Authors and Books
for Children

The Secret of the Mysterious Makeover: Nancy Gets a Facelift

She'd been hard at work at this sleuthing business for a long time, and it wasn't easy. She'd been bonked on the noggin countless times, locked in innumerable closets, and--oh, horrors!--forced to deal repeatedly with all manner of snarky lowlifes. As teenage girls donned bobby sox and poodle skirts to rock around the clock, she dressed in once-modish frocks that had become passé. Her white-bread, upper-crust attitudes seemed rather snooty in the post-World War II era of civil rights struggles. And with the burgeoning youth culture of rock and roll and teen angst--exemplified by such iconic figures as Elvis Presley and James Dean--her comfortable milieu of teas and luncheons and WASP-y privilege looked sadly antiquated.

After a nearly thirty-year reign as a teen supersleuth, Nancy Drew of River Heights seemed quaint and stodgy, not cutting-edge. Or so the powers-that-be at the Stratemeyer Syndicate thought. It was time, they decreed, for an extensive makeover.


Beginning in 1959, and over a period of eighteen years, the first thirty-four Nancy Drew books were subjected to some serious revisions, mostly by Harriet S. Adams, the daughter of the Stratemeyer Syndicate's founder. One major element of the revision process was the attempt to remove racial and ethnic stereotyping that was endemic. The stories were prettied up and repackaged (eight, in fact, were completely overhauled and rewritten), and nipped-and-tucked into a rigid twenty-chapter, 180-page framework that had become the norm for the series.

A comparison of the original and revised versions of the first volume of the Nancy Drew series, The Secret of the Old Clock, illustrates the kinds of changes that were made.

The story, in brief, is this: Nancy believes that recently deceased Josiah Crowley wrote a second will that would disinherit the obnoxious, social-climbing Topham family and distribute his wealth to several other more deserving relatives and friends, and sets out to find that new will. She believes an old clock holds the secret--and interrupts thieves who are stealing the clock and other furnishings. Though they imprison her, she eventually manages to follow them, retrieve the clock, and uncover Josiah's new will, to the delight of his rightful heirs.

The revision hews closely to the original in all major respects, but some elements were added and others were tweaked to refashion and update Nancy Drew--and to increase the Stratemeyer Syndicate's bottom line.

Among the changes:

• Action was added.
• Nancy became more law-abiding and respectful of authority.
• Nancy became kinder and less bossy.
• References to guns and alcohol were eliminated.
• Racial and ethnic stereotypes were removed.
• Coincidences were added.
• Class lines and distinctions were blurred.
• Details of food and drink and clothing became more specific.
• Names were sometimes altered and modernized.
• Changes that had occurred in the series over time were included.
• The reading level of the stories was "dumbed down."