Mary Anne Spier |
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|---|---|
| Information | |
| Full name |
Mary Anne Spier |
| Joined | |
| Left | |
| Title | |
| Biographical | |
| Nickname | |
| Born |
September 22 |
| Hometown |
Stoneybrook, CT |
| Age |
12 (1-10) |
| Family |
Richard Spier (father) |
| Romances | |
| School | |
| Grade |
7th - 8th |
| Affiliations | |
| Miscellaneous | |
| First Appearance | |
| Final Appearance | |
| Portrayed by |
Meghan Lahey (TV) |
Mary Anne Spier is the secretary of the Baby-Sitters Club, due to her exceptional organization skills and neat handwriting. She starts out the series as twelve-years-old and in seventh grade, she has her birthday in Logan Likes Mary Anne! after she joins eighth grade. For the remainder of the series she is thirteen-years-old and is in the eighth grade at Stoneybrook Middle School. Mary Anne made her first appearance in Kristy's Great Idea. Mary Anne also is the central focus of the last book in the original series, The Fire at Mary Anne's House.
Personal Info
General
- Mary Anne lives at 177 Burnt Hill Road, Stoneybrook CT
- She narrates The Baby-Sitters Club books: 4, 10, 47, 25, 30, 34, 41, 46, 52, 60, 66, 73, 79, 86, 93, 102, 109, 114, 120, 125, 131,
- Mystery: M#5, M#13, M#20, M#24, M#31, M#34.
- Mary Anne's Book
- Friends Forever: #3, #8, #11
- Various chapter of the Super Special and Super Mystery books.
Physical Description
Mary Anne is five feet and a half-inch tall. She is petite, neat, and precise with brown eyes. She is the shortest to Kristy in the eighth grade. She used to wear her mousy brown hair wavy and in braids. She was finally allowed to let her hair down sometimes in Mary Anne Saves the Day. She gets her hair cut short by Joyce from the salon in the Washington Mall. She wears wire-rimmed glasses for reading in Stacey's Ex-Best Friend.
Mary Anne has very fair skin and never tans and must cover herself completely when at the beach to avoid burning. Her look is described as "neat preppy casual." She wears a Mary Anne necklace around her neck. Her dad says that she looks and behaves like her mother.
Style: She does not have her ears pierced. She can now wear make-up (blush, eyeliner, lipstick), which her dad allowed her to buy during her makeover. She has some jewelry. Mary Anne dresses "sort of conservatively." She'll wear clip-on earrings. She also has a bra now and takes more of an interest in clothes.
Personality Traits
Mary Anne is quiet, shy, and not self-assured. She cries easily and often; Logan sometimes calls her the town crier. Whisper the words "Old Yeller" to her and her eyes well up. Perceptive and honest, she sees the best in people. She can be just stubborn as she is shy. Mary Anne is well organized and has the neatest handwriting in the club. Although she is an introvert, she can also come up with really good ideas.
She is the youngest of the five older club members. She is usually calm in emergencies. She can sound school teacher-ish and wants to be a teacher in Claudia and Mean Janine. In Graduation Day she wanted to study psychology. She tries to put others first, then learns how to balance others' needs with her own.
She gets spooked if you say boo in broad daylight. She saves letters and other sentimental things in a cedar box her grandmother gave her.
In Dawn's Wicked Stepsister, it's mentioned Mary Anne finds it hard to study with music playing. She doesn't get angry very often, but when she does, she's an expert with the silent treatment.
The thought of dancing in front of people paralyzes her. Mary Anne wishes she was more outgoing.
In Stacey's Movie when she has a bad day she gives an emotional interview. Mary Anne says that people who can't be nice, people yell, and those that think they are better than others make her mad. She also doesn't like teachers that play favorites. She sometimes feels angry at her mother for dying.
In Mary Anne Breaks the Rules, she mentions that she can be gullible. Stacey mentions that she isn't very cool in Stacey and the Bad Girls. Dawn mentions that Mary Anne is very tactful in Dawn and the Older Boy. In Baby-sitters' Island Adventure Mary Anne is dramatic about a missed phone call. She admits she's not very straight forward in Mary Anne and the Search for Tigger.
She says that she takes herself too seriously as mentioned in Mary Anne's Book.
Childhood Experiences
Mary Anne was born on September 22nd in Stoneybrook, Connecticut around 11:00 PM according to Mimi Yamamoto in The Truth About Stacey. Mary Anne has lived at Bradford Court since she was born. Her mother died shortly after her birth. She spent her first birthday with her maternal grandparents Bill and Verna Baker after her mother died. She stays with them until she is eighteen months old. Mr. Spier and the Bakers have a custody fight, which is resolved without much fuss or bitterness.
