Series books long popular

I grew up reading series books — not Nancy Drew, but my brothers' Boy Scout series, where adventures in the wild were more exciting than a girl sleuth tiptoeing around in heels and a skirt solving what I thought were lackluster mysteries. Cliffhangers about dark caves full of eerie sounds with mountain climbing and treacherous thunderstorms were more to my liking.

It wasn't until later when I became a teacher and wanted to know about the books the students were reading that I revisited Nancy Drew. The search was on for other series hoping to capitalize on the interest of readers in novels with familiar characters and similar writing styles.

Since 1899 (the advent of the Rover Boys), series books have dominated children's reading. Edward Stratemeyer inaugurated Tom Swift, the Bobbsey Twins, the Hardy Boys and 19 other series using at least 46 pseudonyms. His daughter, Harriet Adams, was responsible for Nancy Drew under the name of Carolyn Keene (the name still exists on the Nancy Drew mysteries today) and 650 titles using several pen names

Most of the titles from the Stratemeyer Syndicate were not republished during the '40s because the stories were dated.

Too, the golden era of children's publishing offered new and exciting titles to replace them. Many of the new books also appeared in series, luring the next generations to what had become a publishing phenomenon.

Nancy Drew eludes every one of her rivals. The books still sit on the shelves of bookstores, having been brought up to date in the '50s and again in the '70s.

Now, Simon & Schuster has issued two new Nancy Drew series. The Nancy Drew Notebooks (a series of 63) for ages 6-9 are quick-read chapters with a tweak of a mystery in each plot line. Nancy Drew for older readers (ages 8-12) has "a new look, a new car, some new friends and loads of new cases to crack." It's obvious that she'll wear designer jeans and use a cell phone! So far, the covers and interiors have no illustrations, which were a dead give-away to the old-fashioned stories in the previous books.

The middle-grade years are a fertile time for readers of series. If children become avid readers then, the possibility of lifetime reading is great. Publishers have capitalized on this notion with books like the Narnia tales; "Little Women," "The Hobbit" and "A Wrinkle in Time" with their sequels; and "The Dark Is Rising" sequence.