Nancy Drew is 95! History, creation, lasting influence, controversy, and more.
Nancy Drew is 95 years old as of April 28, 2025!!
She’s looking pretty good for someone her age, isn’t she?
The first Nancy Drew book, The Secret of the Old Clock, was released on April 28, 1930. Two more books, The Hidden Staircase and The Bungalow Mystery. Since then, there have been millions of books published, TV shows and movies produced, spin-off series launched, and culture impacted.
Who would have imagined that children’s stories about a teenage girl sleuth would launch a worldwide phenomenon? I doubt even Nancy’s creator Edward Stratemeyer would have imagined it.
The concept for Nancy Drew was created in the 1920s by Stratemeyer who also created the idea of The Hardy Boys. Well, if it wasn’t Stratemeyer alone who created her, it was a combination of him and those who worked with him at The Stratemeyer Syndicate.
The Syndicate was Stratemeyer’s brainchild, created after he’d already found success writing stories for children, starting when he was a child himself.
According to a 2018 article in The New Yorker, Stratemeyer was born in 1862 in New Jersey. He was the youngest of six children. As a child he spent a lot of time reading the popular rags-to-riches tales of Horatio Alger and William T. Adams (a.k.a. Oliver Optic). In his teens he bought his own printing press and created his own stories. At the age of 26 he sold his first story, “Victor Horton’s Idea” to Golden Days, a popular boys magazine at the time. He was paid $75 for the story and his father, who previously had seen his writing as a waste of time, suggested he write more.
He did write more, under a variety of pen names. Then he became an editor at Good News, another child magazine. Eventually he became a ghost writer for various children’s book authors, wrote many of his own, and turned out ideas for other authors to create characters. Many said he wasn’t a great writer, but he was great at ideas.
As his ideas began to sell books, he decided to form a syndicate or a publishing company which would produce books in an assembly line style. By 1910 his syndicate was producing ten or more juvenile titles with about a dozen different writers. By 1920 tens of millions of books produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate were circulating with surveys showing that in 1926, ninety-eight percent of children listed at least one Stratemeyer produced book as their favorite.
According to the article in The New Yorker, this is how it worked:
“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. As Fortune later noted, it was good business for children to become attached to a name, but it would be bad business for that name to leave the syndicate with the ghostwriter.”
And this, eventually, would be where the name Carolyn Keene, the “author” of Nancy Drew came from. In reality, there was no Carolyn Keene. There were only a large number of writers who wrote the books the way Edward Stratemeyer, and later his daughter, Harriet, wanted, just like they had all the other titles and series.
Series produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate included Tom Swift, Bobbsey Twins, Rover Boys, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew Mysteries, Motor Boys and some 50 others.
Nancy Drew’s first book came out April 28, 1930. Twelve days later, Edward Stratemeyer, who had already published millions of books was dead of pneumonia at the age of 67.
His two daughters were left with the question of what to do with the company. Should they continue it? Sell it?
Eventually, the daughters would take over the business, but Harriet would become the driving force behind the company, including helping to make Nancy Drew a worldwide phenomenon.
Grossett and Dunlap produced the books produced by Stratemeyer and they greenlighted the Nancy Drew series after receiving this memo from him:
“These suggestions are for a new series for girls verging on novels. 224 pages, to retail at fifty cents. I have called this line the “Stella Strong Stories,” but they might also be called “Diana Drew Stories,” “Diana Dare Stories,” “Nan Nelson Stories,” “Nan Drew Stories” or “Helen Hale Stories.” […] Stella Strong, a girl of sixteen, is the daughter of a District Attorney of many years standing. He is a widower and often talks over his affairs with Stella and the girl was present during many interviews her father had with noted detectives and at the solving of many intricate mysteries. Then, quite unexpectedly, Stella plunged into some mysteries of her own and found herself wound up in a series of exciting situations. An up-to-date American girl at her best, bright, clever, resourceful and full of energy.”
One of the first writers of the series was Mildred Wirt Benson (just Mildred Wirt when she wrote the series). In fact, Stratemeyer had her in mind when he conceptualized the series.
She wrote twenty-three out of the first thirty books in the Nancy Drew series.
This would become a source of controversy in 1980 when Harriet tried to claim she had written all of the Nancy Drew books herself under the Carolyn Keene pseudonym. A court case involving Grosset & Dunlap and Simon & Schuster about who owned the rights to produce Nancy Drew books drew Mildred out of the woodwork and made Harriet admit she’d helped to write the books, and at one point rewrite them, but she was not the primary writer for most of the books.
When Harriet rewrote the Nancy Drew books in the 1950s she changed the sleuth’s personality from Benson’s original vision of her being more spunky and assertive than Benson had made her.
Mildred had been working for the Syndicate since 1926 when she had answered an ad at the age of 21. The ad had stated that the publishing house was looking for young writers who could come up with new ideas for juvenile books.
She wrote for other Stratemeyer series, but it was Nancy that would become the breakout success. Not that Mildred told a lot of people about her role in the books, partially because she was not supposed to as part of her agreement with the syndicate, who she worked with the syndicate until the early 1950s when management changes changed her role.
Mildred wrote the first Nancy Drew book at the age of 24.
In an interview with WTGE Public Media in Toledo, Ohio, the city where Mildred eventually settled down, she said she didn’t know when she was writing those first books that Nancy would become as big as she did.
“In fact, I don’t think anyone ever anticipated the success such as Nancy Drew has had,” she said. “But I did know that I was creating something that was an unusual book. I knew from the way I felt as I wrote that I was writing something that would be popular.”
While Harriet took the opportunity in 1973, after her sister’s death, to claim she helped her father create Nancy Drew, the 1980 court case blew that out of the water and Benson was subsequently credited with helping to create Nancy. Harriet was, however, a contributor to changes to the books Mildred wrote (taming Nancy Drew down readers say) and the promotion of them, as well as helping ghost writers write later editions.