Her father picked out her clothes for her (typically penny-loafers, jumpers, dresses, never pants, or jeans; although in The Summer Before, Mary Anne wore patterned capris and pedal pushers).
Her past teachers include Mrs. Frederickson (1), Mrs. Jeffires (2), Ms. Ellison (4).
She has never been far away from home until the events of Boy-Crazy Stacey. Her father used to only let her talk on the phone if it was about homework, and made her come straight home from school. She has an antique doll named Lila and a white teddy bear named Snowman.
In The Fire at Mary Anne's House, she mentions that she's been writing in journals ever since she could write. She normally writes when she feels like it.
She mentions when she was eight she wanted to be a fairy princess and had convinced herself that she really was. Everyone laughed at her when she couldn't prove it and threw away the costume afterward in Mary Anne's Makeover.
Mary Anne remembers her dad driving by the Stoneybrook Lighthouse and hit lots of traffic. They started singing "Fox Went Out on a Chilly Night" together. She remembers passing the lighthouse with flashing lights everywhere. Richard got the story and told Mary Anne to never go someplace where you know you're not supposed to be, no matter how old you are. Neither of them talk about it ever again in Claudia and the Lighthouse Ghost.
Biography
She is responsible in the face of an emergency, as shown in Book #4 Mary Anne Saves the Day when she was looking after Jenny Prezzioso, who had a temperature of 104 degrees and called 911.
Mary Anne was the first to have a real and steady boyfriend. Mary Anne and Logan Bruno had some fights (like in Book #41 Mary Anne vs. Logan), and they broke up for a while but got back together.
Mary Anne learned how to dance for the school dance with Logan in Book #10 Logan Likes Mary Anne. While she was at the dance, she was dancing and her shoe flew right off and hit the wall (and almost hitting the vice principal, Mr. Kingbridge, who was mentioned for the first time just then). Mary Anne got her kitten Tigger in Book #10 Logan Likes Mary Anne.
In the Baby-sitters Club: Friends Forever series she broke up with Logan. In Mary Anne's Revenge, she had nightmares about the fire. Mary Anne snuck out of the house to go to Cokie's party and told her off. Afterward, she and her father (with a little help from Sharon) talked about how they've been feeling since the fire. She was also on the yearbook committee.
Room
Mary Anne's room was decorated in pink and white and looked like a nursery. It had pink-framed pictures of family, Alice in Wonderland, and Humpty Dumpty. Dawn Schafer and Kristy Thomas helped her redecorate her room; taking off the pictures and putting posters and photographs and stencils picture frames.
After the barn is remodeled her room was spacious and full of light. It has a blue and yellow color scheme. Her closet is huge and has a new bedspread, curtains, rug, and desk. Her room is cottage style with built in bookshelves. She went shopping for her room in Stacey and the Boyfriend Trap and was completed in Welcome Home, Mary Anne.
Likes
- Yellow and navy blue are favorite colors (#4)
- Movie stars (#11)
- Animals (#11)
- Cats (#10)
- Cam Geary (her favorite tv star) (#10)
- Pollyanna is her favorite Hayley Mills movie (#30)
- Checking the mailbox is sometimes the highlight of her day (#17)
- Sewing (#31)
- Knitting (#31)
- New York City (#18)
- Old movies/Classic movies (#13)
- The latest TV shows (#13)
- Rock music (#13)
- Her mother's pearl necklace (#30)
- Sixteen Candles
- Sleepovers
- Books
- Teenzine Magazine (#131)
- Wrapping presents (#114)
- Roman Holiday is one of her favorite movies (#13)
- Chocolate chip cookies
- The Wizard of Oz
- Smash (music group in Logan Likes Mary Anne!)
- Nicky Cash
- Plain cheese pizza (M#21)
- Strawberry ice cream (FF11)
- Kittens (FF#11)
- Hot chocolate with marshmallows on snowing winter afternoons (FF#11)
- Rainy days (FF#11)
Dislikes
- Crowds (#11)
- Gossiping
- Being the center of attention (#11)
- Confrontation (#4)
- Dealing the people she doesn't know (#4)
- Sports (#26)
- Pink (#5)
- How Sharon cleans the house (#31)
- Bagpipes (#45)
- Dancing (#51)
- Camping (ss#10)
- Cooking (M#4)
- Gym
- Tattoos
- Fighting
- Being called "miss" (mentioned in #25)
- Rats (SS#7)
- Soap Operas (MB)
Jobs
Mary Anne volunteers at Stoneybrook Public Library in the children's department in Mary Anne and the Library Mystery.
