Rewriting Sweet Valley High For 2010

We grew up with SVH and the BSC (that’s Baby-Sitters Club, ya’ll) –but have they outgrown us? Kristin Clifford investigates.

Some YA plots are timeless classics; others have been rendered obsolete by technology. How many problems in Sweet Valley High or the Baby-sitters Club books could have been solved with a cell phone and Google? How many bad dates prevented by Facebook? Would there have even been a Kristy’s Great Idea if Craigslist or Sitters.com were around? Would Jessica have been allowed to roam free in the world despite being a borderline narcissistic personality with sociopathic tendencies?

Let’s revisit some old favorites and see how things would play out today.

Baby-sitters Club # 50: Dawn’s Big Date

Page 82, published 1992:

“I wanted to send Lewis one last piece of mail before he arrived. It was a postcard I’d bought recently. It showed the back of a big chair. All you could see were a woman’s curvy legs hanging over the side. She wore red high heels.

Dear Lewis, Dying to see you Friday night. Mary Anne said you had a hunky voice. Can’t wait to hear it whisper in my ear. Until then, Dawn.”

In 2010:

Dawn and Lewis would e-mail instead of sending letters, so the tragedy of sending that embarrassing postcard would have been avoided. Also, at some point Dawn would have been sent to therapy for her raging daddy issues, which are so apparent in that brief note.

It’s possible that Dawn and Lewis’ gchats, Facebook chats, and other e-mail correspondence might have gotten a little racy. It’s hard to tell with the BSC – they’re so prudish and yet boy-crazy at the same time. If they were 13 today, they would have either be wildly slutty or sport matching purity rings made by the children they baby-sit for, from materials found in their Kid-kits.

Baby-sitters Club # 45: Kristy and the Baby Parade, published 1991

Page 35-36 (the baby-sitters meet a set of infant twins in their infant-care class):

“They were both so, so cute. When Mary Anne held her finger out to Ricky, he grabbed onto it with his tiny hand and wouldn’t let go. Mary Anne squealed …. [Stacey] and Claudia bent over the twins, cooing. Dawn appeared a minute later and joined them.”

In 2010:

Can you say pregnancy pact? Forget Gloucester. The Baby-sitters Club in Stoneybrook, CT would be trying to get pregnant every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 5:30-6 p.m., at least until Kristy figured out that kissing a boy was required. Of course, Mal and Jessi would have to have their Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret moments before they could do so, but they’d try the hardest. The BSC girls love babies and children to an unnatural degree – no teen volunteers for that much sibling time. It’s icky.

Sweet Valley High

Sweet Valley. The land of multiple motorcycle accidents, attempted date rapes, kidnappings, mistaken identity, and so much more. This series in particular presents problems that can easily be solved with the Internet, a dash of common sense, and a smart phone or two. This series was recently “modernized” and the first few books re-released.

Original SVH # 1, Double Love, published 1983:

Jessica goes to Kelly’s Bar with Rick Andover, local sleaze. He gets drunk.

Page 61:

“’Rick, please.’” She wasn’t in the habit of begging, but she was getting desperate. A few more drinks and Rick would be in no condition to drive her home. Then she’d really be stuck.”

In 2010:

Jessica could use her cell phone, or another bar patron’s, to call Elizabeth and get a ride home. Even back in the past she probably could have used the bar phone or a pay phone to do so, but Jessica was never described as bright.

I snagged my own copies of the modernized versions of SVH #1 and #2, Secrets. There were many changes from the original. The twins are size four instead of six, and they drive a Jeep instead of a Fiat. Most importantly – they definitely have cell phones. Reading it to myself, I thought, “Surely the plot will have to change, if Jessica has a cell phone.”

But wait! The writer got around it oh-so-cleverly. On every occasion that Jessica pulled out her cell phone – trapped at a drag race, in a bar or inside said Jeep with a drunken Rick, drunken Rick merely stole the cell phone so she couldn’t use it. Bravo, update writers. Bravo.

I can’t wait to see what happens with the other updates. Does Enid still write letters to her druggie ex? Do Liz and Todd send steamy sexts and Skypes when he moves to Vermont? Does anyone notice that Elizabeth’s lavalier spells Ew? If every modernization involves a drunken skeeze stealing a Wakefield’s cell phone, the writers will have an uphill battle ahead of them.

–By Kristin Clifford