Through more than 600 books published from 1930 to today, the adventures of teen-age detective Nancy Drew were often repetitive. Yet Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor have all said she was a huge influence in their lives. She represented a kind of tough American woman who was smart — and fierce — in the face of injustice or violence.
Accompanied by her best friends Bess and George, she unearthed lost heirlooms, found missing people and fought to right various wrongs. She offered American girls a sense of resourcefulness. She taught us to signal S.O.S. with a tube of lipstick, to break out of a window using spike heels and to keep an overnight bag in our car — a girl never knew when she’d encounter a sleuthing adventure. Real-life kidnapping victims have said that Nancy Drew stories inspired them use their wits to escape.
Over the years many different writers worked on Nancy Drew’s stories, which were always published under the pen name of Carolyn Keene. But the very first books in the series, the ones that established her particular steely bravery, were written by Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson, who was just as bold and independent as her heroine.
read more here @ Baltimore Sun and @ The New Yorker
list of Nancy Drew books here @ Wikipedia and @ Book Series In Order
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