Rereading My Childhood - The Podcast

The Baby-Sitters Club #32: Kristy and the Secret of Susan by Ann M. Martin

• Amy A. Cowan

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This book review features Ann M. Martin's The Baby-Sitters Club #32: Kristy and the Secret of Susan, in which some things haven’t aged well, a few things are progressive, and other things have aged extremely poorly.

Get the Book: https://bookshop.org/a/80100/9781546179269

00:00 - Introduction

00:31 - Spoiler-Free Review

03:52 - Spoiler-Full Review

10:07 - Outro Song

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Should you read this book?

★★★★★ - This book was written specifically for me.

★★★★ - Absolutely.

★★★ - If you enjoy this genre, this is something you should try.

★★ - It’s difficult for me to recommend this book even for its intended audience.

★ - No. Just no.

I’m a bookish nerd on a mission. I’m rereading the books from my ‘90s childhood: The Baby-Sitters Club, Goosebumps, and Fear Street, and writing summaries and reviews. I’m Amy A. Cowan, and this is Rereading My Childhood - The Podcast.

Rereading My Childhood is written by me, Amy A. Cowan. For a list of every Baby-Sitters Club, Goosebumps, and Fear Street book review I have written or subscribe to the Substack, go to RereadingMyChildhood.com. To listen to the official podcast, visit the website or search for “Rereading My Childhood” in your favorite podcast app. For more information about me, visit AmyACowan.com.

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I'm Amy A. Cowan and this is

Rereading My Childhood - The Baby-Sitters Club #32: Kristy and the Secret of Susan.

In which some things haven’t aged well, a few things are progressive, and other things have aged extremely poorly.
 
Oh boy, this one. Let’s get this out of the way. This book has not aged well. I joked about it in the opening, but I’m not exaggerating. I know these books are actively being updated as I do these, but this is the first one in which I *need to know how they’re rewriting it. In previous books, they’ve added cell phones and drained batteries, but nothing that couldn’t be done during a long lunch. *The Baby-Sitters Club #32: Kristy and the Secret of Susan requires a complete rewrite. Not just because of the casual use of the r-word, but some of Kristy’s baby-sitting techniques are highly questionable. It should be an opportunity for Kristy to grow, but there’s no indication of such growth by the end of the book.
The book centers on Kristy and her interactions with a new baby-sitting charge, Susan, who is autistic. She plays the piano, sings, and has perfect pitch, but she doesn’t speak and has no interest in other children. This is a huge problem for Kristy, as Kristy thinks Susan should interact with others regardless of her feelings. It’s uncomfortable to read and, unfortunately, spoiler alert, Kristy does not learn how to back off. The only thing Kristy learns is that maybe a mother might know her kid better than the 13-year-old babysitter. That is a good lesson to learn, but there’s another lesson to learn about not forcing kids to do things.
But I guess it’s not fair to completely gloss over the attempted progressiveness. The book was published in 1990. I was four. George H.W. Bush was president. And a controversial little show called *The Simpsons was in its second season and about to do a Halloween special for the first time. Things were different. Mariska Hargitay wasn’t on TV expounding on autism statistics. And your father wasn’t questioning those statistics because then *he’d be considered autistic. This was a man who had a trash can rotation and schedule. 
Ann M. Martin included a “Dear Reader Letter” (https://babysittersclub.fandom.com/wiki/Kristy_and_the_Secret_of_Susan) in the 1996 reprint, in which she discusses her experience working with autistic children, and that’s why she wanted to include an autistic baby-sitting charge. I have no problems with Susan as a character. I’d like to see more of her in subsequent books, but I don’t think she returns. Susan is a sympathetic and interesting depiction of severe autism. My problems lie with how other characters treat her, even the ones who are supposed to be on her side. Sure, there are going to be characters who are jerks dropping slurs and treating Susan like a trained puppy, but they’re *supposed to do that. They’re jerks. But when characters we know and love (i.e., Kristy) say slurs and refuse to understand Susan, that’s when it doesn’t age well. This book is ripe for a rewrite, though, because autism hasn’t gone away, and *The Baby-Sitters Club is a good medium to introduce kids to topics in an age-appropriate way. I like that this book exists, and it should exist, but it needs a boatload of tweaking. Boats like the ones that carried the Hobarts across the Pacific.
The B-plot involves a new family moving from Australia - the Hobarts. Eagle-eyed BSC fans know that the Hobarts, especially the oldest son Ben, eventually become an important family in Stoneybrook. Ben is Mallory’s love interest. Because of their inclusion, I can’t say you should skip over this one. Instead, I will declare *The Baby-Sitters Club #32: Kristy and the Secret of Susan skippable until rewritten.
Should you read *The Baby-Sitters Club #32: Kristy and the Secret of Susan by Ann M. Martin?
2.75★/5 - It’s difficult for me to recommend this book even for its intended audience. But it does get 5/5 oofs on the oof scale.
 
