L C N 6 1 7 — C H I L D R E N ’ S L I T E R AT U R E : C R I T I C I S M A N D P R A C T I C E ( 2 0 1 5 ) .

E R I C A H AT E L E Y – E R I C A . H AT E L E Y @ Q U T. E D U. A U

Series Fiction!!!“what, then, is the appeal of series books to children? The key seems

to be that series books find the right balance for their particular audience of familiarity and novelty, safety and danger, comfort and challenge […] The series in effect provides a contract with readers, guaranteeing the kind of experience they can expect.” (Ross 201)

What is a Series Book?

“A fiction series used to mean a set of novels, each complete in itself, that shared characters or setting or both. Some series were clearly sequential while others could be read in any order.” (Caywood 94)

“The dozens and dozens of fiction series available fall generally into two groups: the more sophisticated type, such as Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books and Beverly Cleary’s stories about Ramona, which are recognized for their literary merit; and the mass-market series, featuring predictable plots, less-complex characters, and easy-to-read language.” (Tunnell and Jacobs 64) Finite, “high quality” e.g. Harry Potter; Anne of Green Gables; Roll of Thunder etc. Infinite, “low quality” e.g. “Goosebumps”; “Sweet Valley High”; “The Hardy Boys”

etc. AND, we must not forget Blyton, who often goes missing from North American

discussions of series books

Interesting hybrids? – e.g. “Magic Treehouse”?

Emergence of “Series Fiction”

“Penny Dreadfuls” & “Dime Novels”Primary Education and Mass LiteracyMass Production and ConsumptionHoratio AlgerThe Stratemeyer Syndicate!

“Every Horatio Alger hero’s rise to riches depends on a lucky break. Stratemeyer’s was his proximity to Alger himself. In 1898, the older man, in failing health, wrote to Stratemeyer at Good News and asked him to complete a story that he was too ill to finish. “Can you take my story and finish it in my style?” he inquired. “You will divide the proceeds equally with me but I shall retain the copyright… . I fancy it would be easy work for you as you have a fluent & facile style.” (O’Rourke)

Libraries!!!!

Stratemeyer’s Mode of Production…

“Stratemeyer would come up with a three-page plot for each book, describing locale, characters, time frame, and a basic story outline. He mailed this to a writer, who, for a fee ranging from fifty dollars to two hundred and fifty dollars, would write the thing up and—slam-bang!—send it back within a month. Stratemeyer checked the manuscripts for discrepancies, made sure that each book had exactly fifty jokes, and cut or expanded as needed. (Each series had a uniform length; the standard was twenty-five chapters.) He replaced the verb “said” with “exclaimed,” “cried,” “chorused,” and so forth, and made sure that cliffhangers punctuated the end of each chapter—usually framed as a question or an exclamation. Each series was published under a pseudonym that Stratemeyer owned.” (O’Rourke)

Popularity…

“In 1926, ninety-eight per cent of the boys and girls surveyed in a poll published by the American Library Association listed a Stratemeyer book as their favorite, and another survey showed that the Tom Swift books, which the syndicate launched in 1910, were at the top of the list.” (O’Rourke)

“Ultimately, the syndicate would develop more than 125 series that […] would sell more than 200 million copies by 1986” (Cart 430)

For more information about the Stratemeyer Syndicate, you may be interested to read: Deidre Johnson. Edward Stratemeyer and the Stratemeyer Syndicate. New York: Twayne, 1993.

“The Hardy Boys”

The Tower Treasure (1927; 1959) “In this new story, based on the original of

the same title, Mr. Dixon has incorporated the most up-to-date methods used by police and private detectives.”

Narrative Rapid, eventful, multiple climaxes,

coincidence heavy Narration

Third-person, focalised (?), exposition heavy & directs the reader explicitly; end of chapter ‘hooks’

“Frank and Joe exchanged glances. Was it possible the red hair was a wig and the thief had put it on just before Mr. Brown had noticed him? The boys kept still—they didn’t want any interference from Smuff in tracking down this clue.” (Dixon 17)

Detection = ? Social Values tend towards the

normative and the conservative Mum appears to stand “on” a table to

stuff a chicken (Dixon 19)

Socialisation Hardy-Style

Frank and Joe are: Fit, helpful, observant, grateful / respectful, conscientious, pro-

active, from a ‘good’ family, church-going, heterosexual, motorcycle competent, well-behaved young men!

