Cutthroat Publishing: Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys

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I am closely related to Laura Ingalls Wilder.

[SunShine8308]

@slobomotion I have been to the dilapidated homestead of theirs in SE Kansas, but that has been almost 20 years ago.

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@SunShine8308 I am related only by marriage via a Norwegian aunt but the link is really close. She died the year I was born and my first memories are of the great woods of Wisconsin. I am also related to Charles Greenleaf Whittier. I had no idea about this, growing up, and my cousin Eric and a distant cousin into geneology revealed this -- also, that Bush and Obama are family!

[CuteCatFaith]

There is now a website up about my nefarious publisher James Williamson of Creation books.  creationbooksfraud d com. He seems to be in Bangkok now and has continued to prey on writers.

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My late uncle met a Nancy Drew writer in California in the '60s. I wonder who that was? It was a man and they met at a party in or around LA. Why is Charlotte Iserbyt in your tags? I just love her -- was it for the dumbing down part?

[SunShine8308]

@slobomotion I am not as familiar with that later period, but several people wrote and continue to write that series. You could usually tell when the writer had changed. The original books #8, 9, 10 were written in 1932-1933 and were by a man, but I don't know the names of men who wrote them in the 50s and 60s.

Charlotte I. is there because of the dumbing down, although some of her claims are quite over-the-top. As an educator, there sometimes is no other way to do things.

[SunShine8308]

@slobomotion From what I learned in library school, people read and write more now than they ever have, and they know a much wider array of subjects, but on a superficial level. These books from the 1930s have a more diverse vocabulary than current versions and reveal more strategy, but they are not worldly, if that makes sense. In other words, people knew a lot about their environs but not the outside world. Now people are informed about the outside to a degree, but taught...

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@SunShine8308 I initially thought a tearoom was a place in which you shed tears. A lot of life has really gone past my radar, hee hee hee! I remember in the Drew books, tearooms were always mentioned. This is a really interesting video with good commentary!

[SunShine8308]

@slobomotion ... to not believe their own senses.

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@SunShine8308 I think I read only one Bobbsey Twins book but the boy and girl named Nan took a sled boat on the ice and got terribly lost. This was not far off reality -- we had neighbors in Wisconsin whose kid would not listen, went onto the ice and drowned. I recall being quite left to run wild as a kid, to go into boats, to walk into forests, it was learning -- adventure!

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@SunShine8308 I was left to run wild most of the time as a girl and I recall getting my knees horribly cut by playing ball in a vacant lot full of broken glass. I was not frightened at all, but my mother pulled quite a face!

[slobomotion]

Uprated & favorited. I sold my yellow spine Nancy Drew books a few years ago and most of my remaining childhood books to an American woman with two boys here in France. There was even a TV series starring Nancy Sinatra! These were really fun and I read various series until a young teen. My parents bought me book subscriptions and I recall TOMAS TAKES CHARGE was particularly disturbing. How sad the material is getting shortened and dumbed down.