A Nancy Drew Mini-Challenge

I began my grand Nancy Drew reread with a visit to the bookstore and, I confess, I felt my heart beat a little faster at first sight of the row of familiar yellow hardbacks on a shelf in the children's section. However, on closer examination, they were not quite so familiar. Yes, they bore the same cover illustrations that I remembered from my childhood copies on yellow boards. But the contemporary editions are a more garish shade of yellow and the surface is glossy rather than matte. More of a concern though was a copyright date of 1987 inside. Might the changes be more than cosmetic? I suddenly recalled having read about an update of Nancy Drew in the 1980s, and I wondered if I would encounter an altogether different Nancy between these glossy, neon covers than the one I remembered. I decided I ought to do little research before making any purchases. After all, if the point was to revisit my childhood reading, nothing but the original text would do.

I soon learned that a 1980s update had indeed occurred, but that it had not involved any change to existing volumes. The 1980s Nancy who traded in her blue roadster for a Mustang convertible and embraced designer jeans and shopping malls was destined for a new series (The Nancy Drew Files) that launched in 1986, not for retroactive appearances in the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories of my youth. So the contemporary editions of the latter would serve my purposes.

But that was not the end of the matter. For along the way I discovered that the Nancy Drew books that I first encountered in the 1970s were not the originals that I fondly believed them to be, but rather a 1960s update of the original volumes from the 1930s and 40s. The impetus for that update was complaints from parents about racial stereotypes, but the revision process went well beyond attempts to eliminate those stereotypes. Beginning in 1959, a substantial overhaul of the first 34 volumes in the series occurred that involved paring down the books by as much as five chapters, to eliminate period details that would date them, and to heighten suspense. Some have argued that these revisions not only denuded the books of much of their atmosphere and hence their charm, but also changed the character of Nancy, and not for the better. The new Nancy, some opined, was less independent, more modest and ladylike, and more respectful of authority.

Now, for my part, as a child reader I found my 1970s Nancy to be an independent, adventurous, and courageous heroine. And, as noted, the point of my current reread is to revisit that Nancy to find out what I make of her from an adult vantage point. But, in light of the above, distraction though it may be, how can I resist investigating the original Nancy? 1930s and 40s editions are not so difficult to come by in thrift shops and second hand bookstores (the illustrations above are scans of the cover and endpapers of one of my recent finds). And Applewood Books has reissued facsimile editions of many of them. So, armed with some of these, I'm poised to engage in a compare and contrast exercise.

This brings me to my mini-challenge. I encourage anyone who's interested in doing so to join me in comparing and contrasting at least two versions of Nancy Drew. That could mean reading two different versions of the same book, for example, the 1930 and the 1959 versions of The Secret of the Old Clock. Or it could mean reading installments from the Nancy Drew series of different eras: the original or the revised Nancy from the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, the 1980s Nancy from the Nancy Drew Files, the grade school Nancy from the Nancy Drew Notebooks, the college Nancy from Nancy Drew on Campus, the up-to-the minute Nancy from the Girl Detective series who apparently drives a hybrid car and wields a cell phone, or, most recently, the manga-style Nancy of the Papercutz Nancy Drew Graphic Novels. There's no deadline for this mini-challenge. All it requires is selecting and reading at least two different versions of Nancy Drew, and posting your thoughts on how they compare. Who's in?

For those interested in reading more about the ever evolving Nancy Drew, I recommend:

Melanie Rehak, Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her;

Carolyn Stewart Dyer & Nancy Tillman Romalov (eds.), Rediscovering Nancy Drew; and,

Michael G. Cornelius & Melanie E. Gregg (eds.), Nancy Drew and Her Sister Sleuths: Essays on the Fiction of Girl Detectives.

Random Thoughts on Paula Danziger's Can You Sue Your Parents For Malpractice?

Can You Sue Your Parents for Malpractice? held up to rereading much better than the other Danziger books I've revisited of late. It deals with many of the same themes as The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, but more subtly and more effectively. The characters (teachers, parents, cool kids, and rebels) are more complex and believable and, perhaps as a consequence, the family and school dynamics rang truer to me.

I also note that this is one of the few children's/YA books I've come across that portrays lawyers in a positive light. Perhaps it was one of the heretofore elusive sources of my own legal ambitions?