All of these qualities are almost instantly rewarded in the text, as soon as they are mentioned

“bad” characteristics—red hair, being fat, being a farmer, being a bad detective, not asking one’s father for advice etc. etc.

In a sense, the social values of this novel are so clearly present that they are obvious even on a surface reading, but are nonetheless worthy of analysis when you take into account the popularity of the “Hardy Boys” over many decades!

The Hardy Boys live on!

“Nancy Drew”

The Secret of the Old Clock (1930) Narrative

Coincidence heavy; well worth comparing with opening of The Tower Treasure—where Joe and Frank ride motorbikes, cover territory, nearly are injured, pursue a stolen car, visit the police station, have dinner, undertake research, go to wig shop, go to church, visit friends, Nancy gets to read a newspaper, go to bed, speak to “domestic help”, go shopping for a dress, and have lunch with her father.

Narration Third-person, focalised (more through CARSON than Nancy!), exposition heavy “There was something about a mystery which aroused Nancy’s interest, and she was

never content until it was solved.” (Keene 7) Although the Hardy Boys novel is sprinkled with illustrations

throughout, no pictures appear in this excerpt from the Nancy Drew story (although there are illustrations later in the volume) – assumptions about gendered readers?

Detection = “intuition”? Social Values tend towards the normative and the conservative

Socialisation Nancy Drew-Style

Nancy is: Pretty, ‘fair minded’, logical, “naturally clever” (Keene 6), trustworthy,

intuitive, domestically competent, a good shopper, “far too wise to engage in gossip” (18). WAY into father’s wisdom!

“she was the type of girl who is capable of accomplishing a great many things in a comparatively short length of time. She enjoyed sports of all kinds and she found time for clubs and parties.In school Nancy had been very popular and she boasted many friends. People declared that she had a way of taking life very seriously without impressing one as being the least bit serious herself.” (12-13)

“bad” characteristics—being ugly, new money, snobbery, impatience, not asking one’s father for advice etc. etc.

As with the Hardy Boys, the social values of this novel are so clearly present that they are obvious even on a surface reading, but are nonetheless worthy of analysis.

Rehak re: the visual ‘evolution’ of ND

Nancy Drew lives on…

Libraries and Children…

“As late as 1893 children under the age of twelve were barred from almost half the large public libraries in the [U.S.]. This early reluctance to admit children into the library stemmed from the widespread concern that the use of library books, particularly fiction, would distract the child from school study.” (Garrison 207)

“In 1913 the ALA estimated that children’s books comprised about one-fifth of the nation’s library collections and about one-third of the total circulation, but in the branches it was not uncommon for 90 per cent of the work or more to be with children.” (Garrison 210)

Series Fiction in/and Libraries

“The first children’s books to be derided and removed from library shelves were the popular series by Horatio Alger, Oliver Optic Castleman, and Martha Finley. Later the attack would widen to include the Bobbsey Twins, the Rover Boys, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.” (Garrison 211) “No book was to be allowed into the children’s library that represented any authority in

an unenviable light.” (Garrison 212)

“Librarians usually deal with these books in three ways. Some refuse to acquire them […] Some select by the reviews and don’t bother to fill in missing volumes […] Some make a conscious commitment to maintain any series they’ve acquired.” (Caywood 94)

“Libraries struggle with how to house and whether to catalogue paperback series fiction, rendering access problematic; many series books go out of print relatively rapidly making retroactive catch-up more difficult. Acknowledging the difficulties and the very real charms of reading a print series in haphazard order is a useful corrective to the vague notions we sometimes harbor that today’s children inhabit a reading universe marked exclusively by plenitude and ease of access.” (Mackey 152)

Negotiating “Series” Identification?