Later Benson would name the second book in the original series, The Hidden Staircase, as her favorite book to write. Over the years she agreed to sign Nancy Drew books, but only those she had actually written.
Other titles Benson worked on for the syndicate included Kay Tracey and Dana Girls mysteries. After leaving the syndicate she wrote the Penny Park mystery series, which was about the daughter of a newspaper editor who was trying to become a newspaper reporter herself. She called Penny the favorite character she’d ever created, even over Nancy Drew, because she considered Penny “a better Nancy Drew than Nancy is.”
In 1944 Benson began writing for the Toledo Blade and continued to work there for 58 years, focusing mainly on journalism for the rest of her life. It’s why the Toledo Public Library held a Nancy Drew Convention on Friday to celebrate her 95 years.
Benson was a true Nancy Drew and you can read more about her in my separate post here.
Though Nancy Drew was written during the Great Depression, her books didn’t focus on the struggles of everyday citizens. Instead, Nancy was jetting off on trips, driving nice cars, taking flying lessons, learning new skills, being bold. She loved fashion but she also wasn’t afraid of getting her hands dirty.
She could wear pearls and a dress one evening and wear jeans and sneakers the next.
Nancy Drew books never focused on the macabre. Very few books discussed murders. There was very little description of violence. There was absolutely no sex show or even discussed. Nancy had a boyfriend (Ned Nickerson) but they didn’t even kiss.
In other words, Nancy didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, and didn’t go out with boys who did.
Nancy’s image was very important to Harriet, who wanted Nancy to be someone young women could look up to and strive to be like.
Cara Strickland wrote in a 2018 article for JTSOR Daily, that Nancy’s books were “intended to be safe for children, but also functioned as an escape from the heavy realities of their cultural moment.”
The mysteries in a Nancy Drew book were simple, yet also featured complex elements, such as red herrings and miscommunications.
They were fast-moving, full of minimal descriptions, and void of deep exchanges among the characters. They didn’t make you think much beyond what mystery was unfolding and how it was being solved.
The goal of the books wasn’t to address current events or push agendas. Their goal was simply to show the book’s heroes prevailing over evil and setting the world right again.
Young readers loved this, and now, many adults do as well.
The lack of mention of current events also made sure the books remained timeless.
Yes, the books, especially the earlier ones, are certainly dated. There are aspects that some in today’s world might see as culturally insensitive, old-fashioned, or out of touch.
They still, however, show us a young woman who is brave, curious, driven, and determined to solve mysteries to help other people.
From that first book in 1930 came 600 different titles, including spinoffs and updates. Later came movies (the first appearing in 1938), TV Shows, video games, comic books, podcasts, and, of course, merchandise of all kinds (lunch boxes, t-shirts, bookmarks, socks, etc. etc.).
Nancy Drew was originally published by Grosset & Dunlap, but during the lawsuit filed in 1980, as mentioned above, Simon & Schuster won the rights to publish Nancy Drew books after the first 56 because in 1979, the Syndicate had switched to Simon & Schuster. Grosset & Dunlap retained the publishing rights to the first 56 books and eventually Simon & Schuster purchased the Stratemeyer Syndicate in 1984.
The Nancy Drew Mysteries (original series) ran from 1930 to 2003 and produced 175 different titles. Nancy Drew Girl Detective ran from 2004 to 2012. The Nancy Drew Diaries started in 2013 and continue through today. Many fans of the original, more sanitized versions of Nancy, haven’t appreciated the more modernized version of Nancy. So much so that some of the series were discontinued.
The original Nancy Drew series, without the more modern social aspects the more modern series might have, remains the perfect escape from a world growing increasingly chaotic and frightening. Now, though, it isn’t only younger readers craving that escape. People, mainly women, of all ages, are losing themselves in Nancy Drew mystery books. Whether they are revisiting them from when they were young girls or finding them for the first time, they are filling a void that other books can’t for them.
I am one of those women.
Avery, host of True Drew: A Podcast Of All Things Nancy Drew is another one of those women.
“I guess I would say that I’m a fan of the Nancy Drew book series because it is a comfort to me,” Avery wrote to me this weekend. “Reading the books now as an adult instantly transports me back to a simpler time, when I was a girl, and Nancy was a constant companion to me, whether at school, on a road trip, or just laying on a blanket in the backyard on a sunny day and reading one of her mysteries. Nancy Drew showed me from a young age that women can be capable, skilled and smart. She modeled all of the best qualities: how to be a good friend, a good daughter and a good detective! And it always struck me as really cool that my mother and grandmother, who got me into the series, read the books before I did and it was something we could share and talk about together.”
On her website, Avery shares: “In Nancy, I saw a young woman who was not only capable, smart and resourceful when she solved mysteries, but a character that shared my strawberry blonde or “titian” hair color. Back in April 2023, my dad and I happened to go to an estate sale where I bought 70+ Nancy Drew books I had never read or seen before–later paperbacks from the 1990’s–and the idea for @TrueDrewPodcast was born!”
Laura Puckett, a reader and mom, also started reading Nancy when she was young.
“My memories of Nancy Drew started when I was quite young,” she writes. “Right after piano lessons my mother would take me to the library, and I would take the direct path to the sgelf with all the yellow book spines. Finding the next mystery that I hadn’t read, I would barely contain my excitement while looking at the cover to see which adventure I’d get to go along with Nancy on. These books accompanied me on road trips, in my hammock, in my bed before sleep, and so many other places. They are a pleasant part of my childhood and helped me fall in love with reading.”
Mystery author Trixie Silvertale started reading Nancy Drew books when she was five or six years old.
“It was very meaningful to read about a female main character. The fact that she was intelligent and broke a few rules, but did the right thing in the end, was a really great role model… Even though I didn’t realize it at the time! I always think of those books fondly.”
