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A review by chrissymcbooknerd
Dawn: Diary One by Ann M. Martin
4.0
If you were a young reader in the 80's and early 90's, you could NOT have missed the sensation of The Baby Sitter's Club. I devoured the series as a child, even going so far as to try and create my own real life club or preteen baby sitters, which ultimately ended in nothing but disaster. But even these crazy experiences were not enough to detract from the magic and fun of this series.
Somehow, I missed this spin-off series, which starts with DAWN: DIARY ONE of the California Diaries. All avid BSC fans remember when free spirited, hippie child Dawn ended up moving back to California, where her father, brother, and old best friend Sunny lived. However, since the main series focused primarily on the club itself, there really wasn't much said about Dawn during the time that she was away.
Well, Ann M. Martin fixed that with the release of the CALIFORNIA DIARIES series, which was released back in the 90's but was apparently released by Open Media in 2014 (YAY!). This first installment describes, in diary format, Dawn's experiences with being an 8th grader in a school of high schoole students who seem so much older and more mature and sophisticated. Dawn, and best friend Sunny, try to fit in with the crowd by attending a secret party thrown by the upperclassmen, which turns out to be a nightmare that not only ends with the girls experiencing underage drinking and hazing from the older kids at school... it also breaks up a friendship that Dawn was really counting on to get her through these days in California.
While I would probably prefer to see a series focused more on Stacy or Claudia, my two favorites from the BSC, I did still feel tons of nostalgia from revisting at least one of my old, childhood friends --- and I will definitely finish this sub-series if Open Media ends up releasing them all on e-book! In fact, let's release all the old Super Specials too, while we're at it! I so miss those books!
Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to travel back to my days of childhood innocent through a copy of this novel provided for the purposes of presenting an honest review. If you, like I, adored The Baby Sitter's Club but never quite got around to the CALIFORNIA DIARIES back in your day, I definitely recommend that you pick up at least this first book, to make your middle school dreams come true for at least an hour or two of your day!
Somehow, I missed this spin-off series, which starts with DAWN: DIARY ONE of the California Diaries. All avid BSC fans remember when free spirited, hippie child Dawn ended up moving back to California, where her father, brother, and old best friend Sunny lived. However, since the main series focused primarily on the club itself, there really wasn't much said about Dawn during the time that she was away.
Well, Ann M. Martin fixed that with the release of the CALIFORNIA DIARIES series, which was released back in the 90's but was apparently released by Open Media in 2014 (YAY!). This first installment describes, in diary format, Dawn's experiences with being an 8th grader in a school of high schoole students who seem so much older and more mature and sophisticated. Dawn, and best friend Sunny, try to fit in with the crowd by attending a secret party thrown by the upperclassmen, which turns out to be a nightmare that not only ends with the girls experiencing underage drinking and hazing from the older kids at school... it also breaks up a friendship that Dawn was really counting on to get her through these days in California.
While I would probably prefer to see a series focused more on Stacy or Claudia, my two favorites from the BSC, I did still feel tons of nostalgia from revisting at least one of my old, childhood friends --- and I will definitely finish this sub-series if Open Media ends up releasing them all on e-book! In fact, let's release all the old Super Specials too, while we're at it! I so miss those books!
Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to travel back to my days of childhood innocent through a copy of this novel provided for the purposes of presenting an honest review. If you, like I, adored The Baby Sitter's Club but never quite got around to the CALIFORNIA DIARIES back in your day, I definitely recommend that you pick up at least this first book, to make your middle school dreams come true for at least an hour or two of your day!