Finally, I must share the following passage because, holy dream date for the bookish girl:

     "Remember when you said you already knew about me?"
     He nods.
     "Well how did you? Was it my charm, wit, and stunning appearance?" I pretend to model.
     He grins. "No, actually it was books."
     "Books?"
     "Yeah, books. I moved here during a vacation and didn't know people. So I spent most of my time reading books from the library. Almost every book I picked out had your name in it. Same with the school library. I figured we probably had the same interests. So I checked up on you a little. If I hadn't run into you and Bonnie that day, I would have met you some other way.
     Books. I can't believe it. Books.

Sadly, that scene will be nearly incomprehensible to contemporary readers who didn't experience a time when one signed books out from the library by writing one's name on the card in the pocket affixed to the inside front cover of the book. (And can I just say that I miss the history lost to us with the shift to a computerized system, although at the same time I can recall the embarrassment that that public paper trail could cause on occasion.)

So, a happy rereading experience all in all, not just for the book itself, but because it rehabilitates Danziger for me somewhat after my disappointment on my recent reread of The Cat Ate My Gymsuit.

Rereading Anne's House of Dreams & Reconciling with the Adult Anne

I count myself among the L.M. Montgomery fans who feel a great sense of kinship with Anne Shirley but little or no affinity for Anne Blythe. Yet Anne's House of Dreams, which marks the transition from one to the other, has long been one of my favourite books in the series. It was the first one that I owned a copy of, a chunky Canadian Favourites paperback edition that I received for Christmas at age eleven, and its battered state is a testament to the number of times I've read it in the intervening years. Thus I've always fancied it wasn't until the next book, Anne of Ingleside, that Anne and I parted ways. On my latest reread though, it became clear to me that while there are a multitude of reasons that I love Anne's House of Dreams, it was within its pages that my estrangement from Anne occurred. But perhaps along with that realization comes the perspective necessary for reconciliation.

I'll begin with the positive. What is it that makes Anne's House of Dreams one of my favourites?

The Sea: I've often wondered why Anne, who seems to thrill to every other aspect of the natural world, scarcely seems to notice the sea in Avonlea despite living within spitting distance of it. No matter, that lack is more than made up for by its pervasive presence in this book, once Anne and Gilbert arrive in Four Winds. Indeed, in a passage that I had forgotten, Anne muses on this shift:

There was a certain tang of romance and adventure in the atmosphere of their new home which Anne had never found in Avonlea. There, although she had lived within sight of the sea, it had not entered intimately into her life. In Four Winds it surrounded her and called to her constantly. From every window of her new home she saw some varying aspect of it. Its haunting murmur was ever in her ears. Vessels sailed up the harbour every day to the wharf at the Glen, or sailed out again through the sunset, bound for ports that might be half way round the globe. Fishing boats went white-winged down the channel in the mornings, and returned laden in the evenings. Sailors and fisher-folk traveled the red, winding harbour roads, light-hearted and content. There was always a sense of things going to happen⎯of adventures and farings-forth. The ways of Four Winds were less staid and settled and grooved than those of Avonlea; winds of change blew over them; the sea called ever to the dwellers on shore, and even those who might not answer its call felt the thrill and unrest and mystery and possibilities of it.

I'm the sort of impatient reader who usually skips past descriptions of nature, but I linger over and delight in every mention of the sea in this book⎯yes, "the thrill and unrest and mystery and possibilities of it." I'm quite sure that it was thanks to Anne's House of Dreams that I first fell in love with the landscape of Prince Edward Island.

Leslie Moore: I'm ducking as I write this, but I've always found Diana Barry to be an awfully bland character. She's a loyal and good-hearted person, and she certainly provides a rapt audience for Anne's imaginings and escapades. But Anne and Diana have never struck me as having much in common and I've never understood the source of their enduring connection. Whereas, I have no trouble understanding why Anne is drawn to the vivid and complicated Leslie Moore. At one point it's noted: "There was a certain tang and savour to the conversation when Leslie was present that they missed when she was absent." Exactly. She gives that tang and savour to the whole book.

Miss Cornelia: Another of my favourite characters in the series, Miss Cornelia Bryant, is introduced in this book. Like Mrs. Lynde in the earlier books, she's a reliable provider of comic relief (and given the tragedy that threads through the plot, that comic relief has perhaps never been more necessary). But she's no pale imitation of Mrs. Lynde; she's her own woman⎯a true original and an altogether delightful character.