Are the stories in a Nancy Drew Mystery earth-shattering or life-changing? Not usually.
Are they hard-hitting and full of globally impactful wisdom? Nope.
Are they full of gritty stories and swoony romantic scenes? Not at all.
And all those reasons are why so many readers still find themselves reaching for them at libraries, bookstores, and thrift shops today. 95 years after they were first introduced.
Additional resources:
Tell Me More About: Mildred “Millie” Wirt Benson (The original Carolyn Keene)
https://www.truedrewpodcast.com/
https://daily.jstor.org/the-secret-syndicate-behind-nancy-drew/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/11/08/nancy-drews-father
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carolyn_Keene
https://www.tampabay.com/archive/2002/05/30/nancy-drew-s-author-dies-at-96/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildred_Benson
https://www.lib.uiowa.edu/iwa/mildred/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nancy-Drew
https://barrewithjustine.ca/2024/05/17/the-history-and-enduring-appeal-of-the-nancy-drew-stories/
https://crimereads.com/a-cultural-history-of-nancy-drew/
https://www.encyclopedia.com/children/academic-and-educational-journals/nancy-drew
Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.
You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
Sunday Bookends: My 10-year-old’s opinion of the 1982 Annie, some dirt road traveling, and drop in crafternoons continue
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
The kids helped some friends of the family clean up their yard last week and while they helped, I took a tour on the dirt roads around the property. It was fun to look at the cows grazing on the hillsides, even though they aren’t fully green yet (the hills, not the cows), watch two young does walk in front of me slowly, admire the amazing sky and clouds that day.
I rambled a little bit more about last week in my post yesterday, if you would like to read it.
On Friday, we drove to pick up groceries. In other words, we didn’t do very much last week.
Yesterday, Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I held our monthly Drop In Crafternoon with a couple of other bloggers. We will be holding another one tentatively on May 10 at 1 p.m. and definitely on May 24 at 1 p.m.
The crafternoons are events where we gather on Zoom and craft at our respective homes and chat while we work on various projects. There is one woman who creates with beads, another who colors, I sometimes draw or color, and Erin has been embroidering lately. We are calling them drop-in crafternoons because you can drop in and out during the time we are on. No need to stay the whole time if you can’t. Come late if you want or leave early.
Our conversations are usually about light things, including books, but somehow I got us on racism, or maybe Liz did, but usually the conversations aren’t super heavy. You will probably meet our cats, children, husbands, and dogs during the drop in so be warned.
If you want to just drop in and say hello If you would like to join us shoot Erin an email at crackercrumblife@gmail.com and she’ll add you to our mailing list.
Uh…nothing
I keep saying I am going to finish The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien the next week, but I am sure I will actually finish it this week.
I have enjoyed it but, oh my, is it long and wordy. I like the wordy at times too, don’t get me wrong, but I just felt like I might never make it to the end. I am only about three chapters away from the end and I do know that it will end on a cliffhanger since each “book” in the series is actually two books of one huge saga of six books altogether so in many ways I still won’t be done. But I will at least be done with this installment.
I am not sure when I will read Return of the King but probably not until fall or winter.
I’ll need a little break from fantasy books for a while I think. I need a few good mysteries and a romance up next, I think.
I didn’t read any of the James Herriot book (All Things Wise and Wonderful) this past week, except for last night, but I will be diving into it again this week.
I also started Grave Pursuits (Pennsylvania Parks Book 1) by Elle E. Kay as something quick to read and I am enjoying it so far. Elle is a writer who lives about 90 minutes from me, and she writes about state parks and towns near me. I am looking forward to one she wrote that takes place in the town I live in. I’m curious to see what she writes about our tiny town. I’ll be digging into that one next.
I’m also reading The Hardy Boys The Twisted Claw.
Little Miss and I are reading Magical Melons (also called Caddie Woodlawn’s Family) by Carol Ryrie Brink, a collection of short stories about Caddie Woodlawn.
Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder by Valerie Burns
Peg and Rose Solve a Murder by Laurien Berenson
I watched a Hardy Boys from the 1977 show last week and will be writing about it later. I also watched a few episodes of Murder She Wrote from the last season and missed Cabot Cove. She was living in New York City in these episodes.
Little Miss decided she wanted to watch the 1982 version of Annie last night (not sure what inspired this, but maybe a meme she saw making fun of it or something). I told The Husband we were watching it while he was at a work event, and he asked if it was because it was Carol Burnett’s birthday. I said I didn’t know it was her birthday, but it was perfect timing.
When we started it, I realized I must have seen the movie as a kid more than I remembered, because I had it practically memorized. I also realized how old I am because a movie about an orphan hits different now that I am older and think about all those children out there who just want a place to call home.
Another realization was how manipulative that little Annie was. Daddy Warbucks is going to send her back to the orphanage? She adopts a sad look and says, “It’s okay. I’ve already had enough fun just in the short time I’ve been here.” Daddy Warbucks isn’t going to go to the movies with them? “Oh. It’s okay. I don’t need to go to a movie. I’ll just practice my backhand. That girl at the orphanage who said she’d been to a movie once is a liar anyhow.”
Of course, I know that’s not really how they were trying to play her. I’m just having a little fun. In all honesty, I was surprised how nostalgic I was watching the movie.
I couldn’t wait to show Little Miss classic songs like “It’s A Hard Knock Life For Us” and “Little Girls.”
Here were some of her quotes during the movie:
“Why are they dancing? She told them to clean. Hey! You’re supposed to be cleaning! Not practicing your flips!”
“Oh. The little orphan’s got hands!”
“No! Don’t fall for that man! He looks like Professor Quirrell but squared up!”
“No! You can’t marry him! It’s like marrying Jeff Bezos! He pretty much is Jeff Bezos!”
