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30-527: The Motor Boys were the heroes of a popular series of adventure books for boys at the turn of the 20th century issued by the Stratemeyer Syndicate under the pseudonym of Clarence Young . This series was published by Cupples & Leon and was issued with dustjackets and glossy frontispiece. Howard Garis (author of the Uncle Wiggily stories) wrote many, if not all, of these stories. The name of

60-554: A Ted Scott Flying Stories book, published in Germany in 1930 as Ted Scott Der Ozeanflieger. The artwork was generally changed when reprinted in other countries, and sometimes character names and other details were as well. For example, in Norway, translations of the Nancy Drew books were first published in 1941, the first European market to introduce the girl detective. “The translators changed

90-470: A Doubleday imprint. Volumes 20-33 were published by Doubleday . All subsequent reprints during this time period were done by Doubleday. New books were also made available as part of a subscription series with prices ranging from $ 1.00 to $ 1.50 per title. The series was translated into over ten languages worldwide. English publication was discontinued at the end of 1983, but since 2010 it is being reissued in both trade paperback and eBook formats. This series

120-697: A publisher, writing that "[a] book brought out under another name would, I feel satisfied, do better than another Stratemeyer book. If this was brought out under my own name, the trade on new Stratemeyer books would simply be cut into four parts instead of three." Some time in the first decade of the twentieth century Stratemeyer realized that he could no longer juggle multiple volumes of multiple series, and he began hiring ghostwriters , such as Mildred Benson , Josephine Lawrence , Howard R. Garis and Leslie McFarlane . Stratemeyer continued to write some books, while writing plot outlines for others. While mystery elements were occasionally present in these early series,

150-602: A series of stories that made such reading attractive to children. Stratemeyer believed that this desire could be harnessed for profit. He founded the Stratemeyer Syndicate to produce books in an efficient, assembly-line fashion and to write them in such a way as to maximize their popularity. The first series that Stratemeyer created was The Rover Boys , published under the pseudonym Arthur M. Winfield in 30 volumes between 1899 and 1926, which sold over five million copies. The Bobbsey Twins first appeared in 1904 under

180-448: Is 10 years old and very adventurous. Ricky is a red-headed, rambunctious 7-year-old, and Holly is a 6-year-old tomboy. The youngest is Sue, age 4. Their father, Mr. John Hollister, owns a general store named The Trading Post, where he sells hardware, sporting goods, and toys. Mrs. Elaine Hollister tries to help her children solve mysteries and is always ready with handy tips for solving cases. Joey Brill and Will Wilson appear as rivals of

210-453: Is a series of books about a family who loves to solve mysteries. The series was published by the Stratemeyer Syndicate and entirely written by Andrew E. Svenson (1910–1975) under the pseudonym Jerry West. Helen S. Hamilton (1921–2014) illustrated the books. This series recounts the adventures of a young American middle-class family solving mysteries from their home on Pine Lake, in the city of Shoreham, New York. (The Hollister's state

240-481: Is actually up in the air. In "The Happy Hollisters at Skyscraper City", Officer Cal reported that a suspicious person who had been following the Hollister kids had left the state. To which Pete replies, "Then I suppose he went back to New York." ) The Hollister family includes five children, their parents, a family of cats, a dog, and a burro. Pete, the oldest of the Hollister children, is 12 years old. Pam, or Pamela,

270-611: Is really the family cat, Mickey, and the collie "Zip" is the real-life Border Collie Lassie. Joey Brill is based on a real person as well, although everyone claims to have forgotten his real name. Jane (Svenson) Kossmann recounts that her father placed other real characters in this series, including her social studies teacher Mrs. Farber. She also relates that some of the stories in the books are based on stories from her Girl Scout Camp and her brother's Boy Scout Camp escapades. Svenson had his children, and later his grandchildren, review and "edit" his books. Jane remembers getting to

300-421: Is unique in that many of the characters are based on real-life entities, such as, Svenson's family from Bloomfield, New Jersey . In the series, Pete represents Sevenson's real-life son Andrew Jr., Pam represents his daughter Laura, Ricky represents Eric, Holly represents Jane, and Sue is a composite of Svenson's two youngest daughters, Eileen and Ingrid. Even the dog and cat have real-life counterparts: "White Nose"