In The Secret Life of Mary Anne Spier, Mary Anne gets a job at Washington Mall in the Christmas area to pay off a credit card bill. She plays an elf at the Winter Wonderland set up.
In Mary Anne and the Playground Fight, she worked as a counselor at the Stoneybrook Elementary School Playground Camp.
Medical
She badly sprains her ankle in a biking accident in Mary Anne and Camp BSC.
Baby-Sitting and Club Experience
General
She can stay out until 9:30 on weeknights and 10:00 on weekends as of the end of Mary Anne Saves the Day. She has never made a baby-sitting scheduling mistake.
Clients
Mary Anne loves to sit for the Perkins Family. Mary Anne helped Myriah in the Little Miss Stoneybrook beauty pageant in Book #15 Little Miss Stoneybrook...and Dawn, and Myriah got second place.
She baby-sits for the next farm over when in Maynard in Mary Anne and the Secret in the Attic.
Mary Anne was the first sitter for the Brewer kids in Kristy's Great Idea.
History
Her scariest baby-sitting experience was when Jenny Prezzioso gets a fever of 104 and an ambulance takes her to the hospital in Mary Anne Saves the Day.
She volunteers for a month as part of Jessi's idea for the club to do community service. She helps with her parents' friends' son who has brain damage in Jessi's Wish.
Becomes a BSC outcast after Logan is discovered baby-sitting with her at the Kuhns in Mary Anne Breaks the Rules.
The Baby-Sitters Club
Mary Anne is the secretary of The Baby-Sitters Club. The secretary's job is to keep The Record Book up to date. The Record Book has every BSC members' schedules, and Mary Anne has to write down the job information when a call comes in, see who's available, and also has to have good organizational skills and neat handwriting. She also has to keep track of Jessi's dance classes, Claudia's art classes, Kristy's softball practices, Stacey's trips to New York, and more. A lot of the Baby-Sitters Club members say Mary Anne's job is the hardest, she's had it since Kristy's Great Idea.
School-Related Experiences
Classes/Attendance
Mary Anne is in eighth grade her school locker is 132 and her homeroom is room 216. It's about as far from her locker as you can get. Mr. Blake is Dawn and Mary Anne's homeroom teacher. Kristy is in her social studies class. Ms. Frost is her math teacher. Ms. Simon and Ms. Belcher are her English teachers, just in different semesters.
Her classes in order are: English, math, gym, social studies, lunch, science, study hall, and French. In Stacey's Movie she takes the Short Takes Egyptology class.
Extracurricular Activities
She takes sewing lesson on Saturday afternoons in exchange for doing chores for Mrs. Towne.
Grades
In Kristy and the Missing Child Mary Anne was in danger of failing home ec. In The Baby-Sitters Club Chain Letter she had trouble in English and panicked.
Lunch
Mary Anne brings her lunch to school: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, apple, Doritos, and a box of fruit juice. She doesn't bring her lunch to school anymore because she and Kristy decided it was too babyish for 8th grade. Sometimes she sits with Logan with his friends. Other time she'll sit with her BSC friends.
Social Activities
Dances
She goes with Logan to the Remember September Dance, Fifties Fling, Halloween Hop, Valentine Dance, January Jamboree, and both the school and community center spring dances.
Mary Anne dresses as Dorothy for Mischief Night Masquerade.
Friends
Mary Anne and Kristy have been best friends since childhood and lived next door to one another until Kristy's mother remarried in Book #6 Kristy's Big Day and moved her family to her new husband Watson Brewer's mansion across town. Kristy is Mary Anne's best friend in the world and was her first best friend.
During a brief falling out with the rest of the club early in the series (in Mary Anne Saves the Day), Mary Anne befriends the new girl in school, Dawn Schafer, and the girls become close friends to the extent that Mary Anne also considers Dawn her other best friend. She had trouble making friends on her own, and since her family is friends with the Thomases and the Kishis, that was how she met Kristy and Claudia. Mary Anne finally learned how to make friends on her own when she met Dawn. Dawn and Mary Anne often walk together to BSC meetings (until Book #31 Dawn's Wicked Stepsister when they started biking there).
Kristy's mother has also been like a mother to Mary Anne.
She was also close to Claudia's grandmother Mimi until she passed away in Book #26 Claudia and the Sad Good-bye, and she grew up with Kristy and Claudia. She lived across the street from Claudia. As revealed in Mary Anne Saves The Day, she likes Mimi's accent. She thinks it's soft and nice to listen to. Mimi was helping Mary Anne knit a sweater for her father. She often kissed Mimi on the cheek.