The Plot: Many of Montgomery's books tend toward the episodic but not this one. It's one of her most tightly plotted and suspenseful novels. Admittedly aspects of the plot are melodramatic and there are moments when it's difficult, especially as an adult reader, to maintain one's suspension of disbelief. Nevertheless, I relish the shift and the demonstration of Montgomery's writerly range that it represents.

With so much to recommend it, what is it in this book that caused the rift between the once beloved Anne and me?

Exhibit A: Anne in reply to Paul Irving's mention of seeing some of her work in magazines:

"No. I know what I can do. I can write pretty fanciful little sketches that children love and editors send welcome cheques for. But I can do nothing big. My only chance for earthly immortality is a corner in your Memoirs."

Exhibit B: Anne in response to Gilbert's suggestion that she try her hand at writing up Captain Jim's life-book:

"No. I only wish I could. But it's not in the power of my gift. You know what my forte is, Gilbert⎯the fanciful, the fairylike, the pretty. To write Captain Jim's life-book as it should be written one should be a master of vigorous yet subtle style, a keen psychologist, a born humourist and a born tragedian. A rare combination of gifts is needed. Paul might do it if he were older."

Exhibit C: Anne in response to Owen Ford's mention that he'd been told she's a fellow writer:

"Oh, I do little things for children. I haven't done much since I was married. And I have no designs on the great Canadian novel," laughed Anne. "That is quite beyond me."

Not just a belittling of her own talents, but an assumption on each occasion that a male writer is better suited than she is to the task of writing something substantial and important. Anne was my first writing role model, and this has always felt like betrayal times three. But is it really?

The foregoing statements would be a betrayal of Anne's writing ambitions only if she has writing ambitions. Perhaps she doesn't. Perhaps Anne isn't a writer at all. I found this idea startling when Katrine Poe posited it in an essay on Anne in Nancy Drew and Company: Culture, Gender, and Girls' Series (edited by Sherrie A. Inness). But the more I thought about it, the more I agreed with her. Anne writes stories in Anne of Green Gables as part of the story club that she starts with Diana, Jane, and Ruby. She attempts to write a magazine-worthy story in Anne of Avonlea but, diligently though she works at it, the endeavour doesn't seem to move her much beyond the melodramatic plots and purple prose of her story club efforts. And thereafter, she confines herself to occasional sketches such as the dialogue between flowers that she composes while awaiting rescue from the Copp girls' hen house on the Tory Road. Each instance seems to represent a momentary enthusiasm, not a driving passion to write. Think of the grit and determination with which Anne pursues and achieves the things she really wants: an education, a home, a family. If she had a passion to write, she would write. Her imaginative life is of continuing importance to her, but putting any of it down on paper seems more or less incidental.

If this is true, then the source of the sense of betrayal that this book generates in me is not identification with Anne, but misidentification with Anne. In which case, I ought to be able to let it go, or rather, to let Anne let it go without taking it personally. (And, after all, it's not as if losing Anne as a writing role model in my youth left me bereft. I still had Jo March, and Emily Byrd Starr, and Betsy Ray to sustain me.) So I leave this rereading of Anne's House of Dreams prepared to let Anne be herself, rather than who I wanted her to be when I was a twelve-year-old aspiring writer. Can I maintain this live-and-let-live attitude through Anne of Ingleside, hands down the Anne book I like least, and the rest of the series, and on into the newly published The Blythes Are Quoted? We'll see…

Aritha van Herk on L.M. Montgomery's The Blythes Are Quoted

Aritha van Herk on what's new about the new L.M. Montgomery book:

The Blythes are Quoted collects 27 short stories about different characters from communities that we recognize as part of Montgomery's map of Prince Edward Island. They are interspersed with poems "authored" by Anne Blythe and her son, Walter Blythe, and accompanied by vignette-like commentaries on those poems from members of Anne's family. These dialogues reflect the Blythe family's memories and cognizance, thus recording an intimate conversation that resonates beyond their circle. More important, they shape this book into an allegory channelled by the medium of sorrow.

[...]

It is Walter's poetic voice, alongside Anne's, that frames this collection, making it less a sunny-side-up Anne redux than a multifaceted ghost story, and a subtle condemnation of the destructiveness of war.

To read the rest of van Herk's excellent review, click here.

"Librarians love good readers..."

From Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsburg (a marvelous book which I somehow missed in childhood despite having loved others by Konigsburg):

So it happened that we got to meeting in the library every Saturday morning "at 10:00 a.m. o'clock of the morning," as Jennifer said. We'd check out our books. I usually took out one book besides renewing The Black Book of Witchcraft. Jennifer always took out seven books. I could tell that the librarian liked Jennifer even though Jennifer never said "hello" or "good-bye" or "please" or "thank you." Librarians love good readers, and Jennifer was that. In fact, Jennifer wasn't just a good reader, Jennifer was a serious reader.

Here's hoping that the librarians at my local branch feel the same way about me despite my penchant for requesting all manner of books from far flung branches and hogging a large section of the hold shelf on a regular basis...

Shelf Discovery Challenge

    

I've been successfully resisting participation in reading challenges all year, feeling that I needed a bit of respite after getting carried away with them in previous years and thereby transforming my pleasure reading into a source of stress. But Booking Mama's Shelf Discovery Challenge dovetails so nicely with my current project of revisiting the books that mattered most to me in childhood that there's no way I'm going to pass this one up! The challenge simply involves choosing six of the books featured in Lizzie Skurnick's Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading, and reading and posting about them between November 1, 2009 and April 30, 2010. Here are my choices:

Judy Blume, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret;
Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy;
E.L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler;
Beverly Cleary, Fifteen;
Bette Greene, Summer of My German Solider; and,
Elizabeth George Speare, The Witch of Blackbird Pond.

I'm looking forward to revisiting each of these books, and to comparing notes on the experience with other participants in the challenge.

Book Sale Finds

I didn't get carried away at today's book sale, but I did come away with some good finds, each just a dollar or two apiece:

C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism;
Alain Robbe-Grillet, For a New Novel: essays on fiction;
Jeffrey Meyers (ed.), The Craft of Literary Biography;
Eve Garnett, Further Adventures of the Family from One End Street;
E.L. Konigsburg, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler; and,
Carolyn Keene, The Clue in the Diary.

An odd mix of weighty litcrit tomes and kidlit classics that nicely reflects my current preoccupations.

Why I Still Love Encyclopedia Brown

I've just reread the first of Donald J. Sobol's Encylopedia Brown books, Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective, and it is readily apparent to me why I loved these books as a kid, and why kids today continue to embrace them. Here are some of the reasons:

1. Ten-year-old Encyclopedia Brown is an irresistible character. Sobol introduces him thus: "Leroy Brown's head was like an encyclopedia. It was filled with facts he had learned from books. He was like a complete library walking around in sneakers." People are always asking him questions. For example, old ladies stop him in the street to ask his assistance with crossword clues. He always knows the answer, but he pauses a moment before offering it up because he's afraid people won't like him if he comes off as too smart. When Encyclopedia uses logic to help his Police Chief father to solve a case for the first time, his mother suggests that he could be a detective when he grows up. But Encyclopedia figures there's no time like the present and he puts out his shingle immediately. He sets up the Brown Detective Agency in his family’s garage, offering his services for 25 cents a day "plus expenses." Just like that, he transforms what could be a social liability⎯his intelligence and his bookishness⎯into a source of power, not just for himself, but also in service of other kids who are the targets of local bullies Bugs Meaney and his gang.

2. I don't like Bugs Meaney⎯he's a nasty piece of work⎯but I do like his name, and I like that Encyclopedia has an archenemy with whom he does battle.

3. When you make a habit of besting the biggest bully in town, you need protection, so Encyclopedia acquires as a bodyguard the strongest person in Idaville below the age of twelve. That person? Sally Kimball. But brawny though she is, she's no bully. She too uses her powers for good, protecting younger, smaller kids from Bugs Meaney, and also, together with a team of fifth-grade girls, devastating Bugs and his gang in a girls-against-the-boys game of softball. And besides her physical toughness and athletic prowess, Sally is also pretty and smart (almost, but not quite smart enough to stump Encyclopedia with a logical puzzle of her own devising). So she becomes not just Encyclopedia's bodyguard, but also his partner in the detective agency. That's a lot of stereotypes about girls and their capabilities sent tumbling via the character of Sally Kimball, particularly in 1963 when the book was first published.

