Nancy Drew has been my hero since I was six. This is true. When I was first allowed into the "chapter books" section, my elementary school librarian loaded me up with Newbery and Caldecott Medal bookmarks and each one of those found their home inside the collection of old Nancy Drew books on the fiction shelf. As soon as I worked my way through all of them, I started over again.
Why did I idolize her so much? Nancy was an older girl with two great best friends (George the stereotypical tomboy and Bess the stereotypical girly-girl), an awesome car, a loving lawyer father, a stand-in mother for a housekeeper, and a college boyfriend. Those were all things that made Nancy cool but in my mind it was actually her intellect and her willingness to take risks to help people that made her a heroine.
Nancy asked questions that wouldn't have easy answers, that often led to more questions and dangerous situations. She risked her life many times and frequently for people she had only just met. Nancy wasn't concerned about being paid, she cared about good people who were in need. She turned to her friends for help and they leapt to her aid and offered her their advice (most of the time, from Bess at least, it was to be careful). Her boyfriend, Ned Nickerson, was on hand to rescue her when she needed it, though Nancy often rescued herself. She combined clues (often while displaying some impressive talent) to unravel complex mysteries. For a character who debuted in 1930, Nancy is an impressively intelligent and self-reliant young woman. The women who wrote as Carolyn Keene clearly made an effort to present an admirable heroine to the girls of their respective times.
(Like Clare, Nancy will be featured again. I have a book about "Carolyn Keene" that's begging to be reread.)
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