“The Baby-Sitters Club” Author Ann M. Martin Reveals Surprising Original Plan for Iconic Series in Rare Interview (Exclusive)

"I didn't expect that 'The Baby-Sitters Club' would be more than a four-book mini-series," the author tells PEOPLE

When author Ann M. Martin published the first book in her beloved series The Baby-Sitters Club in August 1986, she had no inkling that the characters she created would go on to appear in more than 200 volumes, spinoffs, tie-ins and graphic novels — let alone two television series and a 1995 film.

“I didn't expect that The Baby-Sitters Club would be more than a four-book mini-series in the 1980s,” Martin tells PEOPLE exclusively. “But 38 years later, here we are.”

A former editor for Scholastic, Martin, now 69, had already published four young adult novels by 1986. She was 30 years old, living in a studio apartment in New York City and had recently left children’s book publishing to focus full-time on writing when Jean Feiwel, a publisher she knew from her time at Scholastic, approached her to launch a new series.

Related: Elle Fanning Narrates 'The Baby-Sitters Club' on Audible: 'They're Super '80s, Which Is So Fun'

“She told me she was looking for a four-book series about a group of girls who babysit, and she had a title for the series: The Baby-Sitters Club,” Martin explains. “We talked about the club being a business, and I created the four original characters — Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne and Stacey.”

“From the beginning, I wanted characters who were very different from one another but who formed strong friendships and worked well together,” Martin says.

She also had a clear vision for the books. “I wanted the series to be about babysitting, of course, but especially about how the girls grow, strengthen their friendships and become problem-solvers and independent thinkers,” she explains.

Martin and her editors were “stunned” when a Baby-Sitters Club novel first hit the national bestseller list. “This was when we began to realize that the series was bigger than we had imagined,” she says. “We began publishing six books a year instead of four, and not long after that, one book each month.”

Martin’s original vision for the series didn’t change as The Baby-Sitters Club grew in popularity, but, she says, “I wanted the cast of characters to become more diverse and their experiences to become more reflective of those of the readers. I began receiving hundreds of letters a week from kids who lived in all kinds of towns and came from all kinds of families, and they would ask for stories about kids like them, or about things that had happened to them or their friends.”

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Her original cast of four included two characters who came from single-parent households — Kristy, whose parents are divorced, and Mary Anne, whose mother died before the series began. There was also Stacey, a Manhattan transplant with type 1 diabetes, and Claudia, whose family was one of the few of Japanese descent in Stonybrook, the series’ fictional Connecticut suburb.

As the series went on, Martin steadily added more characters, including Jessi, the club’s only Black member in the books, and Logan, a Kentucky-born jock who was as nurturing and attentive a babysitter as the series’ female characters.

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“We addressed many of the issues that readers were facing and talking about at the time, including divorce, racism, eating disorders, grief and neurodiversity,” Martin notes. “But of course, 1986 was very different from 2024, and I love that the more contemporary adaptations of the BSC, like the graphic novels and the Netflix show, have been able to address many other topics and introduce more diversity to the stories.”

From the beginning of the series, Martin says, readers connected strongly with her characters, often writing to her about which members of the club they most identified with. And she continues to get similar messages today, both from adults who grew up reading the series and from a new generation of young people who are continuing to discover The Baby-Sitters Club.

Related: The Baby-Sitters Club Author Ann M. Martin Is 'Proud' of Netflix's Diverse Spin on Series

“Since the stories are character-driven and revolve around timeless themes — especially family and friendship — and since my editors and I decided to keep the series ‘time neutral,’ the stories, both old and new, resonate with kids today,” she says of the series’ enduring appeal.

“I wouldn’t mind living in this timeless time myself,” Martin jokes.

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Nearly 40 years and hundreds of novels later, Kristy, Claudia and the gang have remained perpetual middle schoolers — though a 13-book spin-off series, The Baby-Sitters Club: Friends Forever, published from 1999 to 2000, saw Martin’s original four characters preparing to transition to high school. The author, who has continued to oversee the series — including the recent graphic novel adaptations — since turning The Baby-sitters Club over to ghostwriters in the early ’90s, revisited the characters in a 2010 prequel, The Summer Before.

But fans continue to wonder where the members of the BSC would be in their lives as adults.

“This is a question I’m frequently asked, especially by adult fans of the books,” Martin says. “They want to know who the characters grew up to be. I could come up with scenarios, but I’m more curious about what readers might come up with!”

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