330-509: The Rover Boys . For decades, libraries refused to carry any Syndicate books, considering them to be unworthy trash. Series books were considered to "cause 'mental laziness,' induce a 'fatal sluggishness,' and 'intellectual torpor. ' " Series books were considered to ruin a child's chances for gaining an appreciation of good literature (which was subsequently shown by one study not to be the case), and to undermine respect for authority: "Much of

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360-646: The 1930s and the second, with different cover art, in the 1950s. Victor Appleton ; Richard Barnum ; Gerald Breckenridge ; Nicholas Carter ; Lester Chadwick ; Allen Chapman ; Alice B. Emerson ; Howard Roger Garis ; Mabel C. Hawley ; Laura Lee Hope ; Gertrude W. Morrison ; Margaret Penrose ; Homer Randall ; Roy Rockwood ; Frank V. Webster ; Arthur M. Winfield ; Mildred A. Wirt (Benson) ; Clarence Young Not found 2023 as Gutenberg authors: Franklin W. Dixon; Carolyn Keene; Eugene Martin The Happy Hollisters The Happy Hollisters

390-505: The Hollister family's in most books. While not actually villains, they appear as obstacles and annoyances to the Hollisters' mystery-solving efforts in most plots. Usually Joey and Will's disruptive actions are shown to be the result of lack of awareness, apathy, or indifference, rather than malicious motives. The series was published between 1953 and 1970. Volumes 1-4 were published by Doubleday . Volumes 5-19 were published by Garden City ,

420-513: The Moss-Covered Mansion ) entire plots were cast off and replaced with new ones. In part, these changes were motivated by a desire to make the books more up-to-date. Grosset & Dunlap , the primary publisher of Stratemeyer Syndicate books, requested that the books' racism be excised, a project that Adams felt was unnecessary. Grosset & Dunlap held firm; it had received an increasing number of letters from parents who were offended by

450-575: The Motor Boys' boat, Dartaway , is also the name of the plane mentioned in The Rover Boys in the Air (1912). Stratemeyer Syndicate Created by Edward Stratemeyer , the Stratemeyer Syndicate was the first book packager to have its books aimed at children, rather than adults. The Syndicate was wildly successful; at one time it was believed that the overwhelming majority of the books children read in

480-548: The Syndicate existed; the Syndicate had always gone to great lengths to hide its existence from the public, and ghostwriters were contractually obliged never to reveal their authorship. Grosset & Dunlap was awarded the rights to The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew volumes that it had published, but the Syndicate was judged free to take subsequent volumes elsewhere. Subsequent volumes were published by Simon & Schuster . Adams died in 1982. In 1984, Simon & Schuster purchased

510-716: The Syndicate later specialized in children's mystery series. This trend began in 1911, when Stratemeyer wrote and published The Mansion of Mystery , under the pseudonym Chester K. Steele . Five more books were published in that mystery series, the last in 1928. These books were aimed at a somewhat older audience than his previous series. After that, the Syndicate focused on mystery series aimed at its younger base: The Hardy Boys , which first appeared in 1927, ghostwritten by Leslie McFarlane and others; and Nancy Drew , which first appeared in 1930, ghostwritten by Mildred Wirt Benson , Walter Karig , and others. Both series were immediate financial successes. In 1930, Stratemeyer died, and

540-696: The Syndicate was inherited by his two daughters, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams and Edna Stratemeyer Squier. Stratemeyer Squier sold her share to her sister Harriet within a few years. Harriet Stratemeyer introduced such series as The Dana Girls (1934), Tom Swift Jr. , The Happy Hollisters , and many others. In the 1950s, Harriet began substantially revising old volumes in The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series, updating them by removing references to outdated cultural elements, such as "roadster". Racial slurs and stereotypes were also removed, and in some cases (such as The Secret at Shadow Ranch and The Mystery at

570-610: The UK). These other series first appeared around the 1950s outside the United States. The second Stratemeyer Syndicate series to be reprinted outside the United States appears to have been the first two books in the Don Sturdy series, although exact dates of printing are unknown. Those were The Desert of Mystery and The Big Snake Hunters . There are two British versions known of the latter book; both were printed by The Children's Press, one in