That and when Grace comes out in her yellow dress “oh that dress is beautiful! Slay, girl!”
Watching it and all the great songs (Easy Street with Carol, Tim Curry, and Bernadette Peters for one) was a ton of fun and Little Miss didn’t even make too much fun of it so that was a win!
At the end I asked her what she thought.
“It was kind of a strange movie. We went from, ‘oh these children are sort of being abused, but I guess we’re okay with that.’ To ‘Oh my gosh that guy is chasing her and she’s hanging off this bridge and going to die’ to ‘oh, she has a family now. That’s – uh – cool”
I am making some progress on book four in the Gladwynn Grant Mystery series. You can find the other three here.
I don’t have a release date yet but I’m having fun pulling ideas together for the story.
Last week on the blog I shared:
- Saturday Afternoon Chat: A drive in the country and adding a blog roll to my blog
- Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot
- Springtime in Paris: Hugo
- Recapping and reviewing the 1977 Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries episode The Secret of the Whispering Walls
- Easter Morn
Now It’s Your Turn
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
This post is linked up with The Sunday Post at Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, The Sunday Salon with Deb at Readerbuzz, and Book Date: It’s Monday! What are you reading hosted by Kathyrn at The Book Date.
Saturday Afternoon Chat: A drive in the country and adding a blog roll to my blog
Good afternoon!
Welcome to the blog for a Saturday Afternoon Chat, where I look back at my week that was.
Most of the time my weeks are not very exciting so don’t expect too much.
Would you care for a beverage while we chat?
I have a variety of tea – peppermint, chamomile, raspberry, and an orange turmeric (has a bit of a bite to it). I also have some milk, grape juice, and just plain water. But no ice cubes. Yes, I need to get ice cub trays because our ice maker doesn’t work.
This past week was fairly routine for us. We did homeschool lessons for most of the week, and then on Thursday I took the kids to the house of a family friend, and they cleaned up sticks and leaves from their yard and The Boy built a garden fence for the woman.
While they worked, I took a scenic tour on the dirt roads around their house. I’ve lived in this area my entire life, but don’t remember being on these roads. The roads had very Irish names like McKeany and Murphy, so I recorded a couple of videos saying the name of the roads in one of the worst Irish accents you’ve ever heard and sent them to Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. She and Wyatt had a good laugh over my horrible accent, and that’s what I was going for, so it worked.
I enjoyed looking at the cows and saw a couple of deer. I tried to film them but I apparently didn’t hit the record button on my phone correctly. Sigh. I did get a quick video but it wasn’t terribly exciting. The sky was amazing that day.
I’d like to say I enjoyed looking at the rolling green hills, but they aren’t very green just yet. The trees are just starting to bloom, and the grass is just starting to grow here. Today we have rain, so I have a feeling that by next week the hillsides will be much brighter and healthier in appearance.
Yesterday, Little Miss and I drove the 30 minutes one way to get our groceries from the Aldi pickup. We went back to my parents for a bit and then came home to unload while The Boy stayed to help my dad with fixing up a couple of lawn mowers to get ready for mowing season.
Today Little Miss and I will spend much of our day alone together while it rains outside. The Husband has assignments to attend and cover for the newspaper and The Boy is going to a friends for the rest of the weekend.
I am going to get on Zoom for our drop-in Crafternoon. You can find more information about it on Erin’s page here until I get my own information page up on it, but the bottom line is it is a chance for people to connect via Zoom and do crafts while we chat. They can be any crafts — knitting, sketching, coloring, watercolors, painting, scrapbooking, needlework. Whatever you craft, you are welcome. Unless it is sketching naked people. Maybe don’t do that on our Zoom. Har. Har. You don’t even have to craft. You can just come on and chat.
We have a tentative one scheduled for May 10 and a definite one scheduled for May 24. All you need to do is send an email to Erin at crackercrumblife@gmail.com or me at lisahoweler@gmail.com, and we will make sure you get on our list to email you the Zoom link.
On other blog matters, I discovered this week how to add a blog roll to my sidebar since WordPress removed the ability to do that a couple of years ago. You can still add a blog roll, but only if the blog is on WordPress. I follow blogs that are on a variety of host sites so I wanted the option to add them as well. After a quick search online, I found directions on how to do that:
Create a Navigation (Link) Menu for Your Blogroll:
- Navigate to Appearance > Menus: in your WordPress dashboard.
- Create a New Menu: Click “Create a new menu” and name it something like “Blogroll”.
- Add Menu Items: Use the “Custom Links” section to add links to other websites.
- Enter the URL of the website and a descriptive label for the link.
- Click “Add to Menu” to include the link.
- Save the Menu: Click “Save Menu” to save your changes.
It was pretty simple, and it is sad it took me this long after they took away the official blog roll feature for me to figure it out. Now I just have to add more of my favorite blogs.
I don’t understand why WordPress is always changing things. I feel like if it isn’t broke there is not need to fix it while they seem to think, “it’s not broke but we can improve it” and then it’s like they wander off in the middle of improving it to improve something else and the thing they said they were going to improve just sits there now broken.
So, to me, WordPress is like a person who says he’s — I mean they — are going to fix something in a house but he — I mean they — wanders off in the middle of one project to start another project and eventually there are like ten projects in the house and around the property that are in various degrees of progress/finish status.
Maybe one day WordPress will actually finish a project and stop messing around with it.
So how was your week?
Do anything interesting or exciting?
Let me know in the comments or leave a link to your weekly round-up post. Tomorrow I will be sharing what I’ve been reading and watching, etc. in my Sunday Bookends post.
Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot
Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog, and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
Your hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
This week we are spotlighting: Debbie Dabble Blog and Debbie Dabbles Christmas Blog
A little about Debbie and her blog: I am a Victorian Soul, who lives in a small townhouse that was built in the mid 1970’s, not a huge Mega Mansion!! I just recently lost my Hubby Joe, who was a Retired Letter Carrier. I worked night shift as an RN on a Hospital based Rehabilitation( Physical Medicine) Unit for 37 years before I had Knee Replacement Surgery and officially Retired in 2019 after 41 years working in Direct Patient Care … I am so glad that we retired at 62 years of age and got to spend that time together before he passed….I still do love Retirement!!!!
I DABBLE IN A BIT OF THIS AND THAT!!!!
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!
Everyone else, Please remember that this is a link-up where you can share posts from the previous week or posts from weeks, months, or even years ago. All we ask is that they be family-friendly!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
What a beautiful table setting.
Important things to know:
- You may add unlimited family-friendly blog post links, linked to specific blog posts.
- Be sure to visit other links and leave a kind comment for each link you post (it would be too hard to visit every link, of course!)
- The party opens Thursday evening and ends Wednesday.
- Thank you for participating. Have fun!
*By linking to The Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot Link Up, you give permission to share your post and images on the hosts’ blogs. Proper credit with a photo and link back will be provided.
Now! Let’s get to linking!!
Springtime in Paris: Hugo
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I have been watching movies that take place in Paris this spring.
Up this week was the movie Hugo.
I had vaguely heard of this one before, but really didn’t know what it was about until Erin suggested it. I don’t know how I didn’t know more about it since it was nominated for eleven Oscars, including best director and best picture, in 2012. It won five for things like cinematography and design. (Thanks to Cat from Cat’s Wire for letting me know I looked at the nomination list instead of the win list when I originally posted this. ooops! hahaha!)
This was a magical children’s movie with beautiful imagery and cinematography. It was much different than I expected based on the movie poster and trailer. I watched it before I read any descriptions. I often don’t read detailed descriptions of movies or books before I jump into them. It can make it either a pleasant or a disturbing surprise. Ha! This was a pleasant one.
First, a quick Google description of the movie: Orphaned and alone except for an uncle, Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) lives in the walls of a train station in 1930s Paris. Hugo’s job is to oil and maintain the station’s clocks, but to him, his more important task is to protect a broken automaton and notebook left to him by his late father (Jude Law). Accompanied by the goddaughter (Chloë Grace Moretz) of an embittered toy merchant (Ben Kingsley), Hugo embarks on a quest to solve the mystery of the automaton and find a place he can call home.
This is one of those ensemble casts with several well-known actors including Ben Kingsley, Sascha Baron Cohen, Christopher Lee, Jude Law, Helen McCroy, Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Moretz, Emily Mortimer, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Richard Griffiths.
Directed by Martin Scorsese, the movie was released in 2011 and was based on the 2007 book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. The book sounds like a visual marvel. It has 284 illustrations mixed in 500 pages of a story.
Selznick once described the book “not exactly a novel, not quite a picture book, not really a graphic novel, or a flip book or a movie, but a combination of all these things.”
Though I’ve never seen the book, I did see some photos online (such as those pictured above) and Scorsese seems to have captured the magic of the illustrations almost exactly as they are in the book.
The cinematography, the costumes, and the sets in Hugo are gorgeous and magical. There are a variety of unique camera angles and filming techniques that give much of the film a soft and dreamlike feel. It is what some might call a visual smorgasbord.
Close-ups on Hugo’s (Asa Butterfield) big blue eyes are frequent, and draw the viewer into his world, making them wonder what he is thinking behind those eyes.
When the movie starts, Hugo is spying on the activity in the train station through the numbers in the clocks high up in the walls and a tower in the middle of the station.
We see that he seems to live in the walls behind these clocks, getting food from vendors he steals from throughout the day to survive.
Eventually, we learn that he’s been living in these makeshift spaces since his father died and his alcoholic uncle took him in. It appears, though, that the uncle is no longer around, and it isn’t until later in the movie, we learn why. Hugo is continuing to keep the clocks running so a new clock repairer isn’t hired and he is discovered.
Towards the beginning of the film, we meet the toy maker who accuses Hugo of stealing from his booth. Hugo is indeed stealing small pieces of machinery from the toy maker’s booth. When the toymaker catches him, he makes Hugo empty his pockets and one of those pockets includes a small notebook with drawings inside about how to repair the automaton that his father found at the museum he was working at before he died.
The drawings trigger something in the toy maker, and he takes the notebook and refuses to give it back to Hugo. This leads to Hugo chasing the toy maker home to try to convince him to give the notebook back. The toy maker refuses but Hugo sees who he thinks is the toymaker’s granddaughter and begs her to ask her grandfather for the book back. He learns that the girl is not the man’s granddaughter, but his goddaughter who was taken in after her parents died.
We are never really told what actually happened to her parents. The girl’s name is Isabelle and she and Hugo become friends. She goes to work with her godfather and encourages Hugo to stand up to him to get his notebook back. Hugo does and the godfather tells him that if he will work for him in his shop then he will give him his notebook back.
Isabelle and Hugo become friends, and eventually Hugo will tell her about the automaton and how he needs a special key to turn it on.
Isabelle takes him to the library, where the librarian gives her books. Hugo looks bewildered as she talks about books, which prompts Isabella to ask Hugo, “Don’t you like books?”
He assures her he definitely does.
Books, movies, and art in general are very important to Hugo because they were things he and his father did together before his father passed away. His father was a clockmaker and repairer and also worked at a museum and was well educated. We learn toward the beginning of the film through flashbacks that Hugo has not only lost his father, but years before he had also lost his mother.
When Hugo isn’t working at the toy shop, he is avoiding the station master (Baren Cohen) who enjoys capturing orphans he catches in the station and then sending them back to the orphanage. At first glance the station master seems like a very angry bitter person but we will later learn there is a lot more to him than we realize.
