Book Review: Sisters, Schoolgirls, and Sleuths

[osprey_archer]

The problem with reading a book about something you already know way too much about is that you will either love it or you will hate it. Carolyn Carpan's Sisters, Schoolgirls, and Sleuths: Girls' Series Books in America unfortunately fell in the "hate it" category for me, because I disagree with many of Carpan's choices about what to include in this book and also many of the conclusions that she draws.

1. American girls' series is such a broad topic - we're talking literally hundreds of series, many with dozens if not hundreds of books - that it may not be possible to discuss it all in one book, certainly not a book less than 150 pages long.

2. Carpan doesn't seem to realize that there are two kinds of girls' series: single-author girls' series with literary aspirations, like Elsie Dinsmore or the Little Colonel or Betsy-Tacy, and mass-produced girls' series cranked out by ghost writers, like Nancy Drew or Sweet Valley High or the Babysitters Club. She's more interested in the second, and the book probably would have been more successful if she had focused solely on the Stratemeyer syndicate or girls' mystery books, which take up the bulk of the book anyway.

But as it is, the book starts with a chapter on Elsie Dinsmore, which is unfortunate both because Carpan doesn't seem to understand Elsie, and because including Elsie makes it harder to justify excluding (or mentioning only briefly) many other popular and influential single-author girls' series. If you've set yourself up to survey everything then you need to hit EVERYTHING, you know?

3. Carpan asserts that "the compliant Elsie Dinsmore...is the model heroine for the hundreds of other girls' series protagonists that followed her" (7), which is QUITE A STRETCH. The only piece of evidence Carpan offers in support of it is that Nancy Drew, like Elsie, lives in a single-parent household with her indulgent father... except Elsie's father, unlike Nancy's, is so un-indulgent that he forbids Elsie to eat that dangerous luxury jam, so actually I think this is a case where an accidental similarity (single fathers) shows how very different the two series are.

It's possible that Elsie has a successor in some specifically Christian series, but the overarching theme in the Elsie books - the importance of daughters' instant, implicit, cheerful obedience to their fathers, except when the father's commands go against the word of God - is as far as I know sui generis among secular girls' series.

In fact, I can't think of any other girls' series where the parent-child relationship is the most important theme of the story. Even in the Little House books (another series Carpan leaves out entirely!), where Ma and Pa are important characters, Laura's coming of age and her relationship with her sister Mary (and to a lesser extent Carrie) are just as important.

4. Also, insofar as there is one "model heroine for the hundreds of other girls' series protagonists," it's obviously Jo March, because she's the ur-heroine of American girls' books in general and because Little Women is the first book in a series of either three or four books, depending whether you count Little Women and Good Wives separately.

5. Chapters 3 to 8 move chronologically through books from the 1920s to the 1980s. The analysis seems stronger - I got the sense that these are the books Carpan really cares about, not the ones she had to read to try to make her survey complete - but it could also just be that her analysis seems stronger to me because I'm not familiar with most of the books she writes about, so I can't knowledgeably disagree.

6. I SUPER disagreed with a lot of Carpan's choices once she reached the 1990s, not least of which is the fact that somewhere around the sixties and seventies she seems to have narrowed her focus from "books for girls" to "books for teenage girls" without quite seeming to notice. How else could you possibly justify the fact that she devotes one paragraph to the incredibly popular Babysitters Club series?

(Also, she dings BSC because "by promoting babysitting the series may encourage preteen and teen readers to focus on mothering as their primary goal in life" (123), which I think shows a complete failure to actually engage with the series, which is about entrepreneurship and friendship and developing your own individual strengths and talents as much as it is about babysitting, and also shows the shallowness of Carpan's intellectual framework for this book, which might without oversimplification be described as Marriage and Motherhood Bad, Sports and Careers Good.)

But then, Meg Cabot gets only a paragraph as well, and her series are definitely aimed at teenage girls, so who knows what's up with that.

There's also no mention at all of horse series (Heartland and Thoroughbred ought to fall in the teen-girl purview, even if Saddle Club and Pony Pals are too young), only brief mention of magic-themed series - Carpan mentions Cate Tiernan's Sweep but not Daughters of the Moon or Circle of Three - and for some reason a whole section devoted to Goosebumps and Fear Street, which insofar as they were gendered were marketed at boys.

Comments

[kore]

-- Wait, no Weetzie Bat? Weren't those popular?

the Little House books (another series Carpan leaves out entirely!)

WHUT

[osprey_archer]

If the Little House series didn't make the cut, then Weetzie Bat probably never had a chance.

