What She Said: Childhood Favorites Remembered

Magazine publishers have long focused tightly on key demographics, and this made me think about my magazine reading over the decades.

• If you were a teenage girl in the 1950s and early ‘60s, you were likely to be reading Seventeen; after all, you had to learn how to apply that heavy eyeliner somewhere.  Having no brothers, I’m not sure of the equivalent for boys, but I’d guess Playboy if they could sneak it out of Dad’s bedside table.

• In my 20’s, Rolling Stone and the Village Voice grabbed my attention.  It was the heyday of the New Journalism, including the thrill of Watergate reporting.

• For young parents like me, the next few years saw a brief detour from serious reading into Sunset and shelter magazines, plus the Wellness Letter.

• And then before I knew it, AARP was filling my mailbox with reading material. (I’m not sure I want to know what’s next.)

I don’t really miss Seventeen, but when it comes to books, folks tend to be nostalgic about those they loved as a child.  One of my favorite books in 3rd or 4th grade was the Boxcar Children.  Recently I was reminded of them in an article about the return of a more recent popular series, "Sweet Valley High".  In an interesting reminder of our emotional attachment to childhood favorites, apparently the newest title in the series has caused a bit of a kerfluffle; here’s what the New York Times recently said about it:

"In the annals of 1980s young-adult fiction, there were no teenage heroines more loyal, more youthfully wholesome, more impossibly flawless than Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield of the “Sweet Valley High” series, with their cascading blond hair, aqua eyes, rosy lips and perfect (in the ’80s, anyway) Size 6 figures.

It is all the more scandalous to their fans, then, that a new spinoff, “Sweet Valley Confidential,” depicts the identical twins, now 27, in an angry rift, living on separate coasts, drinking, having casual sex and — gasp — enjoying it."

Around the same time, Time published a piece titled Top 10 Kids' Book Series We Miss.  Lo and behold, there is the Boxcar Children series along with the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and the Babysitter’s Club.

I imagine that untold numbers of dissertations have been written on the subject of children’s literature so I won’t speculate about what makes one series memorable compared to another.  I can see one very simple theme, though; the children in these books overcome challenges and tough times using their wits and their courage (along with some luck), and that makes us, as young readers, believe we can do it too.  Sort of like Robinson Crusoe for the younger set.

What were your favorite childhood books and magazines ?

pro·ver·bi·al/prəˈvərbēəl/Adjective

1. Referred to in a proverb or idiom.

2. Well known, esp. so as to be stereotypical