Fictional teen sleuth Nancy Drew had been around since the 1930s, solving crimes and irking adults with her snooping. The books, written by a number of ghostwriters under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene, depicted Nancy first as a 16-year-old smarty-pants who graduated high school early and pursued her dream of being a detective. (Later editions raised her age to 18 and also did away with some of the racist stereotypes that had appeared in earlier versions.) In 2003, after more than 70 years of solving mysteries, the Nancy Drew Mystery Stories series ended. Nancy would go on to appear in a series called Girl Detective, in which she drove a hybrid car, used a cell phone and bugged some readers who felt that the new Nancy was ditzy and constantly involved in tedious teenage banalities. We want the old Nancy back. The perfectionist, nerdy Nancy who wasn’t afraid of a dark alley and popped out a magnifying glass from time to time.
Top 10 Kids’ Book Series We Miss
The writers at TIME are not as old as you think. Here are the kids' and young-adult books we cherished in our younger years.