Authors and Books
for Children

Not Just for Children Anymore: Girls' Series Books

Children's literature is not just for children. Many adults in recent years have enjoyed rediscovering some of the books they read as youngsters, either to share with their own children or simply to relive happy memories. Whether they were tracking clues with teen supersleuth Nancy Drew, wondering how nurse Cherry Ames would solve her patients' problems and overcome her own flaws, or agonizing over the growing pains of Betsy-Tacy (and Tib), young readers explored a myriad of possibilities in the pages of series books and found an exciting--but orderly--world, which they still remember fondly.

Over the past several years interest in old-time juvenile series fiction has proliferated on a variety of levels, from simple nostalgia to scholarly examination of underlying themes and messages.


Various Web pages have regularly popped up, dealing with fictional series of all types, from Nancy Drew to Judy Bolton to the Bobbsey Twins. Specialized periodicals, such as The Whispered Watchword and Yellowback Library, are devoted exclusively to series fiction. Public domain series books have been turned into extexts. Adult book buyers now eagerly seek series books, both as reading material and as sometimes pricey collectibles.

Collections of scholarly research on series books have been published, especially about Nancy Drew and the mighty Stratemeyer Syndicate; see, for example, The Girl Sleuth: On the Trail of Nancy Drew, Judy Bolton, and Cherry Ames, by Bobbie Ann Mason (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1975, reprinted 1995); Rediscovering Nancy Drew, edited by Carolyn Stewart Dyer and Nancy Tillman Romalov (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995), and Nancy Drew and Company: Culture, Gender, and Girls' Series, edited by Sherrie A. Inness (Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Press, 1997).

All this attests to the continuing interest in, and popularity of, juvenile series fiction.

The representation of girls and young women in series books is especially noteworthy, and various articles here focus on series fiction aimed at young girls, providing an overview and exploring some specific aspects, including stereotyping, careers, and comparisons between series.

Girls' series run the gamut from Elsie Dinsmore to Trixie Belden; the Abbey Girls to the Dana Girls; Dotty Dimple to Beverly Gray. But the most well-known and enduring series heroine, of course, is Nancy Drew, the perpetually eighteen-year-old detective (age sixteen in the initial books) whose exploits have been recorded by the pseudonymous Carolyn Keene for over seventy years, and who continues to hone her unique crime-solving skills in her hometown of River Heights, and beyond (see Nancy Drew: Girl Detective Extraordinaire and The Secret of the Mysterious Makeover: Nancy Gets a Facelift).

One of Nancy's contemporaries--and perhaps her chief rival in the hearts of series aficionados and collectors--is Judy Bolton, who grew from teenager to young married woman during the course of thirty-eight mysteries by Margaret Sutton, all based at least partly on real events.

Three notable series--Cherry Ames, Vicki Barr, and Connie Blair--featured slightly older heroines--career girl sleuths, who sought (and found) romance and adventure and spurned marriage for the present, despite the importunings of eager suitors.

Peripatetic nurse Cherry Ames combined her "feminine" profession with some shrewd sleuthing in twenty-seven books by Helen Wells and Julie Tatham (see The Cherry Ames Page); flight attendant Vicki Barr solved mysteries while traveling the friendly skies in sixteen books by the same two authors (see Vicki Barr Books); and Connie Blair, despite a marked tendency to be knocked unconscious by evildoers, supplemented her advertising agency career with crime-solving exploits in twelve books by Betsy Allen (see Connie Blair: The Quest for a Colorful Career).

Though these series, and many others, prominently featured mysteries, other series books aimed at girls did not. For example, the eleven Betsy-Tacy books, by Maud Hart Lovelace, focused on everyday lives and enduring friendships of young girls in the early years of the twentieth century (see Betsy-Tacy: Remembrance of Things Past). Helen Dore Boylston's seven Sue Barton books, though sharing some characteristics of the Cherry Ames series, follow a young nurse from training, to marriage, to motherhood, with nary a real mystery in sight (see Helen Dore Boylston: Nurse From New Hampshire). The Bobbsey Twins series, by Laura Lee Hope, initially focused on the daily lives of two sets of twins, but later morphed into a mystery series.

What many girls' juvenile series seem to have in common is that they posit the existence of a safe, orderly world, a world where right and wrong are clearly defined, and where right eventually triumphs. The protagonists face dilemmas, but few moral ambiguities. They are secure, fulfilled, and happy--and they never forget to be "feminine," to act like ladies, even when they are being their most adventurous and liberated.

The books are ultimately reassuring--although (or perhaps because?) many of them were penned during the Great Depression and World War II, times of terrible upheaval and uncertainty. This ability to reassure is, in the final analysis, probably the primary reason that these books endure in our hearts and memories.