I really think Carpan was much more interested in mass-produced ghost-written series books than series of the Little House or Weetzie Bat type, and if she had straight-up focused her book on that kind of series I would have no quarrel with it. But she's inconsistent: she writes at length about Elsie Dinsmore and mentions books like the Princess Diaries, neither of which fit that remit, which opens the flood gates to complain about loads of other popular series that got left out.

[kore]

Yeah, I would bet money probably an agent or editor suggested that she include some of those "to cover the field" and, like you say, it was stuff she wasn't interested in/didn't understand.

[sovay]

In fact, I can't think of any other girls' series where the parent-child relationship is the most important theme of the story.

Maida's father is important to her, but not more so than her friends, and in any case the theme there is explicitly independence, not compliance.

[landofnowhere]

Beverly Cleary's Ramona books have important parent-child relationships. But even in the "Ramona and her parent" books, Ramona has other important interpersonal relationships.

[sovay]

Beverly Cleary's Ramona books have important parent-child relationships.

Ditto Lois Lowry's Anastasia Krupnik and her parents. I think it's not unusual for children's books; most children have parents! (Or they don't and that's part of the story, but.) I was just trying to think of an example where the relationship is especially strong and even then I couldn't say it was the defining theme.

[rachelmanija]

by promoting babysitting the series may encourage preteen and teen readers to focus on mothering as their primary goal in life

WTFFFFFF. Did she actually read any of the books? That's not what they're about at all!

[genarti]

Yeah, this sure sounds like someone who's interested in one particular subgenre/subtype, but is writing as if everything that applies to it applies to everything else too... because that seems more marketable? because she isn't even interested enough in the other subgenres to realize they're different? I don't know. But it sounds deeply frustrating!

[genarti]

SERIOUSLY. Yeesh!

[osprey_archer]

And it would have been so easy to fix in this case! Just focus the book on that one subtype and really dig into the weirdness of the Stratemeyer syndicate! Or if the Stratemeyer syndicate has been written about too extensively, get into more detail about all the different mystery series or whatever. There's clearly enough material if she expanded upon it; she didn't need to bring Elsie Dinsmore in as padding.

[osprey_archer]

She devotes literally one paragraph to the BSC so I think it's entirely possible that she hasn't, and is cribbing this critique from someone else, who may also not have read the books because... how. How would that critique arise from anything that's actually in the books?

[osprey_archer]

And no one ever orders Ramona to stop eating jam forever, and if they did Ramona would not reply "Thank you, father! I'm so glad that I have you to look out for my best interests and protect me from the evils of jam!"

[osprey_archer]

I can't think of any other children's book series where "instant cheerful obedience to your father's orders (and it does always seem to be the father in Elsie Dinsmore)" is even a minor theme, let alone the main theme of the book. Possibly it shows up in some Christian series? I know the idea is still current in certain Christian right circles, like the Quiverful movement.

But in secular books, as far as I can tell Elsie has no literary heirs at all.

[sovay]

But in secular books, as far as I can tell Elsie has no literary heirs at all.

I'm amazed she's in a secular book. Without you specifying, I would have assumed it was a Christian series.

[sovay]

That's not what they're about at all!

I read like two of them and I concur.

[sovay]

There's also no mention at all of horse series (Heartland and Thoroughbred ought to fall in the teen-girl purview, even if Saddle Club and Pony Pals are too young

Do horse series have to have human protagonists? I was not an especially horse-oriented person and I read all the Marguerite Henry I could get my hands on.

[osprey_archer]

Oh, it is a Christian series. But the dividing line between Christian & secular fiction was less sharp when it was first published, so if it had been a little bit less... everything that it is... then it might have had literary heirs that kept some of the other stuff but dropped the specifically religious content.

[osprey_archer]

All of the American girls' horse series that I know about have human protagonists, but I'm sure if the series publishers thought they could sell a book with horse protagonists they would be rounding up ghostwriters right now. IIRC Henry's books are all standalones, aren't they?

[sovay]

IIRC Henry's books are all standalones, aren't they?

The Chincoteague books at least form a trilogy—Misty of Chincoteague (1947), Sea Star, Orphan of Chincoteague (1949), and Stormy, Misty's Foal (1963). I want to say that some of her other books trace different generatios of the same racing lineage, but I may be conflating the existence of King of the Wind (1948) with other authors' books about his descendants like Man o' War. I'm sure about the Chincoteague ponies, though.

[ladyherenya]

As someone who read all the Saddle-Club, Thoroughbred and Heartland that I could get my hands on, I feel a bit miffed by their omission. But then again, my opinion of 90s series' importance is shaped by the fact that (some of) those books were important to me.

