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The Baby-Sitters Club Clubhouse Activity Center
from Creative Wonders

See also the Summary Rating Table for comparisons with other Girls Software programs, and the SuperKids Buyers Guide for current market prices of the PC and Mac versions.

Reviewed on:
PowerMac 6400/200 with 32MB and 8XCD
Pentium166 with 16MB and 12XCD

Description
The Baby-Sitters Club began as a series of books by Ann M. Martin, and grew in popularity with the 1995 feature film of the same name. The story takes place in the mythical town of ‘Stoneybrook’, where a group of friends band together to pool baby-sitting tips and resources. Along the way they learn about families, friendships and life’s ups and downs.

The Clubhouse Activity Center invites the user to join the group, and become involved with their daily activities. It includes:

• a calendar to help the young reader become better organized,
• a stationery kit, where tickets, greeting cards, posters, and stationery can be designed and printed
• a Secret Message Maker that allows the user to create coded messages
• a journal to jot down private thoughts, and
• various puzzles and games to entertain.

Ease of Install/Use
The BSC Clubhouse Activity Center installed without difficulty on our reviewer’s PCs and Macs.

A brief User’s Manual is included in the CD case, and a “Demo” of the program is available on the CD itself. Our young reviewers found these features to be unnecessary, however, and were able to navigate the program intuitively.

Educational Value
As with other programs of this genre, the educational value lies not in the teaching or drilling of academic subjects, but in the more subtle areas of computer familiarity, reading and writing practice and appreciation, and the acquisition of organizational techniques.

Kid Appeal
Young Baby-Sitters Club fans will not be disappointed with the Clubhouse Activity Center. Although it is more of an organizer and stationery kit than anything else, it weaves the series’ characters into each activity, becoming an interactive extension of the well-loved books. “The first thing my daughter does every afternoon is to check her Baby-Sitters Club mailbox,” commented one parent reviewer. “She feels as though she’s sharing experiences with long-time friends.”

Best for/Bottom-Line
Enthusiasts of the best-selling book series are sure to delight in this program that is simulataneously a fan-club kit, an organizer, a print studio, and much more. In the search for a software program that will please eight to twelve year-old girls, this is an admirable contender.

See also the Summary Rating Table for comparisons with other Girls Software programs, and the SuperKids Buyers Guide for current market prices of the PC and Mac versions.

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