Author

Publisher

“Title”

Character

“Authorship”

Familiar, individual genius figure e.g. J. K. Rowling

Industrial, collaborative pseudonym e.g. Carolyn Keene

“Welcome to the inner world of Working Partners, the company behind some of the best-selling series fiction in children's writing. With more than 1000 books in 40 languages, their creations include Dinosaur Cove, Secret Unicorn and the phenomenally successful Rainbow Magic series, which has sold 20 million copies. In 2007, the series was bought by HIT Entertainment, a preschool licensing company who also own Bob the Builder and Angelina Ballerina. Then there's Beast Quest, a bestselling series largely aimed at boys. With 72 books published last year, it's written by ''Adam Blade'', with a companion series called Sea Quest.

Not that the thrusting Adam Blade, or the prettily named author of the Rainbow Magic series, Daisy Meadows, actually exist. Titles are written by teams of authors under a single pseudonym. ''We call it 'collegiate' fiction,'' says Chris Snowdon, the managing director of Working Partners. ''We're not interested in being approached with a single concept for a series. Developing ideas together is what makes our work exciting.''” (Stroud)

Publishers? Series Title?

Scholastic? “Apple Fiction”

Horrible HistoriesMagic TreehouseQ: Following on from

critics such as Hade—what is the difference between “series” and “brand”?

By Character?

Harry Potter Artemis Fowl Percy Jackson etc. etc. Such series tend to focus

on the “shape” of an individual life / experience As compared with earlier

incarnations such as “Nancy Drew”

“team” character series, such as the coloured fairies book etc. balance between individual and group identities

http://rubyredfort.com

Features of Series Fiction

Narrative Tends towards the formulaic Familiar characters, settings, plots Heavy on “plot punctuation”—a series of micro

narrative arcs within a broader narrative arc; stand-alone AND part of longer-term narrative structures; cliffhangers and continuations

Genre Evolved from “adventure” stories, but Stratemeyer

was HIGHLY successful in hybridising the familiar adventure stories with the relatively new genre of “detective fiction” “these “clues” don’t function as a puzzle that the

enterprising reader can piece together for herself, as they do in Sherlock Holmes or Encyclopedia Brown mysteries. Instead, they are reassurances that order reigns behind the scenes.” (O’Rourke)

More recently we’ve seen genres such as horror and romance dominate series (and very successfully)

We also now see a number of movie/TV/corporate “tie-ins”

Gender Is both presumed and constructed via assumptions

about genre appeal (i.e. horror / spy / adventure = boys; romance / shopping = girls)

This has not changed a great deal from the Stratemeyer days!

Rewards for Readers—Why Series Fiction Rocks!

“It makes sense that series fiction holds such appeal for this audience. Having only recently become comfortable with reading, they must feel safest reaching for what they know.” (Hepperman 432)

“By engaging in the act of reading, children automatically develop and improve a wealth of specific reading skills, they strengthen their vocabulary, improve comprehension, increase their reading fluency and their skill at predicting events, develop the ability to skim, and learn about the various patterns in literature and inferencing.” (Tunnell and Jacobs 65) This exemplifies why we need to be clear in our definition of “reading” – how is it ‘the same as’ and

‘different from’ literacy?

“favorite series can serve a serious purpose, too, in times of stress and distress, of isolation and loneliness, of fear and anxiety, they can provide the comforting familiarity of recurring settings and characters who have become both faithful friends and family, living in a reliably unchanging alternative world, a place of sometimes necessary refuge and sanctuary” (Cart 430)

“The key to understanding the appeal of series fiction lies in the appreciation of endings. A series is not simply an extremely long serial; it is a sequence of narratives each with its own closure, providing points of completeness while allowing for the renewal of acquaintance with familiar much-loved characters and situations.” (Watson 541)

Challenges for Readers—Why Series Fiction Sucks!

