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The Nancy Drew books of my childhood were lovely, yellow-spined hardbacks with gorgeous full color covers and alluring titles like Password to Larkspur Lane and The Mystery of the Moss-Covered Mansion. To my child's eyes, these were sophisticated books, because they replaced the kiddy paperbacks and the tall thin children's books I'd read before I "grew up" and embraced Nancy Drew.For a while, she was an addiction. I asked for those books for every Christmas and birthday until, between my sister and myself, we'd accumulated quite a collection. And then, suddenly, we were done with them. We were reading older stuff--Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt, and Nancy seemed immature now. We donated the entire collection to our tiny town library.
Nowadays, Nancy Drew is an advertising brand. Put her name on a product, and it will sell, because Nancy's mystique has been passed down through generations of women--little girls who grew up and encouraged their own little girls to read Nancy. So there are Nancy Drew journals and stationery and pajamas. And, inevitably, there are Nancy Drew video games.
Check out Her Interactive, where you can preview some of the games and play some of them for free, allowing you to solve along with Nancy in a way we never could when I was a child.
My concern, though, is that these games do the imagining for the child who plays them. And this Nancy doesn't have titian hair, but a dark bob that makes her look more like George than like the Nancy of my imagination (and Keene's descriptions).
Sure, even in the old days "Carolyn Keene" was a fiction, and Nancy Drew was a successful conglomerate. Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys were always about sales, but little girls and boys made them about more than that. They became a part of our memories, our nostalgia, and therefore, a part of our imaginations.
It's not horrible that Nancy has morphed into new forms--it's just not Nancy--not as we knew her once.
Is that bad or good? Are these games entertaining or not? They are visually pretty, and probably please the little girls of today the way that the old covers pleased me.
But I wonder . . . is change always necessary? Must Nancy become a video to stay alive?
The books that enchanted the children of this generation, especially the Harry Potter saga, were all immediately made into video games. I know, because I was instructed to buy them for my boys even AFTER I read those seven books--ALL SEVEN--out loud to them.
The boys tell me that the books and the videos are utterly different things; that one experience doesn't really inform the other. So what of the children who don't read the books at all, and go straight to the videos? Are they missing out on the magic of Nancy? Or is the magic of Nancy that she can please children in various forms?
12 comments:
I started reading the adult mysteries at age 10 (stuff from the '40s mostly), and didn't read a Nancy Drew until age 12. But they were too short, if fun.
I helped at the elementary school library when my kids were young. That's when Nancy and the Hardy boys were an altenating tv show. I was amused to hear one little boy ask another 'who wrote the Hardy Boys?' and got the answer: 'I think the author was Nancy Drew'.
I remember hearing the ad for the tv show and being very excited, but of course the casting disappointed me--Nancy looked nothing like the Nancy of my imagination, nor did they make an effort to "capture" Bess, George or Ned according the the author's descriptions.
It's funny that you've remembered that little passing dialogue--probably because it's so charming.
I had a full set of the blue-bound (earlier) version, lovingly collected with my tiny allowance--until my mother gave them away when I was 13. Otherwise I'd probably still have them.
Looking back, it's rather astounding that we had such a role model in Nancy--she was independent, smart, loyal. She had a boyfriend, but he was not her main focus. (I'm still puzzling over what message "George" sent, but at the time it didn't matter.)
Don Bruns gave a very interesting talk at Bouchercon last year about the history of the Stratemeyer empire of books for young people. He was a brilliant promoter--and who knows how many young minds he shaped?
Nancy certainly made an impact. So what would Stratemeyer think of the new incarnations of Nancy? Does the changing of her character matter?
I confess that I have never read a Nancy Drew mystery. (Don't pelt me with rotten tomatoes!) I didn't read Agatha Christie until I was in my thirties. The remarkable thing to me is that so many sleuths from the past are still around -- Poirot, Miss Marple, Nancy Drew, Holmes, etc. Will any of today's protagonists still be remembered 100 years from now?
I never cared for Nancy Drew, but I devoured the Hardy Boys series (the non-PC versions) when I was a kid. I had read the first in the ND series and my Y-chromosome asked my brain, "What's so great about this?" My brain couldn't come up with an answer.
When my youngest daughter was about the right age, I gsve her a Nancy Drew to try out. Times had changed for little girls by then; Christina called the book terrible and declare that Nancy Drew was "A turniped-brain fathead".
I would be glad to read some of the more recent (i.e., paperback originals) of the Nancy Drew series that have been ghosted by writers I like (Chassie West, etc.), and will some day get around to the one Walter Karig ghosted for the original series (just because I enjoyed his novel Zotz!).
All that aside, Nancy influenced many, many writers and today's mystery scene would not be the same had she not tootled around from crime to crime in her roadster. Mildred Wirt Benson eventually received a special Edgar for her contribution to the series. She should have been named a Grandmaster.
I never cared for Nancy Drew, but I devoured the Hardy Boys series (the non-PC versions) when I was a kid. I had read the first in the ND series and my Y-chromosome asked my brain, "What's so great about this?" My brain couldn't come up with an answer.
When my youngest daughter was about the right age, I gsve her a Nancy Drew to try out. Times had changed for little girls by then; Christina called the book terrible and declare that Nancy Drew was "A turniped-brain fathead".
I would be glad to read some of the more recent (i.e., paperback originals) of the Nancy Drew series that have been ghosted by writers I like (Chassie West, etc.), and will some day get around to the one Walter Karig ghosted for the original series (just because I enjoyed his novel Zotz!).
All that aside, Nancy influenced many, many writers and today's mystery scene would not be the same had she not tootled around from crime to crime in her roadster. Mildred Wirt Benson eventually received a special Edgar for her contribution to the series. She should have been named a Grandmaster.
Sorry. Anonymous was me. Stupid computer sent the post out before I had signed it. Stupid, stupid computer.
Loved Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, the books and the TV shows. My brother and I both read every one we could get our hands on and I still have my Nancy books (I'm not sure if he has his Hardy Boys).
I also have the board game; mom found it at a yard sale or thrift store when we were kids, and surprisingly all the pieces were there (and, yes, they still are!)
Sandra, so interesting that you didn't discover some of the classic writers until adulthood. Christie is another writer I pounced on early in life--checked out everything they had in my local library.
Jerry--great comment and worth making twice. :)
signlady, I didn't know about a board game! What were the rules? How did one play?
I loved Nancy Drew books. When I was 12, I had a friend who owned them (I didn't) and I would go to her house and sit in her room and read them when she wasn't home.
It is very nice that you donated your collection to your town library. Many readers benefited from that.
When I was a teenager, I began reading Perry Mason, Sherlock Holmes, Nero Wolfe and Hercule Poirot mysteries.
We watched Perry Mason on tv and I got into the books. My father liked legal mysteries so I did, too.
The computer age changes so many of the classics into something different. I worry about youth who don't read books but just look at computers. That is such a loss.
To look back nostalgically at books we read and loved; that enriched our lives so much.
But the added element that Nancy Drew was a young woman who was so smart, independent and capable, was a bit more than just a mystery plot. It was different than reading about male detectives.
It showed that women and girls can do this, too.
So I look back and smile and sigh about Nancy Drew. The later adult books were good mysteries, but I don't smile and sign about them.
I know exactly what you mean, Kathy. There's nostalgia there, but it has many complex layers. I think the first twinges of feminism in me happened when I read about heroines like Nancy.
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