Will the Real Carolyn Keene Please Stand Up - the Lives of the Creators of Nancy Drew

When I stumbled across this on Amazon.com, I was not sure if I really wanted to buy it.  After all, there are already a number of books out there about the "creators" of Nancy Drew - ones that focus on the Stratemeyer Syndicate itself, others that focus on Mildred Wirt Benson, and some that focus on the evolution and impact of the character, Nancy Drew.  Did I really need another one?  And I had no knowledge of the author, Christine Keleny, other than the brief information provided on Amazon about her.  So, I debated back and forth, but I finally listened to that insistent voice in the back of my mind that kept saying, "if you want all things Nancy Drew related, then you must have this," and I bought it.  Took me a bit before I finally picked it up and read it, but now, I can honestly say, I am so thoroughly glad I bought it, because this book is not just another analytical study of the individuals who created and wrote Nancy Drew - no, this book is actually a well-written, well-researched prose biography of the three people who had the most influence in the character of Nancy Drew - Edward Stratemeyer, his daughter Harriet, and his young ghostwriter, Mildred Wirt!

 

Will The Real Carolyn Keene Please Stand Up gives fans a fresh new look at the history of Nancy Drew's creation. For a character that has been around for nearly 100 years, with new stories continuously published over the course of those nearly ten decades, Nancy Drew has had plenty of books look at her creators, her longevity, her enduring appeal, her pop icon status, and just about every other aspect you can think of as it relates to the girl detective.  Authors like Melanie Rehak, Michael G. Cornelius, Carolyn Carpan, Bobbie Ann Mason, LuElla D'Amico, Emily Hamilton-Honey, Geoffrey S. Lapin, and many others have offered so much insight over the years with books, essays, and countless hours of research on the subject of Nancy Drew and her creation; yet, surprisingly, in all of that time, not once has there ever been a historical look at those creators told in a prose, biographical fashion.  Until now.  Author Christine Keleny (Christine Keleny Books) is not only a writer, but she is also an editor, book designer, and publisher, whose works cross into historical fiction, mystery, adventure, and memoir.  This particular book, while offering well researched biographies on Stratemeyer, Adams, and Wirt-Benson, is also infused with a certain level of historical fiction - since a lot of the conversations and character-thoughts expressed throughout the book are not necessarily factual - but based on everything we knew about these three, they very well could be!

 

Keleny opens her book in the most obvious place - the now-infamous 1980 trial that resulted from the lawsuit filed by Grosset & Dunlap against the Stratemeyer Syndicate and Simon & Schuster over the rights to Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and the numerous other series G&D had been publishing for the Syndicate for more than half-a-century.  An aging Harriet Stratemeyer Adams is on the stand, being questioned regarding the creation of Nancy Drew and the books' original author, which sends Adams on a trip down memory lane ... a trip that the reader gets to follow as we turn back the pages of time to 1887, when a young Edward Stratemeyer is striving to become an author, feeling it in is veins, despite his father's and brother's attempts to dissuade him to pick a more steady career.  The book progresses at a fairly fast rate, as we jump ahead one, two, three, or even more years at a time, following Edward as he meets his wife ... as he begins selling his stories ... as he has two daughters ... as his books become so popular he creates a syndicate of writers to help him get his ideas into book form faster.  We read how the twentieth century saw a huge rise in the success of his children's series - The Rover Boys, The Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, Ruth Fielding, and many others, eventually leading to 1927 and the publication of The Hardy Boys.  This, as we all know, led to his creation of a companion series for girls, a girl detective that only one person could write - a young ghostwriter who had taken over the Ruth Fielding series for his Syndicate - Mildred Augustine Wirt.

 

Keleny alternates between the various players.  Some chapters focus on Edward, while others look at what Mildred was doing, while others take a look at Harriet and her sister, Edna.  Keleny's story is so well-written, that the reader can visually picture each of the characters as they act and speak on the page, and honestly, this would transition so beautifully into a movie, or even a television mini-series.  Edward, Harriet, and Mildred are all developed far beyond their typical "this is what research tells us about them" found in most books; instead, we get living, breathing characters with emotions, with hopes and dreams, with frustrations and losses, with times of happiness and times of mourning.  Yes, the scenes portrayed throughout the book come from the Stratemeyer Records on file with the New York Public Library ... from the Iowa Women's Archives at the University of Iowa ... from researchers such as Geoffrey S. Lapin (to whom the author credits having done considerable work to uncover Wirt's connection as the original author of the Nancy Drew books) and James Keeline ... and to the descendants of the Stratemeyer family itself ... however, they are expressed through a prose tale that draws the reader in until, just like the children's series that are the subject matter of these individuals, he or she cannot help but turn page after page after page to see what is going to happen next!

