Wild Things!

by Betsy Bird

  So it was and so it shall always be: for every individual with the urge to create, there will always be another person, eager to point out how they’re doing it wrong.

  Everybody does it to one extent or another, but only a few do it for a living. Although many creators view professional critics with contempt — perhaps silently repeating the mantra “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, criticize” — they are also aware of the overwhelming power of the arts critic, whose opinionated pen may have the ability to close a Broadway show, make a novel a bestseller, or turn an unknown soprano into a household name. Those who review children’s books are similarly empowered. A rave may get a book onto the shelves of every library in the country or bring a book to the attention of an important awards committee. A pan may cause a novel to sell for $1.98 in the remainders bin within a matter of months.

  But sometimes a scathing review has little or no effect at all.

  In many cases, books for young people are immune to criticism simply because their primary audience, children themselves, neither know nor care what the critics think. While adults find it necessary to use children’s books as a tool with which to inform (read: force) kids into appreciating “good” literature, many is the child who sneaks a little trash into his or her literary diet on the sly.

  This trend is far from new. The last half of the nineteenth century was one of the golden ages of children’s literature. The era brought us, among others, A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the works of Hans Christian Andersen, Treasure Island and Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson, Little Women and its companion novels by Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, and Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge. Reviewed by major newspapers and mainstream magazines such as Atlantic Monthly, most of these books became major bestsellers.

  However, during those same decades, there was an entire genre of children’s fiction that racked up huge sales while receiving far less critical attention. These were series books about adventurous boys (Rollo, Peter Parley) and virtuous girls (Little Prudy, Dottie Dimple, Elsie Dinsmore) that were published with great frequency, sold in inexpensive editions, and advertised with shocking commercialism. In Children of the Series and How They Grew, author Faye Riter Kensinger states:

  Practices of publishers and authors to provide “come-ons” or ties in unrelated series were unashamed. Advertisements appeared in sheaves of back pages, sometimes inside cover boards and eventually on backsides of paper wrappers extolling the books already in print and announcing others in preparation. Individual prefaces gave opportunity to present information, sales results, reader correspondence, and reasons for extending series. Final paragraphs of stories prepared the reader for oncoming books.

  For all their popularity, most of these early series remain unknown today — even among children’s book aficionados. Few remember authors Jacob Abbott, Oliver Optic (real name William Taylor Adams), or Harry Castlemon (real name Charles Austin Fosdick). Horatio Alger retains some name recognition, even if his books are no longer widely read, for writing prototypical “rags to riches” stories about poor working boys who, through hard work and the mentorship of adult men, advance up the ladder to middle-class society.

  There are several reasons why the series books of the nineteenth century have been forgotten. For one, they were cheaply produced and did not hold up physically past a few readings. Second, most of these books were superficial, quickly written potboilers, produced for a commercial market that valued quantity over literary quality. The final reason is that most were removed from library shelves as, over time, critics and librarians began to perceive series books as inferior literature not worthy of the attention of children, much less preservation for historical purposes.

  This removal of series fiction from the nation’s public and school libraries began in 1879, when the American Library Association’s summer conference included a discussion on “the threat to young readers posed by the pulps.” According to The Lost Life of Horatio Alger, Jr. by Gary Scharnhorst with Jack Bales:

  S. S. Green, head of the Worcester, Massachusetts, Public Library, advanced the lesser-evil argument in defense of Alger and Adams [Oliver Optic] in particular. Green readily admitted that their stories were banal. “Poor as they are, however,” he argued, “they have a work to do in the world. Many persons need them.” . . . “A boy begins by reading Alger’s books. He goes to school. His mind matures. He outgrows the books that pleased him as a boy.” In any event, Green concluded, the motives of writers such as Alger and Adams were above dispute: “Mr. Alger is a son of a clergyman and himself a graduate of Harvard College and the Divinity School of Cambridge.”

  Mr. Green apparently did not know that the reason Horatio Alger had become a full-time writer was that, some years earlier, he had been forced out of his position as a Unitarian minister under allegations that he’d sexually molested several boys in his congregation — a charge he never denied and one that puts a whole new spin on his many fictional tales of nurturing older men taking a kindly interest in the rearing of young boys.

  THE SYNDICATE

  Children’s series books may have suffered a blow toward the end of the nineteenth century, but they weren’t down for the count. In fact, within a quarter century they were selling better than ever, largely thanks to a man named Edward Stratemeyer. Born in 1862, Stratemeyer grew up reading the works of Oliver Optic and Horatio Alger. An eighth-grade dropout, he began writing so-called dime novels and magazine serials while working as a clerk at his brother’s tobacco shop. After racking up an impressive number of manuscript sales, he was hired to work in the office of series publisher Street and Smith; one of his duties there was to complete manuscripts that his childhood idols, Optic and Alger, had left unfinished at the time of their deaths.

  Stratemeyer’s first big success was the Rover Boys series, which he originated and wrote under the pseudonym Arthur M. Winfield; the New York Times would later explain that Stratemeyer chose this pen name because “Arthur” sounded like “author” and “Winfield” represented the victory he hoped to claim in the field of children’s books. The middle initial stood for the millions of copies he hoped to sell. He proved to be prescient in that regard.