600-401: The United States were Stratemeyer Syndicate books, based on a 1922 study of over 36,000 American children. Stratemeyer's business acumen was in realizing that there was a huge, untapped market for children's books. The Stratemeyer Syndicate specialized in producing books that were meant primarily to be entertaining. In Stratemeyer's view, it was the thrill of feeling grown-up and the desire for

630-593: The color of Nancy's car, shortened the text, and made the language easier to read; but they made no substantive changes” to the stories. By the 1970s, Nancy Drew stories had “been translated into Spanish, Swedish, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Icelandic. Other series reprinted outside the States include The Dana Girls , The Hardy Boys and the Bobbsey Twins (in Australia, France, Sweden, and

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660-626: The contempt for social conventions ... is due to the reading of this poisonous sort of fiction." Franklin K. Mathiews, chief librarian for the Boy Scouts of America , wrote that series books were a method, according to the title of one of his articles, for "Blowing Out the Boys' Brains", and psychologist G. Stanley Hall articulated one of the most common concerns by asserting that series books would ruin girls in particular by giving them "false views of [life] ... which will cloud her life with discontent in

690-402: The end of a chapter in an early rough draft of one book and realized she could not read on since the book was unfinished. After begging her father to tell her how the book ended, she was irritated by his response: that he didn't know how it ended since he hadn't written it yet! Jane also recalls that while her friends at school knew The Happy Hollisters were based on her family, no one thought it

720-544: The favorite exclamations of Pete and Ricky Hollister's, respectively. Twelve of the books have been translated into Swedish . The whole series was translated into Spanish, and sold in Spain and several Latin American countries under the title "Los Hollister". The whole series was also translated into Norwegian , as Lykkebarna . At least 11 of their adventures were published in a German adaptation as Die fröhlichen Falkenbergs under

750-565: The future". None of this hurt sales and Stratemeyer was unperturbed, even when his books were banned from the Newark Public Library as early as 1901, writing to a publisher: "Personally it does not matter much to me. ... Taking them out of the Library has more than tripled the sales in Newark." Some syndicate series were also reprinted in foreign countries. An early foreign version was

780-583: The local YMCA , ride his racing bicycle, or punch a boxer's punching bag he had set up at home. In the cartoon series Arthur , Arthur and Francine, in an attempt to get their friend Buster Baxter to read, suggest several simple books, including The Jolly Jollisters . Rick Barba pays homage to The Happy Hollisters in his Spy Gear Adventures book series, by naming his two neighborhood bullies "Brill Joseph" (reminiscent of Joey Brill) and "Wilson Wills" (for Will Wilson). He also has his sibling protagonists Jake and Luke Bixby utter, "Crickets!", and, "Yikes!",

810-430: The pseudonym Laura Lee Hope , and Tom Swift in 1910 under the pseudonym Victor Appleton . Stratemeyer published a number of books under his own name, but the books published under pseudonyms sold better. Stratemeyer realized that "he could offer more books each year if he dealt with several publishers and had the books published under a number of pseudonyms which he controlled." Stratemeyer explained his strategy to

840-452: The stereotypes present in the books, particularly in The Hardy Boys publications. In the late 1970s, Adams decided it was time for Nancy and the Hardys to go into paperback, as the hardcover market was no longer what it had been. Grosset & Dunlap sued, citing "breach of contract, copyright infringement, and unfair competition". The ensuing case let the world know, for the first time, that

870-505: The syndicate from its partners — Edward Stratemeyer Adams, Camilla Adams McClave, Patricia Adams Harr, Nancy Axelrod and Lilo Wuenn — and turned to Mega-Books, a book packager, to handle the writing process for new volumes. "They don't have hippies in them," [Adams] said ... "And none of the characters have love affairs or get pregnant or take dope." All Stratemeyer Syndicate books were written under certain guidelines, based on practices Stratemeyer began with his first series,

900-434: Was "any kind of a big deal. It was just another job to them — although they thought it was strange that my father worked from home sometimes, and sometimes all night and weekend." She reports that he tended to write in concentrated sessions, sometimes for what seemed like three days straight. When he "locked himself in his office to write", no one was allowed to disturb him. She reports that he took breaks from writing to swim at

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