 

The one thing I think Keleny does perfectly with this book is acknowledge the fact that there was never just "one" Carolyn Keene.  Sure, Edward Stratemeyer created the idea and the initial outlines for the Nancy Drew series.  Sure, Mildred Wirt (Benson) wrote the original books in the series.  Sure, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams took over the character and molded her into the later image that so many adults today remember her as.  Yet, it was not just one of these three that "created" Nancy Drew; rather, it was the amalgamation of all three - Stratemeyer, Wirt, and Adams - that ultimately defined Nancy Drew and gave her the characteristics and charisma that has helped her endure for nearly 100 years non-stop.  While so many other series fell away, many long forgotten - Nancy Drew is still at the forefront, still recognized as the quintessential girl detective (let's face it - any book, any movie, any television show that features a female detective will always make at least one, if nor more, reference to Nancy Drew).  And this book is the perfect story of how these three individuals, in their own special ways, combined to make (literally!) the world's greatest amateur female detective.

 

Now, for all this praise (and I really did enjoy the book!), that's not to say it's perfect.  It is always a bit off-putting when I come across grammatical errors or misspellings in a published book - and this book had a number of them.  When talking about the gala thrown by Simon & Schuster after they took over publication of the Stratemeyer properties, it states, "[w]asn't Nancy's popularity proven at the gala 15th anniversary party put on by Simon & Schuster for Nancy Drew..." (p. 5).  This was actually referring to the 50th anniversary gala. Later, when we read about Edward acting out a story he is writing, his wife "knew that this roll-playing was important to Edward..." (p. 20).  I believe the author meant "role" playing.  These are only a couple - there are others that could be listed, but it is a reminder that books are no longer edited with precision as they used to be.  While these are small things, and they don't make the book any less readable, they do (for me, at least) present a jarring moment, at which I'm taken out of the story as my mind immediately focuses on the error.

 

As an aside, Keleny does throw in a moment of Hardy Boys history for us, as she gives us a few pages of Leslie McFarlane and his first communications with Stratemeyer (pp. 108 - 114), which ultimately led to his taking on the Hardy Boys books, and later, the first few Dana Girls stories.  There are also moments with members of the Garis family, as well as the addition of Andrew Svenson as a partner of the Syndicate.  Thus, the author gives readers a well-rounded story of everything that was going on in the lives of these three creators, and how it all impacted their work on, and in Harriet's case, her utter devotion to Nancy Drew.

 

Who was the real Carolyn Keene?  Well, once you read this book, I believe you will be in a much stronger position to answer that question, and you will be sparked to delve deeper and do your own research and studies to get a better understanding of everything (and everyone!) that went into creating our favorite teen detective!  Is every word of this book true, and did every thing that is described in this book actually take place the way it is written here?  Probably not.  But that does not in any way lessen this book's value in the annals of Nancy Drew studies, and it certainly should not detract from anyone's enjoyment in reading the story.  

 

RATING:  10 last ditch attempts to sell the Syndicate out of 10 for a well-researched, superbly written story of the lives, loves, hardships, and successes of the three individuals who, in one way or another, created Nancy Drew.

The Baseball Boys of Lakeport - the Second Volume of the Lakeport Series

This book is definitely not a usual one for me.  However, it is a book I could not pass up when I saw it up in Cooperstown, New York a couple of years back when my friend, Pam, and I went up there to explore all the sites that actually existed and were used in the Nancy Drew mystery, The Secret of Mirror Bay.  After all, Cooperstown is famous for its baseball, and this book happens to be authored by none other than Edward Stratemeyer, the same man who created Nancy Drew (and whose daughter authored Mirror Bay!). Thus, even though I'm not a sports fan at all, and even though I'm not normally a fan of series books for boys, I picked this up for no other reason than to have a collectible from my visit to Cooperstown.  However, as I was chatting with another friend recently, he was asking me about books written by Edward Stratemeyer, and I had to admit I have never read one.  So, thanks to his prompting, I picked up this book and gave it a read.

