The Baby-Sitter's Club: Mary Anne Saves the Day by Ann M. Martin and Regina Telgemeier

Mary Anne is the Treasurer for the Baby-Sitter's Club, and feeling a little insecure because alone out of all the others, she still has a bedtime at 9PM, while all the others have theirs at 10. She's tried to ask her Dad for a later time, but he isn't convinced she's old enough and mature enough to handle it.

Adding to her stress, the girls have a Huge fight over the hogging of jobs by various members of the club, and each of them says things that they will certainly regret later. When Mary Anne starts to cry, the others call her a big baby, and she feels that the charge is true, and goes home again to cry later. But with the members of the club barely speaking to one another, she apologizes to Claudia, which mends their relationship for a while.

Until Claudia comes home one day and finds Mary Anne drinking tea and talking with Claudia's grandmother, Mimi. Mimi calls Mary Anne "My Mary Anne", and Claudia goes ballistic, as she thinks Mimi should only drink tea out of the special cups and call no one but her "My" anything! Mimi tries to smooth things over, but it doesn't work, and Mary Ann once again goes home in tears.

The next day, the girls, who usually sit together at lunch, are all widely separated, and Mary Anne finds herself sitting all alone at a table. There, she is approached by a new girl named Dawn Schaeffer, who has moved to town after her parents divorce, but she's been ignored by all the other students, and hoped that Mary Anne was also new so that she could be friends.

Abandoned by her other friends, Mary Anne finds herself making a new friend in Dawn, and as the club limps along, finds herself enjoying spending time with Dawn, especially when it annoys Stacey, who lives next door to her and can see how much time Mary Ann and Dawn are spending together.

But when Mary Ann and Stacey help one of Mary Ann's babysitting kids through strep throat, she knows that the time has come to end this grudge between the members of the Baby-Sitter's Club. But can she convince the others that it's time to make up and apologize? Or will it take severe measures for everyone to go along?

This book adds a typical older kid/Early teen dilemma, the fight between friends that turns into a real grudge match and how to get the friends thinking about friendships and less about their truly hurt feelings. Mary Ann doesn't really have strong ties to anyone in the group except for Stacey, who she lives next to, so when the group splits, she's left on her own.

And being alone hurts, especially when you don't have very many friends, as Mary Anne is all too aware. She tries to be a peacemaker, but its hard when the others aren't interested in making peace. Still, even she gets into the grudge-baiting near the end, until Dawn realizes what she is doing and refuses to be her friend, or have any part in what she's doing.

In the end, things end happily, and the club grows by a new member: Dawn. And with Mary Anne's Dad and Dawn's Mom being old flames, its possible it might end with them becoming sisters-in-law, but that's only hinted at for now. This is a good graphic novel for young teen girls or older child girls, in the 10-14 age range. It's a little larger than the original novel, but readers will enjoy actually seeing the girls and their charges depicted on the page.