4. But the greatest pleasure of the book is, just as I recalled in my previous post, the opportunity to follow the clues and solve the cases (10 contained in each book) alongside Encyclopedia. When his mother asks him, after his first success, how he went about it, he explains: "I got it from a book I read about a great detective and his methods of observation." This is a nod to Sherlock Holmes, I think. In any event, a combination of close observation and deductive reasoning is certainly the secret of Encyclopedia's success, and the key to the same for the reader who aspires to solve the cases him or herself before flipping to the back of the book where the solutions are revealed. Some of you know that I'm a lawyer and a law professor. Much is made of the mystical process by which students learn in first year law school how to "think like a lawyer." On reflection it occurs to me, with apologies to my first year law professors, that I may in fact have received my earliest lessons in how to think like a lawyer from Encyclopedia Brown. At the time I couldn't have connected Encyclopedia's brand of logic with the work that lawyers do (I think I may have to credit Nancy Drew with making that connection explicit for me⎯another current reread). But in all likelihood it would have been in the solving of those puzzles that I first developed the taste and talent for logical reasoning that ultimately led me to pursue a legal career.

I'll stop there, but stay tuned for a follow up post on Nancy Drew, and possibly a forthcoming law review article: "Learning to Think Like a Lawyer from Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew". . .

Childhood Reading: Mysteries

A number of recent experiences/events have conspired to propel me into a new writing project: a series of essays on my childhood reading. The last thing I need is a new writing project, what with so many others (at last count, two novels-in-progress and two substantially researched and partially written legal monographs) already underway. But this excavation of my childhood reading is enormous fun and, as I have as yet attached no particular expectations to it, rather liberating. So I'm running with it.

My current preoccupation is with the mysteries I read as a child. I think that my first mysteries were Donald J. Sobol's Encyclopedia Brown books. My recollection of these is rather hazy. I know that I read many of them but I doubt that I reread them the way I did other favourite series. In retrospect, I realize that Sobol must have been having fun playing off the conventions of adult P.I. novels, with Encyclopedia Brown, "boy detective," setting up a detective agency in his family's garage. If I recall correctly, each book contained a number of mini-mysteries for readers to solve, so the chief pleasure of them was not a sustained narrative, but the puzzle-solving exercise⎯an aspect of adult mysteries that still appeals to me.

I think that from there it was on to Nancy Drew. Again, my recollection of these is hazy, although I know I read many of them and, indeed, even owned several. Enid Blyton's Famous Five novels followed shortly thereafter. I remember my brother and I purchasing stacks of these and sharing them back and forth on our summer trips to Scotland to visit my grandparents.

Of course, there was also Lousie Fitzhugh's Harriet the Spy, one of my childhood favourites. But I'm inclined to think of Harriet more as an aspiring writer than an aspiring sleuth, the whole spy thing notwithstanding. Still, I'm going to reread it together with some Encyclopedia Browns, and Nancy Drews, and Famous Fives, to see if it fits somehow. For that's what I'm doing now in service of my essay on this topic⎯rereading several of each. You can see why I'm having such fun with this! There are eight Encyclopedia Brown books, and two Nancy Drews already making their way to me via my public library's hold system. And I have several of those battered paperback Famous Five novels still on my shelves, handy for revisiting.

When did I make the leap to adult mysteries, and where did I begin with those? I'm going to have to think a bit longer to pinpoint the when, but I'm quite sure it was straight from the foregoing children's mysteries to Agatha Christie. I remember that a friend from camp loaned me some Ellery Queen books at one point, but I don't think they hooked me the way that the Christies did.

Did you read mysteries in childhood? Which ones and why those? If you moved on from there to adult mysteries, which ones did you sample first?

Betsy-Tacy Giveaway Results!

My apologies for being so slow to draw names for this giveaway. I was waiting for the copies of the books that I'd ordered to arrive so that I would be able to mail them off immediately to the lucky winners. As you can see from the above photo, they have indeed arrived. They make an impressive looking stack, do they not?

I'm pleased that so many people are interested in reading these books, and I wish that I had a copy to give to everyone who entered. Alas, I had to narrow it down to four. I did so using an online fruit machine thingy to randomly pick names from the list of entrants. And without further ado, the four winners are:

Suko
A Bookshelf Monstrosity
Chicklit
Dorothy W.

Please email your mailing address to me at katesbookblog@yahoo.ca and I will pop your book in the mail pronto. Enjoy!