with,” said Galligan. “We got to embody the ethos of this collaborative type story, which was the best.”

“I mean, what if we did an unofficial spinoff?” mused Telegemeier, intrigued by the idea. “Unbranded, but, I mean, there’s actually more there.”

“I would love that, yes, yes, yes! We have a very long Google doc. We can make something happen here.”

“I think my wheels started to spin,” said Telgemeier with a mischievous smile.

In the meantime, the generations of fans who grew up with Ann M. Martin’s The Baby-Sitters Club can enjoy the return of two of the franchise’s pivotal creators. “It’s like I have come back from my travels to come home and sleep in my own bed,” said Telgemeier.

For a franchise that has now been passed from one generation to another, it may be the perfect description.