The Ghost Writes Back (article)

I stumbled across a link to an article by a former Sweet Valley High ghostwriter on BuzzFeed the other day. (Yes, BuzzFeed; it's more than just jokes and cute animal GIFs.) I was never much of a Sweet Valley High fan (I preferred The Baby-sitters Club, but for some reason I had a Sweet Valley High board game), but the BuzzFeed post piqued my curiosity so I checked out the article.

Amy Boesky spent most of her twenties writing every other Sweet Valley High book while pursuing her PhD. Her article is extremely interesting and I highly recommend you head over to the Kenyon Review and read it for yourself.

There were two parts of the article that I found particularly fascinating. The first was the description of the writing process. Francine Pascal, the creator of the series, provided story plots: "eight or nine pages of single spaced directives that laid out exhilarating and implausible fables of duplicity, innovation, risk, and triumph" (Boesky, 2013, para. 25). Boesky first turned Pascal's "long, free-verse poems" (Boesky, 2013, para. 25) into chapter outlines, which she then sent to her editor for approval. After receiving the editor's approval she wrote the books.

The other part of the article I really noticed was her discussion of the arguments for and against series books at the time. "Librarians hated series books. They kept kids from reading 'real' literature" (Boesky, 2013, para. 27). The other side was argued by reading specialists who believed that the important thing was to get kids reading. "Lay down the habits, they [reading specialists] argued" (Boesky, 2013, para. 27). The discussion struck a chord with me because I rarely came across anyone who didn't share the reading specialists' view in my library science courses. Was adolescent literacy so much better in the 80s that librarians weren't desperate to get kids reading? I come down firmly on the side of "it doesn't matter what kids read as long as they are reading." Plus, I believe that reading "real" literature in another form, such as a graphic novel, can help some kids understand the story better than they would if they read the classic tome itself.

As an avowed fan of mass-market series books (not just The Baby-sitters Club, but also Nancy Drew), I really enjoyed this peek behind the curtain.

Boesky, A. (2013). The ghost writes back. Kenyon Review Online. Retrieved from http://www.kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issue/2013-winter/selections/amy-boesky-656342/