This movie could be a real downer if it weren’t for the quirky characters and the constant striving of the movie (and the viewer) to get to an ending we hope will be full of some happiness for Hugo. Had this been any other Scorsese film, we might not have gotten that (like Hugo might have ended up at the bottom of the river. Ya’ know what I’m sayin’?), but without offering too many spoilers I can assure you there is a happy ending.
I loved the scenes where Isabelle and Hugo were walking around the old library, by the way. Oh, to walk in a library with books piled up high like that.
There are several little storylines going on throughout this movie. The big one we have is with Hugo, of course, as he tries to figure out how to get the automaton to work again and then find out what message it might be sending when it does work.
(He hopes it is a message from his father or from anyone to help him not feel so alone.)
Then we have the friendship between him and Isabelle and the antagonistic relationship Hugo has with her godfather. Then there is the godfather’s story and the story of the godmother. Then there are the characters who work inside the station and their relationships.
The story from the book and the movie does feature real life characters including the real life filmmaker named Georges Méliès. To avoid spoilers, I won’t share which character portrays Georges.
Have you ever seen this one? What did you think of it?
You can find Erin’s thoughts on it here.
You can learn more about Georges Melies on Cat’s blog here.
I can’t believe we are winding down with our Springtime in Paris feature!
Next week we are writing about The Intouchables, a French film with subtitles. It is rated-R for language and sexual discussions (but no on screen sex or violence…I previewed it *wink* Right now it is streaming for free if you have an Amazon Prime membership. You can also find it on DisneyPlus, Fandango, Plex, YouTubeTV, Google Play, AppleTV, and Hulu
The week after, on May 4, we are having a group watch of Charade with Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant via Zoom, and then we will share our thoughts on the movie on our blogs May 8.
If you watch any of the movies on our list for this feature at any point before May 10th, you can find the link on this post below or at the link up in the menu at the top of the page. You don’t have to watch the movies the same weeks we do to write about them.
Other resources:
Wikipedia Georges Melies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_M%C3%A9li%C3%A8s
Wikipedia The Invention of Hugo Cabret book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invention_of_Hugo_Cabret
More about Melies from Cat’s Wire: https://catswire.blogspot.com/2025/04/silent-movies-trip-to-moon.html
Recapping and reviewing the 1977 Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries episode The Secret of the Whispering Walls
Here we are to another episode from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries show from 1977. As I’ve mentioned before, in the first season of this series the episodes switched back and forth from Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew episodes and in the next season they started to join together.
This week we have another Nancy Drew episode, The Secret of the Whispering Walls.
I knew part way into this one that it was based on at least one Nancy Drew book — The Secret of Red Gate Farm, but learned on the Nancy Drew Wiki site that it also combined the story of The Hidden Staircase. I didn’t recognize some of the elements from that book until I read that and then I began to see what parts they pulled from it. I did find it interesting that there is a book with this title from the same era as the Nancy Drew books and ironically it is written by Mildred Benson, who wrote about 30 of the original Nancy Drews under the pseudoym Carolyn Keene.
The book was part of the Penny Parker Mysteries series and I thought it was interesting what was written in the description of the book on Amazon.
“Penny Parker starred in a series of 17 books written by Mildred A. Wirt Benson and published from 1939 through 1947. Penny was a high school sleuth who also occasionally moonlighted as a reporter for her father’s newspaper. Benson favored Penny Parker over all the other books she wrote, including Nancy Drew. “I always thought Penny Parker was a better Nancy Drew than Nancy is,” Mrs. Benson said in 1993.”
You know I’m going to have to get a copy of this one so I can compare.
On to the episode:
We open to someone breaking into a house.
Then we have Ned Nickerson, the assistant of Nancy’s father, attorney Carson Drew for the purpose of the show, pull up outside a house. Nancy’s friend George Fayne hops out of the back seat and says “Super evening, Ned! Thanks for the movie!” She gives a little wave and hops toward the house, which I assumed was hers because Nancy stays in the car.
We see George go into the house and we see the hands of the person rifling through drawers and that person stops as George closes the front door. So, it must be George’s house, right?
But, no, Nancy then follows a few minutes later, walking into the same house. She’s walking toward the stairs when she hears something fall in her father’s office.
My question is — why didn’t she come into the house with George?
In other episodes it has appeared that Ned was just a friend, unlike in the books where he is her boyfriend. Could Nancy have been staying behind for a goodnight kiss? Hmmmm….
I’m guessing maybe so because after George goes in the house we see someone opening the office door enough to peer out and watch her go up the stairs. Then we switch back to Nancy smiling at Ned and Ned smiling back. Nancy gets out of the car and then Ned looks pretty proud of himself about something or maybe it’s more delighted, as he leans back and shifts the car into gear.
Maybe this was a deleted scene to keep the show clear of kissing sessions. *wink* Again I say hmmmmmm.
Whatever the reason, let us move on to the plot.
Nancy catches someone in her father’s office, but the man pushes her down and takes off back into the office and smashes a chair through the window to escape. I’m not sure why he didn’t just rush past her and through the front door, but I guess he has a flare for the dramatics.
Nancy and George are, of course, alarmed and when they hear someone else coming back to the office from the outside, they arm themselves. George is wielding an umbrella that she brings down on what she thinks is the head of the intruder returning, but it is actually the head of Mr. Drew.
Oops. *cue goofy music here*
The next morning Carson Drew is looking through the papers in office to see if anything was taken by the burglar. He thinks things are mostly in order, but then, wait a minute — the papers for the sale of the property and farm owned by Carson’s eccentric aunts are missing. The sale was supposed to be finalized the next day.
This means Carson will need to go to the state capital and obtain new copies of the deeds so he can transfer the property to the aunt’s neighbor. He asks Nancy and George to go to the home of the aunts to explain to them what has happened while he heads to the capital.
He’ll be there in time for the signing of the papers, he assures Nancy.