 

The Baseball Boys of Lakeport is the second volume in a series of books set in the fictional town of Lakeport. What I find amusing about that is the fact that another Stratemeyer series, The Bobbsey Twins, is also set in the town of Lakeport.  The first volume of The Bobbsey Twins series, written by Stratemeyer and published in 1904, featured the two sets of twins having adventures in their hometown of Lakeport.  The first books in this Lakeport Series were published in 1908 (see below for questions regarding publication and copyright dates), and while they did not feature the Bobbsey family, they did feature a group of boys who managed to form clubs of some sort involving a variety of activities.  The boys went hunting in the first book, formed a baseball team in this book, then went on to form a boat club, a football team, an automobile club, and at the end, an aircraft club.  There was very little mystery to this book - it was more about the adventures of the boys and they trouble they faced from local bullies, and based on some of the recap of the first book in this one, I would hazard the guess that all of the books were the same.  This series only lasted six books, being published from 1908 to 1912:

 

1 - The Gun Boys of Lakeport, or The Island Camp (1908)

2 - The Baseball Boys of Lakeport, or The Winning Run (1908)

3 - The Boat Club Boys of Lakeport, or The Water Champions (1909)

4 - The Football Boys of Lakeport, or The Champions of the School (1909)

5 - The Automobile Boys of Lakeport, or A Run for the Mountains (1910)

6 - The Aircraft Boys of Lakeport, or The Rivals of the Clouds (1912) 

 

While the "boys" in the book are quite a few in number, Stratemeyer seems to focus on four or five main boys, with a number of supporting characters that have minimal dialogue or action.  The main characters are Joe Westmore and his older brother, Harry, and their good friend, Fred Rush.  Other boys who share the spotlight are Link Darrow and Paul Shale.  Rounding out the cast are the minor players, such as Frank Pemberton, Walter Bannister, Matt Roscoe, and a few others whose names only appear once or twice throughout the story.  On the other side of the tracks, you have the bullies/villains of the story, which include Dan Marcy, a carry-over from the previous book who caused the boys considerable problems when they were out hunting; Si Voup, the captain of the opposing baseball team who will do anything to win the championship; Sidney Yates, another player of the opposing team who pulls some nasty tricks that get him punished severely by his father; and then there is Montgomery Jaddell, the school principal who is quite the stick in the mud, and who seems dead-set on making life as difficult as possible for the boys during their last weeks of school for the year.

 

While there is the main story involving the formation of the Lakeports amateur baseball team and their struggles to earn money to buy uniforms and equipment, as well as their games against various opposing teams from the surrounding towns, there are a couple of smaller adventures along the way - such as a stolen boat that leaves the boys stranded on Pine Island and the kidnapping of the Lakeports' two strongest players just before the final championship game. The boys also come up against some vagrants who think they are going to report their activities, as well as a bull that somehow gets loose and runs rampart through the main street, and a stolen cash box (that Harry and Joe's father mistakenly believes Harry took!).  Again, there are no major mysteries, and most everything centers around the boys' baseball activities.  Again, the subject matter of the book is not necessarily my cup of tea, but the writing is actually well-done, the story nicely paced, and the characters are varied enough to avoid a cookie-cutter cast.

 

The internal illustrations are by Max Francis Klepper (1861-1907), who was a German-born artist who immigrated to the United States in 1876 and grew up in Indiana before working in Illinois and New York.  He contributed illustrations to a number of magazines, such as Collier's, Harper's Monthly, Cosmopolitan, and others, as well as providing illustrations for several books during the early 1900s, one of which was this particular book.  More information about the artist can be found here:  Max Francis Klepper.

 

Something I found rather interesting is the copyright page.  Pretty much all references to this book I was able to find online provides a copyright and publication date of 1908.  However, the copyright page for this book lists the original Copyright as 1905, by A. S. Barnes & Co., under the title "The Winning Run."  The Copyright of the Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. edition is 1908, under the title "The Baseball Boys of Lakeport, or The Winning Run."  I was unable to locate any information regarding that earlier copyright, or even a book (or magazine serial) published under the name "The Winning Run" by A. S. Barnes & Co., leaving me to wonder just where that copyright originated.

 

Another surprising fact about the book is its length.  The story is 315 pages, which is nearly 100 pages more than most of the children's series books I am used to reading from the first half of the 20th century.  This must have been somewhat the standard in the very early 1900s, as ads in the back of the book indicate the first three Dave Porter books were 312, 286, and 304 pages, respectively.  Other series listed in those ads show books of various lengths - from 300 pages to 310 pages to 320 pages to 330 pages, and even one book at a whopping 431 pages!  It's actually rather sad that the decades passed, the length of these books aimed at children and young adults gradually decreased to just a little over 200 pages, and ultimately down to just 180 or so pages per book.

 

Overall, not a bad story, and while I may not be rushing out there to hunt down the other five books in the series, if I do happen across any of them at some point, I'm likely to pick them up just to read the further adventures of these Lakeport boys!

 

RATING:  9 silk hats with the top knocked in out of 10 for a wholesome story of sportsmanship, friendship, and adventure, with a lot of sports and a bit of mystery thrown in for good measure.