Meryl's Notes Blog

Normally, I would be amazed that a book series has been around 75 years, but I’m not. My mom read them, my sister read them, I read them, and my daughter has read one or two of them.

From Nancy Drew at MysteryNet.com: “The teen sleuth was the last brainchild of Edward Stratemeyer, owner of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, who had already created such popular series as the Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, and the Hardy Boys. Seeing a need for a girls’ mystery-adventure series, he created Nancy and hired a young journalist to write the stories based on plot outlines that he provided her. The Secret of the Old Clock, by ‘Carolyn Keene,’ was published in 1930 — the same year that Edward Stratemeyer died. His daughter Harriet Adams carried on the work of supervising the series and later wrote many of the books herself.”

I remember the Bobbsey Twins, but never read them. The only Hardy Boys I saw were Parker Stevenson and Shaun Cassidy on TV. Plus, Dynasty’s Pamela Sue Martin played Nancy. The show lasted one year. Do a search for Nancy Drew on imdb and you get a lot of results.

I had no idea Nancy Drew has many PC games since my daughter is in the age group. Nancy Drew doesn’t pop up in conversation.

The “author” of the series is Carolyn Keene, a pseudonym for all the contributing authors — there is no author by the name. I remember when I first saw these books in my sister’s room, I thought they looked old (by the cover design) and a boring read. It wasn’t my favorite, but it was better than expected. Today, the book covers are a classic.