In The Secret Life of Mary Anne Spier, she makes a new friend named Angela and invites her over for Christmas. They don't see each other ever again, however.
Boys/Boyfriends
Logan Bruno is her first real boyfriend. She meets Logan during lunch the first month of eighth grade. She feels like she could be in love with Logan. Their first date is the Remember September Dance. Richard demanded Mary Anne and Logan meet at the party and dance instead of Logan coming to her house.
She feels like Logan is taking over her life in Mary Anne vs. Logan. He gives her a bracelet with tiny gold hearts linked together over a surprise Valentine's dinner. Mary Anne gives it back to him and breaks up, wanting to be independent. She and Logan were just friends. They get back together in Mary Anne Misses Logan and he now gives her space. Logan loves her new makeover in Mary Anne's Makeover.
Mary Anne exchanges rings with Alex at Sea City. She wears it on a chain around her neck. He was the first boy she was interested in, sees him again when sitting for the Pikes. He gives her a big purple hippo. She thinks she's in love with him but she's loyal to Logan. Alex has a girlfriend back home so they end vacation as "friends forever."
She goes out with a boy named Bob in Maynard, Iowa. He is the grandson of one of her grandmother's friends. He's very cute but they don't have anything in common.
The BSC members spread rumors about a boy named Chris from SHS, who supposedly likes her in Mary Anne's Makeover. Another rumor is that Carlos Mendez invited Mary Anne to the Winter Dance at SHS.
After Logan and Mary Anne break up Dave Griffin and Pete Black asked her to the Fall Fling.
Trivia
- She is the focus of the final book in the BSC series, The Fire at Mary Anne's House.
- Mary Anne shares the same name with Ann M. Martin, the writer of the Baby-Sitters Club series.
- She sometimes sees a therapist, Dr. Reese, like when Amelia Freeman died.
- Ann M. Martin said that she based the character of Mary Anne on herself and based Kristy on her best friend growing up.
- Doesn't believe in bad luck.
- If she could be any animal she would be a koala.
- Mary Anne wants to live in NYC when she's older.
- Mary Anne doesn't like Abby's imitations in Kristy and the Sister War.
- In Kristy's Great Idea, on page 149 it's mentioned that she's been to New York City twice before.
- Even though she doesn't like to cook in Kristy and the Missing Child, she has her own special spaghetti she makes in The Fire at Mary Anne's House.
- She mentions having memorized dialogue from Titanic and Roman Holiday in The Fire at Mary Anne's House.
- Mary Anne taught Claudia Kishi how to knit in Claudia and Crazy Peaches.
- She carries wallet sized pictures of her friends in her purse, she had one of Amelia Freeman in Mary Anne and the Memory Garden.
- She once had a complete set of Boxcar Children books mentioned in Dawn and Too Many Sitters.
- Mary Anne mentions that she wants to marry and have kids one day in Graduation Day.
- She visited Stacey on vacation in Stacey's Lie.
- Some Disney movies scare her in Jessi and the Bad Baby-sitter.
- She caught Sharon's bouquet in Dawn's Wicked Stepsister.
- Mallory says that she eats like a bird in Mallory and the Mystery Diary.
- She's afraid of the secret passage in Dawn's Wicked Stepsister.
- She says that she gets cold easily in Mary Anne vs. Logan.
- She becomes a pen pal to Stephie Robertson at the end of California Girls!.
- Her last name is pronounced Spear, not Spier.
Media Portrayals
TV Series (1990)
In this series, she is portrayed by actress Meghan Lahey. In this version, her hair is long which matches Mary Anne's hair prior to book 60. She is taller then her book counterpart.
Movie
She is portrayed by actress Rachael Leigh Cook. In this version, Mary Anne's hair is short, which matches the hair cut she got in Mary Anne's Makeover. Also in the movies she has glasses sometimes.
The Baby-Sitters Club (web series)
Mary Anne is portrayed by actress Malia Baker. This is the first time Mary Anne is portrayed as half African-American. She is also given glasses. This series adapts the first several books directly, so her hair is still long and often in braids.
In Kristy's Great Idea Mary Anne wanted to spend her money on pizza, in this series she wants to spend her money on pizza and ice cream. They also show her crocheting. In the show, she has a flip phone instead of a smartphone like her friends.
Gallery
Book Covers
Interior Illustrations
Other Images
Netflix TV show
Graphic Novels
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Kristy Thomas - President ·
Claudia Kishi - Vice President ·
Mary Anne Spier - Secretary ·
Stacey McGill - Treasurer | ||