  Between 1899, the year he began the adventures of brothers Dick, Tom, and Sam (and later their sons), and the author’s death in 1930, the series sold more than five million copies. And the Rover Boys was only one series that Stratemeyer invented. Add on the Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, Honey Bunch, the Hardy Boys, the Dana Girls, the Happy Hollisters, and, of course, Nancy Drew, and you have a publishing powerhouse that, despite getting almost no respect from the literary establishment, endures in popular culture to this day. In The Secret of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, author Carol Billman shares an early negative review from St. Nicholas, the best-selling children’s magazine of its time. Never calling out the Rover Boys or its author by name, the “Books and Reading for Young People” department clearly throws its arrows at Stratemeyer/Winfield with this diatribe:

  Reading only highly spiced stories of adventure, heroism, or mystery, and accounts of strange circumstances that could arise perhaps once in a thousand lives, tends to give wrong ideas of life and of the people we meet every day. . . . If you spend a summer by the sea, the chances of your finding Captain Kidd’s treasure are hardly worth considering; and should you dig for it, you would be likely to waste much time that might be devoted to good fun, sensible exercise, or the study of sea-animals or plants.

  While the St. Nicholas reviewer could have rightfully criticized the wordy prose and flat dialogue of the Rover Boys series, only the prissiest child would agree they’d have more fun doing deep knee bends and studying plankton than digging for Captain Kidd’s treasure. If anything, this review pinpoints exactly why these series books were so popular with children: they offered everyd
ay kids outsize adventures and heart-pounding drama that they were unlikely to ever experience in day-to-day life. Stratemeyer also recognized that children, who often feel like objects owned by their parents, enjoyed owning their own books. Carol Billman states:

  Stratemeyer put two plans into action that changed the history of American juvenile literature. In 1906 he went to one of his publishers, Cupples and Leon, and proposed that they sell his hardcover series books for fifty cents. (The prices at that time varied and went as high as $1.25 a copy.) The Motor Boys, written under the name Clarence Young, was the first series to be sold as fifty-centers. The books were an immediate success. . . . Other publishers followed suit, and a new pattern of juvenile bookselling was in effect. The second brainstorm Stratemeyer had at the time — his literary syndicate — was induced by sheer demand. One man could no longer produce annual additions to all the series he had going, not even the indefatigable Stratemeyer. . . . The plan was simple: Stratemeyer would design Syndicate offerings and continue writing some of the books as time permitted under his own name, under two established pseudonyms (Winfield and Captain Ralph Bonehill), and under new pen names. Other volumes would be farmed out to other writers.

  Edward Stratemeyer did not live to see the enduring success of his most famous product line. In 1929 he invented the character of teenage detective Nancy Drew. Some sources say he wrote the first three volumes (The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase, and The Bungalow Mystery) himself, while others claim he created the characters and plots but assigned the writing to a young author named Mildred A. Wirt Benson. Stratemeyer died in 1930, around the same time Nancy Drew was introduced to the public. Novelist Bobbie Ann Mason explained the appeal of the series for many young readers:

  Nancy’s abilities certainly left me limp with longing. I couldn’t even answer roll call in the schoolroom without blushing, so my adulation of Nancy was understandable. I wonder how many little girls — especially shy ones — secretly imagine themselves as circus performers or movie stars. I did, certainly. Nancy acts out those fantasies. She is a bareback ballerina in a circus, a dancer, an actress. When a leading lady is taken ill, Nancy replaces her after rehearsing only once. (Once! I feel as if I have rehearsed my whole life!) Even when she has to fall back on purely feminine arts, she is applauded: her flowers win first prize in the flower show. Nancy is so accomplished that she can lie bound and gagged in a dank basement or snowed-in cabin for as much as twenty-four hours without freezing to death or wetting her pants. And she is knowledgeable about any convenient subject. She always has, at tongue’s tip, virtually any information needed on any case. She once did an overnight cram course in archaeology and passed a college test with a brilliant score. The ease of her achievements is inspiring to every bandy-legged or pimply little girl who follows her adventures.

  Mason pegs the wish fulfillment/I-want-to-be-just-like-her appeal that the series had for many young readers. And the books made perfect escapist entertainment for girls growing up in the uncertainty of the Great Depression. Not only was Nancy well-to-do (she even had her own shiny blue roadster), she was independent (she drove that roadster everywhere!), brave, capable, and supported by people who never let her down, including her nonthreatening boyfriend, Ned, and a couple of pals, plump Bess and boyish George, who existed mainly to make Nancy look good. Critics complained that the Nancy Drew mysteries were formulaic and the writing was utilitarian at best, but it hasn’t been until recent decades that some have acknowledged that Nancy was an icon who influenced the lives and careers of countless girls growing up in the pre-feminist era. Not only was novelist Bobbie Ann Mason a fan, but so was mystery writer Sara Paretsky, and Supreme Court justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Sonia Sotomayor.