On the way to the farm, Nancy tells George about the neighbor of the aunts, a grumpy and mean old farmer who used to try to scare Nancy as a child with his tractor. No sooner has she said this than a tractor barrels across the dirt road and forces her car off the road.
It’s the grumpy farmer, Mr. Warner, who tells her to watch where she is going. There is a back and forth about it being the land of Nancy’s great aunts and the farmer saying it will soon be his land and him ignoring Nancy’s requests to pull her car out of the ditch.
Nancy and George have to walk to the farm of the eccentric aunts and when they get there the farmer roars by and says, “I warned those two young women! Just remember, if anything happens to them in this old house, it’s on your conscious, not mine!”
“Oh, it’s just his way of scaring people off with wild stories.”
“Not so wild!” says the one aunt, pointing at the girls menacingly. “I have heard those demons, and I have seen them!”
“Yeah pink elephants, purple spiders, and usually after one of her ‘cough spellings,’” snaps the other aunt.
This comment starts the reoccurring humorous theme of Aunt Lela’s clearly being a functioning alcoholic. She kept taking a “tonic for her heart” but viewers are given the impression that drink in the little cup is a bit stronger than a “tonic”.
What Aunt Lila means by “demons” are voices inside her walls. This was a plot point in the Hidden Staircase when the aunt of Nancy’s friend Helen Corning (who later disappears completely from the series) says there are ghosts in her house.
Inside the house later, the aunts tell Nancy and George that they are excited to move and are going to Las Vegas. The declaration of their planned destination is declared by the aunt who is a drinker.
They also make this announcement in front of a couple who have recently arrived at the farm to help the two aunts run it. To say the couple seems a bit off is an understatement. When Nancy asks the man some questions and then says she gets the impression he cares for her aunts very much, he abruptly stops talking and walks away in a very bad acting moment meant to let us know that there are some secrets brewing at this place and he may know what they are.
Ned and Carson are supposed to be heading out to the farm with paperwork for the aunt’s to sign but they are knocked off the road by a mysterious truck. Carson ends up in the hospital but doesn’t want Nancy to know so she won’t get worried.
It takes a couple of days for Ned to get to Nancy since he’s with Carson and by then Nancy has already discovered that there is a tunnel behind the walls at the aunt’s house that leads to a well on the property of the cranky farmer who wants to buy the land. The well is one of those huge old-fashioned ones that you can crawl out of. One of those you only ever see in the movies or televi— oh, right.
Nancy wants to find out where the voices were coming from since she didn’t find the source when she went through the tunnel. She know she’ll have to go through again to figure it out.
This plot point is different than in The Secret of Red Gate Farm where Nancy discovers a “cult” but that is something you will have to read if you want to know more about that craziness. People in white sheets. Ahem. That’s all I’ll say about that. It is not what you think it is, however.
Warning! I am going to share some spoilers in these next couple of paragraphs. You’ve been warned.
Are your ready?
If you don’t want spoilers you might want to skip this part.
I’m warning you.
Okay. You’ve been warned.
In The Secret of Red Gate Farm the “cult” on the hill is actually a group of people trying to cover up a counterfeit money ring and it is the same in this episode except the strange couple who came to help out the aunts are running the ring and are trying to get them not to sell so they can keep doing it. They have set up their operation in a room under ground at the end of one of the tunnels that leads from the aunt’s house to the neighbor’s well.
The aunts know about the tunnels by the way, but they thought they were all sealed up. They used to be used for smuggling goods in the 1890s the drinker aunt says as she sniffs her “tonic.”
Nancy discovers what the couple is doing through a series of steps, including finding burnt counterfeit money after the couple has burned the trash further up the proptery, a trap door in the barn, and then spying on the couple as they go into the barn. She also decides to take George with her into the tunnels when she hears voices in the walls after the couple has driven a van into the barn.
At the same time Nancy and George head down the cranky neighbor also hears the voices from his well and decides he’s going to find out what is going on. He is certain that Nancy and her dad are trying to find a way to keep him from buying the aunt’s property.
Eventually, the bad guys (the couple) capture the neighbor and tie him up, which Nancy and George see because they are spying from the end of one of the tunnels. They overhear the couple planning to get as much of the fake money out as they can and then blow the tunnel to bury all the evidence. They’re going to bury the neighbor too.
Nancy sneaks in while they are sneaking out and unties the neighbor so they can all get out before the explosion.
Going back a bit here for a funny scene recap — at one point Nancy sends George for help but George gets lost and can’t find the ladder back to the house. She thinks she hears Aunt Lila and the camera cuts to the woman sitting on the couch by the fire drinking her tonic. George yells out to her and the woman thinks that the spirits are yelling at her from the fire. She freaks out and tosses her little cup of booze at the fire around the same time Ned bursts in and hears George yelling, “Call the police!”
Ned doesn’t know where George is but yells back that Mr. Drew already had him call the police. I’m not sure why he had Ned call the police, but help is on the way.
The police end up waiting for the couple in the cranky farmer’s field when they crawl out of the well. Nancy, George, and the neighbor pile out soon after and Nancy tells the police what the couple is doing. They deny any involvement until the dynamite explodes and counterfeit money blows up out of the well and rains down on everyone.
In the end, the neighbor’s wife marches him over to the aunt’s house and he confesses he wanted the property because a big development was going to move in and he wanted all of the proceeds. He tells the aunts that because Nancy and George saved his life he’s not going to buy their property but instead let them sell it the development company and make even more.
The aunts are thrilled because now they will have all the money they need to move to Las Vegas. Aunt Lila is so overcome with excitement that she requests a bit of her tonic. Everyone laughs at the alcoholic old lady as the show draws to a close.
In my opinion, putting aside the weird alcoholic aunt, this episode was well done. There seemed to be a lot more focus on unique camera angles and the acting was better than previous episodes. The camera angles from above and below and around columns made us wonder if someone was following Nancy or not, keeping us on our toes.
