ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, June 12, 1996 TAG: 9606120008
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: ORLANDO, FLA.
SOURCE: LINDA SHRIEVES ORLANDO SENTINEL
In line behind 100 antsy girls at Books-A-Million, 10-year-old Meagan Ward was ready. She had her books ready for autographs, her questions prepared for her favorite author.
In fact, Meagan had several weeks to prepare for the Orlando visit of Ann M. Martin, author of The Baby-sitter's Club series.
Like all members of the BSC fan club, Meagan had received a postcard alerting her that Martin would be signing books at a bookstore in the area.
But unlike most fans, who wanted to ask Martin questions about her cats or favorite characters or what it's like to live in New York City, what Meagan really wanted to ask Martin was this: Why, oh why, can't you write some books that take a little longer to read?
``You can read them in, like, a day,'' Meagan said. Meagan, it should be noted, is in the fourth grade, but she's reading on the seventh-grade level.
When Martin pops into town - any town - for a book signing, look out.
From small towns in Oklahoma to the skyscraper alleys along the East Coast, in good weather and bad, hundreds - sometimes even thousands - of girls show up to get a glimpse of their favorite writer.
And when Martin appeared in Orlando this month for a two-hour signing, almost 500 girls showed up.
Her name may mean nothing to most adults, but to thousands of preteen girls, Martin is a celebrity.
And this summer, when the 100th book in The Baby-sitter's Club makes its debut, it will mark a milestone in children's publishing, which has never seen such a popular series.
No one, not even Martin, envisioned that the books would become a small industry.
Now, in addition to selling 125million books, there's a board game based on the books, a spinoff series for younger children, an HBO series, a movie and a series of trading cards. There's a fan club with 60,000 members across the country, plus an upcoming home page on the World Wide Web.
The whole thing started out simply. Back in 1986, Martin was a 30-year-old book editor who was sick of her job.
She quit and decided to try writing children's books. That's when a friend and former colleague at Scholastic Books gave her an idea. Why not, suggested the editor, write a book about a group of young girls who are baby sitters in some sort of club? Books with the words ``baby sitters'' and ``club'' in the title always seem to sell very well, the editor noted.
And so began The Baby-sitter's Club, which chronicles the adventures of a group of 13-year-old girls in fictional Stoneybrook, Conn.
At the time, Martin's contract called for four books. Period. ``I never even thought about writing a series of books,'' Martin said. ``Nobody had any idea it would do what it has.''
But 10 years and 99 books later, Martin is such a phenomenon that when she goes out for a book signing, she is routinely met by hundreds of girls who want to know about her cats, her favorite characters and what it's like to be a best-selling author.
The series has been going so long and so strong that some of the early faithful are now in college. Take, for example, 19-year-old Sharon Everson of Orlando, who poked her head in the door at the signing, toying with the idea of getting an autograph.
``She peeked in and said, `Oh they're all so little. I'm not going in,''' said her aunt, Laurel Everson, a manager at Books-A-Million. ``So she asked me to get an autograph for her.''
A freshman at Florida State University, Everson began reading The Baby-sitters Club back when the series started in 1986. She represents, incredibly, the first generation of Baby-sitter's Club readers - girls who are now in college.
To 40-year-old Martin, a former teacher who grew up in Princeton, N.J., writing for preteen girls isn't hard.
``It seems to come more naturally to me than any other age group,'' she said. As a single woman with no kids, one has to wonder: Where does she get ideas for the books?
That's easy, she says.
``I get lots and lots of letters from kids, so I get lots of ideas from them,'' Martin said. ``Really, not that much has changed since I was a kid. Kids today still worry about most of the same things we worried about as kids - they're all concerned about fitting in.''
The books are short and the plots are simple enough to handle in a 130-page format. In one book, Dawn wonders whether her blind date with a friend's cousin will be a disaster. In another, Stacey wonders whether her new friends are using her as a cover for their drinking and shoplifting. There are mysteries in the series too, with puzzles such as the local surfer who mysteriously disappears or when dogs around the neighborhood are being stolen.
As a child, Martin was an avid reader herself. She read the Bobbsey Twins series and the Nancy Drew series; she adored the horse stories of Marguerite Henry; she gobbled up light fantasy, such as ``The Wizard of Oz,'' ``Alice in Wonderland'' and, later, the J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy.
Still, she never envisioned writing in her future. ``I liked writing, but I wanted to be a teacher,'' Martin said. After graduating from Smith College, Martin taught fourth-and fifth-grade students for a year.
After a year of teaching, she quit to become an editorial assistant in the children's paperback division at Pocket Books. There, her job was to read unsolicited manuscripts, known in the publishing world as the ``slush pile.''
``That's when I began thinking about writing,'' Martin said. ``I thought, `I can try this.' Some of the things I read were really good. Some was so good that I didn't know if I could do any better, but I thought I would try.''
After a couple of more jobs in publishing - working as a copy writer and later as editor of a teen-age book club - she decided to try her luck as a writer.
``The timing was fabulous. I had decided to leave my job at Bantam and, about the same time, a friend came to me with the idea.''
Since then, Martin - who now has an apartment in New York City and a country house in the Catskills - hasn't had time to look back.
Martin no longer writes all the books, although they all bear her name. ``It's no secret. In the beginning, I did write all the books. But now it's up to 40 books a year,'' Martin said. She outlines plots for the books and edits all of them, but ghostwriters do most of the writing.
That has freed her to write something other than Baby-sitter's Club books. Recently, for instance, she finished a picture book for younger readers, ``Leo the Magnificat.'' Being published by Scholastic in October, the book is based on the life of a cat that lived in a Louisville, Ky., church and was so loved by the congregation that church members made him a clerical collar. When he died, the church held a funeral and the local newspaper printed an obituary.
Martin plans to work on other books - for older and younger audiences - but she feels most comfortable with the preteen audience.
And besides, she notes, she has some evidence that boys - perish the thought - are reading The Baby-sitter's Club.
``I get letters from girls who say, `All the boys in my class read your books, but they won't admit it,''' Martin said with a smile.
LENGTH: Long : 129 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: KRT ``I get lots and lots of letters from kids, so Iby CNBget lots of ideas from them,'' says author Ann M. Martin. color.