The argument that BSC was promoting motherhood to young girls is such an odd one. The babysitting was presented in terms of being a responsible older sibling, rather than a surrogate mother -- from memory, there wasn't a lot of caring for actual babies, too, who require more cuddling and so on. Moreover, it presented caring for children as a job that you should be paid money for. And because the books spent so much time focusing on all the other things in the girls' lives, it's so obvious that their lives and their dreams for the future do not revolve around looking after kids.

[marycatelli]

That is always a real mistake.

I read a book on types of fantasy where the author admitted to having to solicit examples of two out of four of her types so she could read them. That she was not already familiar with them weakened the book immeasurably.

[asakiyume]

Ugh, that sounds like bad scholarship and simplistic, not to mention WRONG thesis. If she had a thesis adviser, that person would have advised her to do precisely some of the things you mention (narrow and define what books, exactly, you're looking at).

... And I really had hoped we were beyond the marriage and motherhood Bad, sports and careers Good stage, but I guess not.

[marycatelli]

One also notes that at the time, obedience to your father was also considered a secular virtue.

[littlerhymes]

In what world is Elsie more influential than Jo March and DON'T GET ME STARTED on Babysitters!!

[conuly]

Though I think even then Elsie's commitment to this ideal was odd. Her father is actually evil, and the author seems to delight in showing off the conflict between Elsie's own good sense and obeying her evil father. He punished her for freeing a hummingbird he'd trapped under a cup.

[kore]

Yeah, ditto Sarah Crewe and her father....

[landofnowhere]

Right, there the father is absent/dead pretty much the whole time! In the more wish-fulfillment-y of children's books you do tend to have parental figures only when they are convenient: e.g. the grandfather of the Boxcar Children.

I think part of it is that adults are more interested in reading about complicated parent-child relationships than kids are, so series books that are marketed more direct-to-kids rather than to librarians/parents tend to focus more on peer relationships than on the adults.

[marycatelli]

Oh, yes. Much more typical would be dying in a fire because you didn't listen to your parents' instructions about your candle, or being seduced and left pregnant, unmarried, and dying of TB because you didn't listen to your parents' warnings about your wooer's character.

[marycatelli]

It has "babysitting" in the title. Isn't that all you need to know?

[osprey_archer]

If it makes you feel any better, the book was published in 2009, so maybe it was part of the dying gasp of "marriage and motherhood Bad, sports and careers Good"? But that's probably too much to hope for.

[osprey_archer]

I DON'T KNOW. I'm hard-pressed to think of any heroines at all that follow the Elsie model, so assigning her some kind of over-arching influence of girls' series books seems so wrong. Even Mary Anne Spier, the most retiring of the BSC girl (with the strictest father, too!), never gets into Elsie territory - and when her father veers in Horace Dinsmore directions, trying to forbid Mary Anne to use her babysitting money for pizza parties with her friends, the narrative is firmly against him and he backs down.

[osprey_archer]

Someone could probably write an entire book about horse series for girls - possibly even just about 1990s horse series for girls; there were SO many. I'd read it.

I think you're right and the BSC rarely gets sitting jobs for babies. The girls all seem to enjoy babysitting but they've all got so much going on with their hobbies and social lives that for most of them, I don't think they've even settled on specific dreams for the future (with the obvious exceptions of Claudia & Mallory, who are going to be an artist and a writer respectively): their possibilities are still wide open. No one is thinking "Wow, this babysitting work will be great preparation for the day when I fulfill womankind's true calling by becoming a wife and mother!"

[evelyn_b]

I'd definitely read someone's weird thesis on the hidden and overt influences of Elsie on non-ghostwritten "literary" girls' series like Anne et al., but claiming she's the model for New Girlhood go-getters like Grace Harlowe and Dorothy Dale (or any member of the BSC) is just nuts.

Is Nancy Drew's father ANYTHING like Horace Dinsmore? I've never actually made it through a Nancy Drew (though I saw a trailer for an adorable-looking movie) but I got the impression he was a basically good guy who appreciates Nancy for who she is instead of scolding her for not reading all the creepy childrearing treatises in his mind.

This author clearly never bicycled home from the library with 15 BSC paperbacks in the basket. I'm feeling tempted to read SS&S just to wallow in all the wrong, but it'll pass.

[osprey_archer]

I'm pretty sure that if any member of the BSC encountered Elsie, they would instantly begin to set up a plan to save her from her abusive father. But given how rich and well-connected he is I'm not sure it would work, so the whole thing might be too dark for a BSC book.

I've never made it through a Nancy Drew book either but my impression, both from what I've heard and from the fact that I've never heard "But really Carson Drew is the WORST," is that he admires and respects her detecting skills and gives her everything a girl could want, like her famous roadster.

I would be VERY curious to see what you make of S,S&S but not curious enough to urge you to subject yourself to it.