06/10/2007

Growing up with Nancy Drew

Teen sleuth influences generations of women

By
Record-Eagle staff writer

Record-Eagle/Marta Hepler Drahos
Beth Turner of Maple City takes a break during a garage sale where she parted with her childhood collection of Nancy Drew mysteries.

When Nancy Drew makes her 21st-century movie debut Friday, tween girls won't be the only ones in theaters.

Their mothers and grandmothers — many of whom grew up on the teenage sleuth — will be sitting beside them.

"I loved Nancy Drew because she was adventurous,” said Christine Hauke, who read the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories as a child and now checks them out to other readers as children's librarian at Charlevoix Public Library. "They were mild, easy, and they were good mysteries.”

Created in 1930 by Stratemeyer Syndicate founder Edward Stratemeyer, Nancy Drew has been in print continuously, selling more than 200 million copies worldwide. The original mystery series contains 175 titles, many of which were updated over the years to appeal to contemporary readers. Now the Nancy Drew empire also includes several spin-off series like Nancy Drew on Campus, Nancy Drew Files, Hardy Boys Nancy Drew SuperMysteries and Nancy Drew: Girl Detective — currently the most popular books with middle school-age girls, Hauke said.

"Some of the old ones, if they're not being circulated, they'll slowly, slowly pass away,” she said. "But they're still popular, which kills me. Because we all grew up with Nancy Drew.”

JoAnne Beare read both the Nancy Drew series and its counterpart, the Hardy Boys, also created by Stratemeyer. But Nancy Drew was the one she preferred "because she was a girl,” said Beare.

Now 61, the Empire woman remembers borrowing the books from an elementary school friend in Marbellus, N.Y., who received a whole set as a gift from her parents.

"I was in awe,” Beare said. "It was like a set of encyclopedias. When I finished one, I could get another.”

Besides the adventures at the heart of the stories, she said she was drawn to Nancy Drew's character.

One of what is known as the yellow-spine series of the Nancy Drew mysteries, as found in an antique shop.

"What I remember was she was independent and that made me feel good,” she said. "It's funny when you look back on it, because there weren't many things for girls.”

Beth Turner read the books as a girl growing up in Flint and can still recall her excitement when she received one as a gift or borrowed one from an older cousin.

"As soon as I got one, I could hardly wait to read it,” she said. "I would get totally into them and shut everything out.”

Since marrying, Turner, 62, has hauled the books on 23 moves all over the country, partly out of sentimentality and partly in hopes of passing them on to her daughter, Dawn. Recently she sold them at a garage sale, where the collection was one of the first things snapped up.

"One woman bought them all,” she said.

While the yellow-spine picture covers are perhaps most familiar to Baby Boomers, the first 38 books came in blue hardcover with dust jackets, said Nancy Drew authority Jenn Fisher. Experts consider books one to 56 as the "classic” series, she said.

Over the years the books have inspired movies and TV series, which in turn have spawned collectibles like lobby cards, games, puzzle books and greeting card kits. In keeping with a new generation, the upcoming Warner Bros Pictures movie will tie in with video and computer games, said Laurie Bella of HighWater Group PR, which represents Her Interactive and Majesco Entertainment.

Fisher credits Nancy Drew's longevity and broad appeal to the character's bold personality and unusual freedom as an only child living with her father after her mother's mysterious illness and death.

"She was very independent yet she had respect for her elders,” said Fisher, who consulted on the film starring Julia Roberts niece Emma Roberts as the teenage sleuth and Max Thieriot as her boyfriend Ned Nickerson. "She got to do things no other 18-year-old could even imagine doing.”

Revising or changing some of the earlier titles completely to eliminate outdated references such as "roadsters,” "running boards” and "rumble seats” also helped to make Nancy and her friends more identifiable with contemporary readers, she said. Volume 1, "The Secret of the Old Clock,” has over 116 printings to date.

"At times they modernized her over the years. They changed the way she looked on the covers and updated the language,” she said. "I think modernizing her a little bit helped as she went along.”

Fisher, 33, began reading the books when she was 7 and said favorites included "The Hidden Staircase” and "The Secret in the Old Attic,” with their focus on spooky old houses and passageways. But it wasn't until law school, when she spotted a vintage book from the 1930s at an antique show, that she was inspired to learn more about the series.

Now the Arizona resident writes, researches, consults and speaks about Nancy Drew around the country. She also operates a Web site, nancydrewsleuth.com, and is currently at work on a book about the history of Nancy Drew, "Nancy Drew Sleuth: 75 Years of Mystery Revealed.” The book aims to clear up many of the common myths about the series and its origins, including the identity of author Carolyn Keene.

Fisher said the books were the work of several ghostwriters, who signed away all rights to properties and used the pseudonym Carolyn Keene to assure anonymity. Among the writers was Stratemeyer's daughter, Harriet. Stratemeyer, who died before he could realize the enormous success of the series, created the first outlines himself.

Turner said the earlier books were both innocent and thrilling, an irresistible combination for kids of her generation, who didn't have computers or watch much TV.

"They were clean living, yet there was excitement,” she said. "As a girl, you could go into fantasy as a sleuth.”

Beare said the spirited girl detective helped influence her love of adult adventure and mystery books by contemporary authors like Janet Evanovich and Patricia Cornwell.

"I read for total pleasure,” she said. "I work 10 hours a day, so if I can put my feet up with a book for half an hour at night, I feel very blessed.”