When I checked our catalog for Nancy Drew books, I was amazed to find over 100 entries, proving that Nancy Drew is still popular - even after 77 years! Over 80 million copies have been sold since she was first introduced in 1930.
Another proof of her lasting power, Rediscovering Nancy Drew is the outcome of a conference held in 1993 at the University of Iowa. Why there, you might ask? It's because the women staff and faculty at the U of I's School of Journalism and Mass Communication discovered that the author of the original Nancy Drew books was the first person to earn a master's degree in journalism at Iowa - Mildred Wirt Benson, who wrote under the name of Carolyn Keene.
Editors Carolyn Stewart Dyer and Nancy Tillman Romalov have compiled several essays by people who have a variety of reasons for participating. Here are some of them:
- Mildred Wirt Benson (of course) - who wrote the original stories
- Carolyn Keene - the new author of Nancy Drew (using the same pen name as Benson)
- Donnarae MacCann - who discusses the racism in the older books
- Phil Zucherman - who writes about reprinting the classics
- Anne Greenberg - who discusses the new Nancy Drew
Rediscovering Nancy Drew can be found on the second floor under the number 813.52 RED.
c Waterloo Public Library 2007
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