I also felt like Pamela Sue Martin toned it down a ton for this episode. She wasn’t quite as abrupt or bossy as she was in the first two episodes. She seemed to soften her portrayal of Nancy down to where it should be if we are going to compare it to the books.
Nancy was bossy and sometimes a bit rude in the books, but not to the point of Pamela’s portrayal in The Mystery of The Diamond Triangle. For this episode the writers added some moments where she appeared more aloof and clueless, but in a humorous way.
For example, at one point George is afraid to sleep in her room because of all the whispering sounds in the walls and instead curls up in the hallway with a blanket. Instead of telling George to come in with her to be safer, Nancy simply tells George that she’s solved one of the mysteries and then says cheerfully, “Well, goodnight, George,” before leaving her in the hallway alone, huddled under the blanket. It was a funny moment showcasing how fixated Nancy can get on a case.
Next up in our feature of discussing episodes from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries I will be offering my impressions of the Hardy Boys episode entitled The Flickering Torch Mystery. I actually watched this episode ahead of what was next up, but I’ll go back to The Disappearing Floor for a later post.
You can read some of my other Nancy Drew/Hardy Boy posts here:
The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries Recap: The Mystery of the Diamond Triangle (with spoilers)
Discussing The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries Show episode, The Mystery of the Haunted House.
The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries Season 1 Episode 2 The Mystery of Pirate’s Cove
Easter Morn
A poem from my brother about our grandfather.
For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that …
Easter Morn
Sunday Bookends: He is Risen! And I feel like the books I am reading are very long.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
First things first – He has risen! He has risen indeed! Happy Easter!
Remember when I was all like, “I need some warmer weather. It’s too cold!”
Well, I thought we’d go into the warmer weather gradually, not one day it’s 35 and I’m wearing a winter coat to a day later it’s almost 80 and humid.
That’s Pennsylvania for you.
I didn’t enjoy the humid weather yesterday, but I did enjoy nicer weather the day before when it allowed me to sit on the front porch and read some while Little Miss drew on the sidewalk with chalk.
I am going to miss my evenings watching Murder She Wrote with a blanket over my lap.
Oh wow. Did I just write that?
I am officially old, aren’t I? Talking about watching Murder She Wrote with my blanket and a cup of tea. *wink*
Oh well. It’s where I am in life and I am okay with that. I’ll just have to watch Murder She Wrote with a glass of lemonade or cold ice water instead.
Today we will have Easter dinner with my parents and maybe watch a movie together.
This doesn’t really go with the rest of this section, but I hit 103 subscribers on my little YouTube Channel yesterday. Whoot!
Guys, gals, blog readers! I feel like I may never finish the two long books I’ve been reading! I know I will and have moved my focus to just one of the books to make it even more likely I actually finish of them this week.
I have been reading both The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien and All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Herriot, switching off between the two depending on my mood, and they are taking forever! They seem so long. I read them on my kindle at night and I swear that I will be reading for an hour, look down at the percentage and realize I’ve barely made a dent in the book!
I finally realized they are both 400-page books, which isn’t really a lot, but can drag a book out when you’re only reading a chapter here and there. Even though they are long books, I am really enjoying them. I am especially enjoying The Two Towers even if it is a bit wordy.
I love the characters and all their different quirks, even if I have gotten a bit lost since we met up with King Theoden and his peeps. Now I am getting too many characters thrown at me, but that’s how fantasy books are so I am just taking it all in stride.
I hope to dig into a book of short stories by Louis L’Amour this week that my husband picked up at the library for me but I have also started a Hardy Boys book and am enjoying that. That, of course, won’t take me long to read since it is only about 200 pages long.
Little Miss and I finished The Littlest Voyageur by Margi Preus this week and really enjoyed it. It was about a squirrel who travels with river voyagers in Canada and learns the hard way that a fur trade is going on. It dealt with the subject of the fur trade in a very cute way and didn’t become as preachy as I thought it was going to. There was a lot of history woven into the book, which on the surface seemed to simply focus on a squirrel and his dream to become a river explorer.
The Boy is reading Warhammer books. I don’t remember which one he is on now.
Last week it was old mystery shows. The Rockford Files with a guest appearance by Tom Selleck early in the week. That episode was hilarious. Then it was Murder She Wrote, including a two parter where Jessica was in Ireland. Those two were very good. I’ve watched some real duds but this was in season 12 so they must have had better writers by then.
Yesterday I watched a 1934 movie called She Had to Choose. It was interesting and had me shouting at the screen a couple of times because I was so stressed at some of the decisions being made. As is with most movies from that era, it was about 60 minutes long.
I also rewatched Paris Blues for the Springtime in Paris feature that Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are doing until the beginning of May.
You can learn more about it here and if you want to jump in you can link up your impressions of the movies at any time at the link on the page. /
I’m working on the fourth book in the Gladwynn Grant Mystery series. I actually wrote an entire paragraph this week. Ha! I hope to write even more this upcoming week.
If you want to read the other three books in the series you can find them here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Lisa-Howeler/author/B07Y3W52FD?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true&ccs_id=654deb79-0e34-4d05-94d1-a81a4bd0ca0d
Last week on the blog I shared:
- Saturday Afternoon Chat: Reading on the front porch
- Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot April 18 Come Link Up With Us!
- Springtime in Paris: Paris Blues
- Coloring in illustrations in Nancy Drew books
- Top Ten Tuesday: Literary Friendships
While I wash dishes I listen to a book and right now that book is The Two Towers.
Also, this:
and this:
Photos From Last Week
Now It’s Your Turn
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
This post is linked up with The Sunday Post at Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, The Sunday Salon with Deb at Readerbuzz, and Book Date: It’s Monday! What are you reading hosted by Kathyrn at The Book Date.
