This week’s Fashion & Style section of the New York Times included a well-titled tribute to the Nancy Drew mystery book series, “Nancy Drew’s Granddaughters,” and included several choice quotes from many famous and ambitious female political and social figures who read the series as a child. Unfortunately, as sometimes happens with the Times, the short article had the feel of an overedited, in-just-before-the-deadline one-off, and not of the quality tribute that the indomitable Carolyn Keene deserves.
Before I continue, I do want to mention that in the second grade I was heartbroken to find out from our elementary school librarian, Mrs. Lawless, that my heroine Ms. Keene did not, in fact, exist. The Nancy Drew mystery series, which according to the Times piece debuted in the 1930s, was written not by one single author, but by a long series of authors and editors who wrote under the name of Carolyn Keene, a pseudonym. I had inquired with Mrs. Lawless after heading determinedly into the library with pencil and paper in hand, intent on telling the authoress how much I liked her books and how much they meant to me, and that I was waiting for her to publish the next one.
I was young enough at the time that copyright and publication dates meant less than nothing to me, and that pencil and paper would be the instruments assisting in the writing of my communique. Suffice it to say, I was more than a little bit devastated that there in fact was no Carolyn Keene to read and receive my letter. For if Carolyn Keene didn’t exist (and surely, she must!) then to whom could I write?
I was a very, very nerdy child, and I most definitely looked the part. I actually remember the feeling I got while learning to read in Kindergarten, struggling through the “Sam I Am” book series even as I considered them to be more than a little bit unenlightening, although I reluctantly admitted to myself that I was perpetually curious to find out what exactly would happen to Sam on the next page. I remember the daffodil yellow cover of the books, which were really merely pamphlets, and how the little photocopied pages felt in my hands as I triumphed over first one then another page, working my way through the books until I successfully met the release that was the back cover.
In first grade I have a clear memory of sitting in the corner at one of the child-sized low, round tables in Mrs. Whitlock’s classroom, and being embarrassed and annoyed by the lunch-lady (who I ran into at the airport just a few years back, and who still remembered me as the prolific reader in the corner) coming over to praise me for always reading, something I hadn’t necessarily realized I was doing until she pointed it out. The other kids from my class and their day-to-day activities didn’t hold my interest the way the books did, however, a phenomenon that would prove true through at least the first half of high school. I was much more interested in what I was discovering about the world through reading, and in all the great stories that existed to be discovered.
As I grew older I read more and more aggressively, learning to read through the roar of our television, on long car rides, and in class. In particular I read in math class, which I found horribly and unutterably boring, and would hold the book open in my lap behind the little curved plastic desks, pushing it forward almost onto my knees and pressing them up against the desk to pin it there whenever an alert teacher deigned to meander my way during lessons. I was rarely caught or chastised probably, in hindsight, not because I was so crafty with hiding my books (somehow I doubt I got around Mr. Blanchard, my fourth grade teacher, of all people), but because it was so infrequent and likely very amusing to come across a kid who so loved to read that she snuck books between the pages of her math text and sought to craftily hide her reading during other lessons. I attribute both my exceptionally high verbal scores and my exceptionally low math scores to this years-long behavior, and smile now to think of what my teachers must have thought about the little nerd child.
At home I read in the shower, soaking many a library loaner by pressing the book up against the shower wall with one elbow and quasi-shampooing my hair with my other hand, or by leaving the book on the old radiator with white-chipped-paint just outside the shower doors, anchoring the pages down with the shampoo bottle, and leaving the shower door open. When I couldn’t find books to read that were yet to be digested, I read shampoo bottles, ingredient lists, classified ads, music lyrics, and (perhaps best of all) my dad’s copies of the ‘Reader’s Digest.” In later years I read books far beyond my years, age, and knowledge of the world, and as a child I read through lunches and classes right up through Middle School, when someone picked up on how bored I was in school and skipped me a year in English and Social Studies, and when the social scene first began to develop and I realized to my surprise that I was intrigued by the possibility of playing a part.
