Nancy Drew

If you grew up reading Nancy Drew mysteries, your pulse may quicken to hear that Simon and Schuster is publishing a new, updated series. Thumbing through the new books will awaken fond memories. Bess Marvin and George Fayne are still Nancy's close chums. Ned Nickerson remains her "special friend," although his extracurricular activities include reading books at Emerson College rather than quarterbacking the football team. Nancy's father, Carson Drew, is still a hot-shot local lawyer, and Hannah Gruen -- the Drews' housekeeper -- continues to fret over Nancy's safety (albeit with considerably less cause in the modern books)

THE DAY after Christmas, feeling a gray shade of blue in a world full of fear, I reached for the book that was my favorite present. Not the elegant memoirs of a former Smith College president. Not the new Philip Roth novel. Not even the indictment of the media in Marvin Kalb's better-than-fiction One Scandalous Story. No, what arrested my attention was the seventh in the multi-volume series of the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories: The Clue in the Diary. So I spent the afternoon absorbed in the company of Nancy and her chums: tomboy George and plump Bess.

AN ASSOCIATED Press story last week profiled Millie Benson, a 96-year-old author who still writes a column for the Toledo Blade but is best known for bringing to life a young detective named Nancy Drew. Benson wrote 23 of the original Nancy Drew stories under the pen name Carolyn Keene. She got paid $125 per book, according to the AP story, and never collected royalties from the books, movies, board games and other products flowing from the adventures of Nancy and her sidekicks, George Fayne and Bess Marvin.

As a girl, Lynne A. Battaglia says she read the typical childhood books. But the U.S. attorney for Maryland has no difficulty naming her favorite character. "Nancy Drew," she declares without hesitation, saying the fictional teen-age detective was a role model. "Nancy Drew represented the woman that I wanted to be. She had integrity, she spoke her mind." Battaglia, 50, who grew up near Buffalo, N.Y., says she came from a background in which a woman was considered accomplished if she married and had children.

Jim Trelease, author of "The Read-Aloud Handbook," explores the importance of "junk" fiction when choosing books for your child's library.Try to resist an elitist approach in which you offer only the best, he advises parents. One of the patterns that continues to surface in research is the important role that 'junk' fiction plays in forming lifetime readers. By 'junk,' I mean formula fiction such as Nancy Drew and comic books.Carlsen and Sherrill's massive study of lifetime readers, 'Voices of Readers,' showed a preponderance of such books in college students' childhoods.

ONE OF THE most popular series of books for young girls has been sold to a toy company for a very pretty penny -- $700 million.Parents who have paid hundreds of dollars for American Girls historical books and the dolls and accessories that accompany them will understand the appeal of the privately held Pleasant Co., a mail-order publisher and doll manufacturer purchased this month by the giant Mattel Inc.There's something charming, even magical, about the...

Gone is the Titian hair, or at least any references to it. Now she's a reddish-blond, but the blue eyes still sparkle, the blue Mustang is still nifty transportation, and George and Bess are still along for the ride, all the way to Wilder University.After 65 years and more than 125 books, Nancy Drew finally is going to college.The aptly titled "New Lives, New Loves," the first in the Nancy Drew On Campus series, will debut officially on Friday, but copies began sneaking into bookstores last week.

Paul Frame, 80, an illustrator whose work included about 200 children's books, including the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys adventure series, died of lung cancer Tuesday in New York. He started his career in 1936 as a staff artist at Lord & Taylor, where he designed the rose that continues to appear as a symbol of the New York department store.Fred "Sonic" Smith, 45, a guitarist with the rock group MC5, died of heart failure Sunday in Detroit. He was a member of MC5 from 1967 to 1971. The Detroit-based band was credited with paving the way for many punk and modern rock bands.

When I was 10, Mrs. Manning would pay me 25 cents each to bathe her four children and put them to bed. She'd had four kids in six years, and I collected plenty of quarters from her.I would take the money, hike through the woods that surrounded our suburban neighborhood and cross a four-lane highway to what was then the Zayre's discount store. For 99 cents, I would buy the newest bright yellow, hardback edition of the Cherry Ames mysteries. I could not run back to my quiet bedroom fast enough.

This is important: Who were the ghost writers for Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys and the Bobbsey Twins?The generation of readers who grew up with these popular young-people's books finally may have an answer, and it's inside one of the 150 boxes donated recently by Paramount Publishing to the New York Public Library.The boxes contain 100 years' worth of children's book publishing history -- the first manuscripts for Nancy Drew, letters, sales records, and yes, the identities of many of the true authors of the series and their payments.