Homogeneity Of narrative, plot, character, ideology “In 1967, 87 publishers had books reviewed by the

selective Horn Book Magazine; by 1997 that number had dropped to 30. A staggering 60 percent of the books reviewed in Horn Book in 1997 came from only five publishers (Hade, 2000). What these numbers reflect are the results of three decades of company merging and acquiring in the publishing industry.” (Hade 159)

Collecting/Consuming rather than “reading”Perceived reluctance to “move on” from

series books

Librarian, Philip Crawford:

  “As someone who grew up loving to read, I at first struggled to

understand these kids. I knew, of course, that not all kids were great readers, but I was unaware there were those who actually hated reading. Finding books for these students is probably my greatest challenge.” (Crawford 46)

“I try to change the negative experience that occurs when resistant readers encounter books—the immediate revulsion they feel when presented with something they view as academic and boring. This often means putting into their hands books that many librarians, teachers, and children’s literature experts snub: YA problem novels, slim books about sports figures and celebrities, graphic novels, lurid biographies of serial killers, series fiction, comic strips, and how-to books. While many librarians may scoff at series like Gossip Girl, Nancy Drew, Cirque Du Freak, and Goosebumps, these books have the power to engage and excite teens who would otherwise read nothing.” (Crawford 47)

Still not convinced? …

“Last but not least, you need to become aware of what a collection of good teen paperbacks series can do for your circulation. Numbers are the name of the game, ladies and gentlemen. Simply put, circ means bucks. The more YA books you circulate, the more money you get to buy more YA books.” (Makowski 7)

Discussion Prompts

Tell us about your series book—what “marks” it as a series title? What are its significant features? How does it address / hail the potential young reader?

Tell us about your or your library’s relationship with series fiction – positive, negative, neutral?

Secret librarians’ business—keep it anonymous, but what dirt can you dish re: series books? What’s “that” series that isn’t allowed in the library?

Series books can present a unique set of challenges to librarians, not only in terms of ideology, literacy, culture, and value, but in terms of material management. How do the libraries you know catalogue and/or shelve series books?

Works Cited:

Cart, Michael. “Carte Blanche: One Cheer for Series Fiction.” The Booklist 97.4 (2000): 430. Caywood, Carolyn. “Series Fiction: The Whole Story.” School Library Journal 38.8 (1992): 94. Crawford, Philip Charles. “Why Gossip Girl Matters.” The Horn Book Magazine 84.1 (2008): 45-48. Dixon, Franklin W. The Tower Treasure. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1959. Garrison, Dee. Apostles of Culture: The Public Librarian and American Society, 1876-1920. 1979. Madison:

U Wisconsin P, 2003. Hade, Daniel D. “Curious George Gets Branded: Reading as Consuming.” Theory Into Practice 40.3 (2001):

158-165. Hepperman, Christine. “Reading By the Number: Paperback Series Fiction.” Horn Book Magazine 73.4

(1997): 432-437. Keene, Carolyn. The Secret of the Old Clock. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1930. Mackey, Margaret. “Serial Monogamy: Extended Fictions and the Television Revolution.” Children’s

Literature in Education 37.2 (2006): 149-161. Makowski, Silk. Serious About Series: Evaluations and Annotations of Teen Fiction in Paperback Series. Ed.

Dorothy M. Broderick. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 1998. O’Rourke, Meghan. “Nancy Drew’s Father: The Fiction Factory of Edward Stratemeyer.” The New Yorker

November 8, 2004. Online. Available at: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/11/08/041108crat_atlarge Rehak, Melanie. Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her. Orlando: Harcourt, 2005. Ross, Catherine Sheldrick. “Dime Novels and Series Books.” Handbook of Research on Children’s and

Young Adult Literature. Eds. Shelby A. Wolf, Karen Coats, Patricia Enciso and Christine A. Jenkins. New York: Routledge, 2011. 195-206.

Stroud, Clover. “Welcome to the Fiction Factory.” Sydney Morning Herald January 16, 2014. Online. Available at: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/welcome-to-the-fiction-factory-20140115-30uwp.html

Tunnell, Michael O and James S Jacobs. “Series Fiction and Young Readers.” The Booklist 102.2 (2005): 64-65.

Watson, Victor. “Series Fiction.” International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature. Ed. Peter Hunt. Vol. II. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2004. 532-541.