Meet the painter behind the iconic covers for ‘The Baby-Sitters Club’

Those oil-painted images, which often captured surprisingly diverse families and friend groups, were mostly the work of one man: Hodges Soileau. In addition to “The Baby-Sitters Club,” Soileau illustrated Harlequin romance novels and some of “The Boxcar Children” books. Somewhat to his own surprise, Soileau’s “Baby-Sitters Club” work has found a second life as he’s sold the original canvases to legions of the series’s superfans. To date, he has sold most of the original art he created depicting the characters from fictional Stoneybrook, Conn.

When I spoke with Soileau via Zoom this month, the almost-80-year-old painter had his original artwork behind him, including canvases from “Mary Anne Saves the Day,” “Farewell, Dawn” and even the VHS cover of “The Baby-Sitters and the Boy Sitters” from the HBO 1990 TV show based on the series. Now living in Venice, Fla., the artist describes himself as “old school,” and shares the history and the behind-the-scenes creative process of his work.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

I’d love to know how you were commissioned to illustrate these covers. How did you get the job?

I was doing work with Scholastic, but [Art Director] Hollie Rubin called me in one day. She said, “I have this book. It could be two, three or a series.” She asked if I would be willing to take it on. I said, “Sure.” Now, it is 131 books later, plus the mysteries, super specials, calendars and the box covers for Mattel games. The job lasted 12 years.

I read that there was a different artist for the first book.

Yeah, for the first two books. And I don’t know what the situation was because he was a very good artist. But I never had any problems with Scholastic. We worked well together.

Can you walk me through why oil paintings were the medium for “The Baby-Sitters Club” covers?

I did my first oil painting in 1983 in Connecticut. And from then on, everything I did was oil and I had done some book covers in that medium.

I’ll tell you a little story. I was walking down the hallway to hand-deliver a painting to the creative director. I saw all these little windows where the assistant art directors sat, and all the drawing boards were gone. Their desks had PCs on them. I asked David, the creative director, “What’s going on?” He said, “Instead of getting this [the oil painting]” — and he sniffs it and says, “Ah, the smell of oil.” — “Instead, I’m getting this,” and he picks up a floppy disk. That’s when it all changed, you know? Most of the guys, like me, were old school and doing oil paintings and weren’t interested in digital at all.

What was the process of deciding what the characters looked like with the publisher? You captured how I envisioned the characters as a kid.

I had a photographer in the city. Scholastic had the budget for photoshoots and models. We started with the two blonde characters, Dawn [Schafer] and Stacey [McGill]. The biggest problem of all was in a 12-year span, those models had outgrown the characters. So we had to find new models. I had to make that transition from one Stacey to the next Stacey because [readers] would write letters to the publisher if you didn’t get it right.

How long did it take you from start to finish before you turned in the painting?

I turned them around pretty fast, actually, because there were so many. Plus, I wasn’t just illustrating “The Baby-Sitters Club.” I did romance covers. I was nonstop for all those years. It was a blur. Every day, I used to work until about 3:30 p.m., then I’d go for a six-mile run. I’d come back and do six rounds on the heavy bag, then I’d work until midnight.

My wife helped me a lot. She used to go to a library in Westport, Conn., that had a fantastic clip file. I’d ask for her to get me everything, for example, with airports [for “Farewell, Dawn”]. She read each “Baby-Sitters Club” manuscript, and she’d give me an idea of what it was about.

I used some neighborhood kids for some background models. I even used my son when he was a teenager. But the main characters were always the same.

For this painting [a 1994 “Baby-Sitters Club” calendar with the characters on a wooden roller coaster], we … set the chairs up [in the studio] at an angle and photographed each of the kids, two together and some by themselves. They were all there in the same shoot. Then I put them on the roller coaster in the painting.

I used to test the paintings by taking a Polaroid of it. If it looked good in the Polaroid, I knew it would reproduce well for the cover.

Were you painting one cover a week?

I never spent more than three days on each cover because if I did, I’d miss a deadline. I can honestly say in my career, I never missed a deadline. Ever.

How did selling the original oil paintings come about?

I had so many of them that I gave some to friends for their kids. When we left Connecticut [and moved to Florida], I kept all the “Baby-Sitters Club” paintings. I did a talk in my hometown of Eunice, La., and gave some to the libraries. I gave a couple to a school library in Westport, Conn. I gave one to the teacher who got me to come do that. I gave a lot of them away. At the time, I didn’t think there was any market for them. And all of a sudden this just happened, you know?

Somebody did a blog or something. When they mentioned my name, I got a barrage of emails. I was in the middle of switching my website, so my website just blew up. There are more inquiries than I have paintings left. I have 85 remaining. I kept seven for myself. I’m trying to be fair. Amazingly, the people who are inquiring are very patient with me. “The Baby-Sitters Club” was important to me, but I never dreamed that this would happen.

Jennifer Chen is a freelance journalist. Her debut YA rom-com book, “Artifacts of an Ex,” will be published by Wednesday Books in the fall of 2023.