It’s not long into the book before Mrs. Felder calls the BSC, and Kristy is on her way to meet the autistic child. Claudia is the first to drop the r-word, and pretty casually, I might add. Usually, I would dismiss this as an unfortunate aspect of the ‘80s, but later Kristy admonishes a child for using the word, so even in the backwards late ‘80s, it’s a pejorative. What’s the bar here, Martin? Is it okay for Claudia (and later Kristy, and in a different book (https://open.substack.com/pub/amyacowan/p/the-baby-sitters-club-super-special), Mallory) to say it because they’re main characters, but side characters can’t? I have no answers.
So Kristy ventures to the Felders’ house to meet Susan before officially accepting the job. Kristy asks what caused Susan’s autism. Mrs. Felder doesn’t have an answer, but in times like these, she should turn to our government, because the answer is vaccines. You knew that joke was coming, right? Please tell me you’re not surprised. You cannot think I wasn’t going to make that joke - that’s the tone of these reviews.
Anyway, Mrs. Felder needs someone to watch Susan as she transitions to another school, one that focuses on music. Kristy thinks that Susan should go to Stoneybrook Elementary and endeavors to use Susan’s perfect pitch to introduce her to the neighborhood kids. Somehow, that will prove that Susan shouldn’t go to a specialized school. Mrs. Felder thinks Susan will thrive at this new music school, but she just does not realize with whom she’s speaking. Kristy is the *president of the Baby-Sitters Club. She definitely knows what’s best for this kid she met thirty minutes ago.
Meanwhile, the Hobarts are moving into town. They’re Australian, so that means *Crocodile Dundee references. Mallory and Jessi waltz over to the Hobarts’ house, with all the Pike kids in tow, to wait for video games to be invented or something. The Hobarts are Ben, James, Matt, and Johnny. The only ones you need to remember for right now are Ben, who is the same age as Mallory and Jessi, and James, the guinea pig in Kristy’s experiment. The Hobart children are having some trouble fitting in because all the American kids are surprised by the Australians’ dress.
*The Hobarts might not have sounded “American,” but they certainly looked it. They were all wearing jeans (James’s were ripped fashionably at the knees), both James and Matthew were wearing Swatch watches, and their shirts were oversized and baggy. Johnny was even wearing a little pair of Reeboks.
Ridiculous. They should be in kangaroo hide vests, and the only oversized thing should be their knives that are sheathed in a bandoleer across their backs. There’s a BSC meeting where they throw around the R-word, and then it’s right back to the Hobarts’. Actually, Kristy is baby-sitting for Susan, and Kristy takes the girl over to the Hobarts’, where Mallory is baby-sitting. Even though Ben is old enough to babysit, he does not. I don’t know why. We know the BSC has a monopoly in Stoneybrook, but I didn’t think it extended to older siblings. We don’t want to cross the BSC. Look what happened to the We ♥ Kids Club. They’re in prison for ARSON and burning cushions! 
Anyway, they explain how to play tag, James has a catch phrase (“funny as a funeral”), and some of the kids who have been bullying the Hobarts show up and give fake names. Susan shows no interest, but Kristy forces interaction. She fumes about Susan attending that special autistic music school and continues to bother the poor girl while she’s trying to play the piano. Kristy, just let the girl play the piano and hang out. This is a nice, easy baby-sitting gig. The girl even takes requests. 
A bunch of kids keep coming over, requesting songs and specific dates, and then leaving. Kristy discovers that one of the bully kids is standing outside Susan’s house and charging a dollar to see “the amazing dumbo who can sing but not talk,” like a shitty P. T. Barnum, who was already shitty, despite what *The Greatest Showman tells you. Kristy yells at the kid, saying that she doesn’t want to hear “dumbo” and the R-word in reference to Susan. Does this make Kristy reflect on her and her friends’ casual use of the word during BSC meetings? No. Their use is forgotten. In fact, it is used once again during a school assembly.
Kristy stares at the special education kids instead of the presentation on the dangers of smoking or getting kids to sell Astroturf (an actual assembly topic I endured in elementary school - you could win a bank shaped like a Tootsie Roll that might have 50 bucks in it if you sell enough!). She thinks that since *those kids attend a normal school where a random club president stares at them, then Susan should be able to attend the same school. The R-word is, once again, thrown around.
The next day, Kristy schleps Susan over to the Hobarts *again. Kristy finally realizes that while James is kind to Susan, his real friend is Zach, one of the kids who used to make fun of him. That’s not a great start to a friendship, but the bully kid wants to learn how to punch inanimate objects, which is how James wins him over. Susan maintains her friendship with the piano and not the tween-appointed guinea pig/boxer.
As Susan’s leaving date approaches, we also meet the mysterious Mr. Felder. Apparently, he hasn’t been around because he’s the CEO of Tylenol!
 
Not really. He has a second family. And speaking of second families, Mrs. Felder is expecting a baby! They’re going to name the kid “Hope.” As in, “We *hope this one is normal.” That’s not what the book says, but that’s the vibe I got.
Kristy says goodbye. James says goodbye. And we never see the Felders again. Kristy is still salty at the end of the book, so she learned nothing. Kristy says she wants to work with kids like Susan, but throughout the book, she never works *with Susan. She seems to work *at her, if that’s a thing. She pulls the poor girl away from the piano and introduces her to the concept of exploitation. If Kristy had just listened to Mrs. Felder, Kristy could have had a sweet baby-sitting gig listening to beautiful music and doing some homework, and Lil’ P.T. over there wouldn’t have made five bucks off of the girl. And Kristy never, for even a second, thinks, “Hmm, maybe I was wrong about Susan. I should rethink my vocabulary as well as my approach to kids with autism.” Instead, Kristy is choosing to pervade more lives with her bad ideas as she gets older.
Again, this one is relatively skippable. The Hobarts are here, and that’s all we need to know for future books. There are no more non-verbal kids in Stoneybrook, the special education students are relegated to their classroom and forgotten, and by legal decree, kids who are different are forced into something more palatable. Ah, the future that conservatives want.
Although if someone wants to let me know how they update this one, I would appreciate it. Its release is this month! See, I can be timely. Every few years. Kinda.!