I collect vintage children’s
series books—like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. I may have started there,
anyway. But eventually, I moved on from Nancy, Frank and Joe, Trixie Belden and
Judy Bolton. Back to the thirties, the twenties, and a hundred years back to
1914. Back to Ruth Fielding, the Motor Maids, and the Flying Machine Boys. The
Outdoor Girls and the Moving Picture Chums.
It’s not exactly a popular hobby
in the 21st century.
I’d always been a bit reluctant
to pick up the genuinely old series—afraid, I guess, they’d be as musty to read
as they are to smell. What exactly did I expect? Stilted language, I suppose.
Outdated gender roles and ethnic stereotyping. Heavy-handed moralizing.
Finally, other collectors
recommended a few very old series, and I decided to give them a try. What I
found was surprising. Certainly, an old-fashioned writing style. Some occasional
stereotyping. Definite moral values, though not as preachy as I’d anticipated.
But, far and beyond these expected qualities, I discovered a startling vitality
on those yellowing pages—youthfulness as fresh today as when they were first
written. There was real humor here, and heart-thumping action and suspense.
What I found, time and again, were
stories that took off running from the very first page. The discovery of an
old, hand-drawn map, stuck beneath the cover of an antique book. A sinister
stranger, eavesdropping in a café. A sudden storm. Kidnapers. The dam breaks.
An eerie figure looms in the mist.
Something happens right
away—something startling, exciting, gripping. But the problems for our hero—or
heroine—aren’t easily resolved. They get worse, as obstacles and dangers pile
up with barely a moment to breathe, apart from a bit of comic relief.
At times, the sheer quantity of
incredible disasters that befall these characters is mind-boggling. The Moving
Picture Girls, for instance, tend to move from one crisis to the next with
barely a breather. A violent storm comes up. Their ship begins to sink. One of
the actors is washed overboard. They are rescued and resume their trip by
train. The train is robbed. Someone is taken captive. A rival company sends a
spy to steal the company’s film. They arrive at their destination and begin
filming. Indians unhappy with the location of the filming threaten the company.
A horse runs off with one of our characters. She is rescued, but a “controlled”
blaze, set for purposes of the film, goes out of control, trapping our actors
in the middle of a prairie fire. This may be a bit of an exaggeration—but not
by much. And always our intrepid
cameraman manages to keep on filming, so later the resulting footage can be used
to create a popular and prize-winning movie.
Corny? Yes, some of these scenes
are hysterically, though undoubtedly unintentionally, funny. But often, the characters
also display genuine laugh-out-loud wit. I’ve been surprised by how well the
humor translates for a modern reader.
It’s easy for me to see why young
readers from decades long past gobbled these stories up. Many of the books I
find have been read nearly to death. It makes me smile to think about some kid
reading in bed when he’s supposed to be getting a good night’s sleep before
school the next morning.
How many kids still do this? I’m
afraid not as many as there used to be, before TV, the internet, and cell phones.
But an action-packed story—whether for kids or adults—still has that ability to
grab readers by the collar and drag them along on a wild ride. Consider Harry
Potter and Lemony Snicket—both, not coincidentally, having been translated into
successful movies.
I tend to forget how important a
compelling plot is—one in which things actually happen (and keep happening). But unrelenting action and unanswered questions
can energize a story like nothing else. Both Steven Spielberg and George Lucas
took inspiration from the old-time movie serials with their cliffhanger endings,
in creating blockbuster movie franchises.
I love to develop characters and
setting. But my musty old books connect me with the real power of story.