There are several good stories to be told about the nerd child and her great books, and were I to paint you a picture of me during my childhood, you’d find a slender but tall little girl with long, thick brown hair pulled back into a hairband from a great big forehead, wearing some awful printed mock turtle-neck top from Land’s End with teddy bears or images of presents patterned across the material, and thick aqua-blue plastic glasses two sizes too large for her face. She would be huddled off to the side of a large group of students, the latter of whom were flush in the moment of coming of age, while she herself was engrossed in her canary yellow covered hardcopy book, chin in hand, deep in thought. And between the canary yellow covers in the midst of a great adventure and perhaps more importantly terrific feat of mental reckoning you would find nerdy little me, a plump young girl named Bess, a tomboy named George, and our good friend, Nancy Drew.
Nancy Drew was for me both hero and heroine – she was effeminate (she wore pearls) and also tough, full of sass and not about to take ‘no’ for an answer. She snuck out of the house without fear of the dark or the scary things it could contain, and her friendships were not merely those of young girls learning about the world and themselves, but of alliances, from which she acquired the strengths and abilities she could not find in herself. She was a superhero in a skirt, and even though I occasionally found her perfection and Home Ec-yness (which I might even then have referred to as Home Ickyness) a little too saccharine sweet for my taste, I was always along for the ride, usually tagging along on George’s coattails, as her toughness and resilience were a bit more closely aligned with where I sought to locate myself in the world. The girls of the Nancy Drew series made me feel strong, and capable, and safe, and the works of Carolyn Keene made me feel normal, and smart, and powerful within my own tiny corner of the world at a time when my growing understanding of myself and how big the world can be most needed that reassurance.
The Times article asked many famous women “who their Nancy Drew was,” and I would say that mine was daring and brave, and took risks with her physical well-being only when she knew that her intellectual abilities and powers of reasoning could get her out of any sticky situation she might find herself in. Indeed, the latter helped her wriggle free from many a prickly situation, and I in my real life (when I actually put down the book long enough to observe it in progress) began to similarly use my own creativity and resourcefulness to get myself out of the sticky situations of the day-to-day life of a grade schooler (of which I don’ t really think there were all that many). From the Drew books I developed the ability to see the world more clearly, when I was attentive enough to it to discern the patterns and causality in grown-up life, and would even today attribute much of my observational aptitude to the good role models that Nancy Drew and her sidekicks provided.
I remember too how exhilarating it was to go to the local library and run my fingers cross-wise along the spines of the 40+ Nancy Drew books that they held from the series, overjoyed with the secret coup-de-grace of a whole bookshelf’s worth of material that, it appeared, only I was clever enough to check out and read. And I remember as well how it felt the day I returned the last books to the library (for I used to check out dozens at a time, taking them home in a large plastic shopping bag imprinted with the acronym of the local librarians’ union), and realized that I had out-read the series – I had finished off Nancy Drew, and in fact had read so many of the works multiple times that there was no longer any more previously overlooked nuances to detect.
It was with a heavy heart then that I moved down a shelf, to the aquamarine blue bindings of the Hardy boys series, which I devoured just as quickly, although with a little less exhilaration than that of Nancy Drew (because ugh! They were boys!), and an even heavier heart that shortly thereafter I returned the last of that series as well. I even now recall the awe and pride of standing in front of the entire mystery section of the children’s room of the library, and seeing that I had read every title across a half dozen floor-to-ceiling shelves, and the sadness that accompanied the understanding that I had moved beyond my old friends, and would have to let them go if I wanted to keep reading.
Nancy Drew was my co-conspirator, my inspiration, someone who challenged and befriended me during the angst of the first decade of my life, in a time before laptops and iPhones and constant internet connectivity and the endless barrage of the television. She met me in the quiet places in my house, held my attention, and pushed me to try harder, go farther, and think more creatively at a very formative and vulnerable age. And when I finally left that children’s room book section for the ‘Young Adult’ shelves (whose location was trepidatiously close to the Adult books consumed by my mother, a voracious reader herself), I remember the chagrin and nostalgia of leaving a roomful of well-known and closely loved friends behind, and the indebtedness I felt to Nancy Drew, who I knew would protect all the other books and characters in my absence. Losing the Drew series was a lot like losing an old friend at that relatively tender young age, but she and her co-conspirators opened the door for me to a whole host of other works, and life experiences lived between the pages of great and sometimes not so great works of literature, and for that I will always be tremendously grateful.
-M-
