Baby-Sitters Little Sister
Baby-Sitters Little Sister is a series spin-off of The Baby-sitters Club novel series. Written by Ann M. Martin, the series centered on seven-year-old Karen Brewer, the stepsister to Kristy Thomas, who is President of The Baby-sitters Club. In this series, Karen is a second grader at Stoneybrook Academy. Much of the books are about Karen going to school, and the many adventures that she and her classmates have. Karen usually tries to do the right thing, but because she has been through some hard times in her young life, she sometimes makes a mistake. She does, however, learn from the mistakes, and the books do teach valuable lessons.
In the beginning of the series, Karen and her younger brother, Andrew live primarily with their mother, Lisa, and stepfather, Seth Engle. Karen and Andrew do not get to spend much time with their father, Watson Brewer, and stepmother, Elizabeth Thomas-Brewer. Therefore, they end up missing the extended family so much that they request to spend equal time with both families.Once, Karen's feelings are hurt because no one came to pick her up at Stoneybrook Academy after a field trip. She waits with her favorite teacher, Ms.Coleman, until someone comes to pick her up, and this was the lead-in for Karen's parents to work out a fair schedule for her and Andrew.
Although the series covered holiday celebrations every year in real-time, Karen only celebrated her birthday once (she turned seven years old in Baby-Sitters Little Sister #7, Karen's Birthday). Her classmate,and Best Enemy, Pamela Harding celebrates her birthday once, and invites Karen, and everyone else in Ms.Coleman's class to the party. Karen is jealous because Pamela's parents are rich. She and Nancy plot to get Pamela gifts that they are sure that she will hate. In the end, Karen is the only one that gets a horrible gift, and everyone else's parents made them get Pamela something nice. Then, Karen plots to play tricks on Pamela.
Certain events in The Baby-sitters Club overlapped in the Baby-Sitters Little Sister series, however, the timeline was shown to be off by about a year . However, in some Baby-Sitters Little Sister novels, Karen sometimes talks about the members of the Baby-sitters Club, such as Kristy Thomas, Claudia Kishi, Mary Anne Spier, Stacey McGill, Dawn Schafer, Mallory Pike, and Jessica "Jessi" Ramsey.
The series began in 1988 with the publishing of Karen's Witch, and ended twelve years later in 2000 with the publishing of Karen's Cowboy.
The series has a spin-off series, The Kids in Ms. Colman's Class.