The girl sleuth
By: Bobbie Ann Mason.
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Athens
Language: eng
Number of pages: 145
Subjects: Children's stories, American -- History and criticism.; Detective and mystery stories, American -- History and criticism.; Children's literature in series -- Bibliography.; Girls -- Books and reading -- United States.; Girls in literature.
Description: In this long out-of-print work, Bobbie Ann Mason reminisces about her childhood reading of the girl detective series books. With a nostalgic but critical eye, she draws on observations of popular culture and on memories of growing up in the fifties to describe the pleasures and effects of reading mysteries. Mason's recollections of a rural youth spent longing for mysteries to solve represent a quintessential American girlhood experience.

Holding up Nancy Drew as a model of "the conventional and the revolutionary in one compact package," Mason shows how the series heroines encouraged young readers to "dream big" and stay open to life's possibilities, dished up antidotes to spoon-fed notions of traditional femininity, and amiably subverted the literary snobbery of child experts, librarians, and book reviewers.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 141-144).
Originally published: Old Westbury, N.Y. : Feminist Press, 1975. With a new preface.