The Truth About Stacey

Ann M. Martin's The Truth About Stacey is a friendship story for 9 year olds about a baby-sitting club that suddenly has competition.

What happens

Stacey McGill moved from New York City to tiny Stoneybrook in August. She didn't make a single friend until she met Claudia. Now she's treasurer of the Baby-sitters Club, and the club is the best thing that's happened to her in a horrible year.

So when a flyer turns up for a rival Baby-sitters Agency, it feels like the end of the world. It's run by two eighth-graders, Liz Lewis and Michelle Patterson. Their sitters are older. They can stay out later. There are even boys on their books!

Kristy's answer is a very long list of ideas (Claudia hates most of them). The one everyone likes is the Kid-Kit, a decorated box of games and books to bring along on every job.

Stacey tells it all herself, and she's chatty, stylish and a bit sharp about Stoneybrook. Kristy's prank call to the agency, booking a sitter so she can go on a "date" with Winston Churchill, is properly funny.

There's a lot going on underneath the club drama too. Stacey has diabetes. She has to watch every single thing she eats, and her parents have become super overprotective. Now they want her to see yet another doctor in New York, one an uncle saw on TV. Who wouldn't groan at that?

It's worth knowing that the diabetes is explained quite plainly. Stacey remembers fainting at school and wetting the bed at a sleepover. Her old best friend in New York turned the others against her and called her a liar. A seven-year-old Stacey sits for gets teased in a playground too. It's all handled gently, but a child who's been left out might feel those bits.

Stacey's America is a world of flyers through mailboxes, phone extensions and a stereo turned up loud. Stacey also spends a fair bit of time thinking about boys. If you've got a reader who loves a gang of friends who argue, make up and get on with it, they'll feel right at home. The club itself starts in Kristy's Great Idea, if they'd like to meet it from the beginning.

What to read next

If it's the new-school-and-new-friends feeling they love, try Alice in the Spotlight, the first Secrets Club book. Alice meets Tash, Dani and Melissa on her very first morning at Riverside, and she has a secret about her big sister she's determined to keep (her sister is quite a handful).