  For many years, Edward Stratemeyer’s daughter Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, who inherited the Nancy Drew line after his death, oversaw the series, penning many of the volumes herself and working hard to keep both the content and the look of the books updated for modern young readers. One can understand why Nancy attracted an adoring readership during the decades when a woman’s role was so circumscribed.

  But what are we to make of her enduring popularity? Though public interest in the series has waxed and waned over the years, Nancy Drew has never gone out of print. It continued being published through the women’s liberation movement of the seventies, continued past Harriet Stratemeyer Adams’s death in 1982 (still working for the syndicate, she died at age eighty-nine), and is still available in the twenty-first century, though by this point many real-life and fictional females have surpassed Nancy in accomplishments, independence, and bravery.

  What keeps these books selling? What prompts the occasional new film or TV show based on this character, a major motion picture having been released as recently as 2007? Some would say that, at this point, it all boils down to name recognition. Everyone knows the name “Nancy Drew,” including millions who have never picked up a Carolyn Keene book in their lives. Nancy Drew is part of our popular culture. She’s a product. This is what “the critics” have always complained about. . . but it’s also what her creator and syndicator, Edward Stratemeyer, intended all along.

  Women Who Played a Role in the Children’s Book Revolution

  In an era when women didn’t even have the right to vote, there were few career opportunities for females beyond teaching. Nevertheless, the burgeoning revolution in children’s books that occurred around World War I resulted in many women finding work as librarians, editors, and booksellers. In Bookwomen: Creating an Empire in Children’s Book Publishing, 1919–1939, Jacalyn Eddy notes, “in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, career-minded women were most likely to achieve and maintain professional success when their careers accommodated the prevailing social belief that women possessed special nurturing qualities and an innate knowledge of children.” Conversely, many libraries “advocated the recruitment of women who did not necessarily care for children,” claiming that women who liked children “are often the very worst persons to do work in a children’s room.”

  Here are a few of the pioneering women who had major roles in the development of twentieth-century children’s literature:

  Caroline Hewins (1846–1926) was a Hartford, Connecticut, librarian who was responsible for one of the first circulating children’s book collections, as well as one of the earliest rooms in a library devoted solely to children’s books. Every kid who has ever borrowed a book from the library or spent a rainy Saturday browsing in a children’s room should know her name. . . but she is almost forgotten today.

  Anne Carroll Moore (1871–1961) enrolled at the Pratt Institute library program planning to work in the area of research and reference, but when asked to take charge of what was called Pratt’s demonstration library for children, Moore’s career took off on a widely different path that included being in charge of children’s services for the New York Public Library system, lecturing, reviewing, and becoming an authority in the field of juvenile books.

  Louise Seaman Bechtel (1894–1985) was the first woman to head the children’s department at a major publishing house. (Offering her the position, her boss commented, “I suppose that’s a subject on which a woman might be expected to know something!”) Under her supervision, Macmillan published three consecutive Newbery winners: The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly, Hitty, Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field, and The Cat Who Went to Heaven by Elizabeth Coatsworth.

  May Massee (1881–1966) is hailed for starting the children’s book departments at two major publishers — Doubleday and Viking.

  Bertha Mahony Miller (1882–1969) was the owner of Boston’s Bookshop for Boys and Girls. A small shop publication that reviewed and recommended children’s books eventually became The Horn Book, a nationally known journal for which Mahony served as editor from 1924 to 1951.

  FIGHTING THE SYNDICATE

  It’s perhaps not a coincidence that the Stratemeyer Syndicate was experiencing its initial
burst of growth at the same time that children’s books began to be taken very seriously by publishers, librarians, and critics.

  A clash was inevitable.

  Franklin K. Mathiews was the chief librarian for the Boy Scouts of America. No fan of the Stratemeyer books, in 1914 he published an article in Outlook magazine entitled “Blowing Out the Boy’s Brains,” condemning series books for their sometimes violent subject matter. It’s said that his article caused a slump in Stratemeyer’s sales. Five years later, Mathiews decided to take a more positive, proactive approach, joining with Publishers Weekly editor Frederic Melcher to create Book Week, “an annual event designed to emphasize better reading choices than those offered by Stratemeyer and his ilk.” Joining the two men in this plan was Anne Carroll Moore, the first “Superintendent of Children’s Work at the New York Public Library.”

  While it’s true that, for the past several years, libraries had been providing more services to young people and more and more major publishers had been setting up children’s departments, Book Week served as public notice that children’s books had arrived. According to Barbara Bader,

  In short order Doubleday established a separate children’s department under May Massee, a former Rochester librarian and editor of the A.L.A. Bulletin (1922); Frederic Melcher donated, and the American Library Association bestowed, the first John Newbery Medal for “the most distinguished contribution to literature for children” published in America the previous year (1922); and the booklists of Boston’s enterprising Bookshop for Boys and Girls grew into The Horn Book, the first magazine devoted to children’s books, edited by bookshop founder Bertha Mahony (later Bertha Mahony Miller).