Whatever you may think of Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield looking back—shallow? anti-feminist? white-bred?—it was fascinating to learn that the creator of the series, Francine Pascal, is a proud feminist. Amid stories of impeccably glossy Sweet Valley, Calif., tales of convertible driving blondes and afternoons spent at the shake shack after school, she tackled things like date rape and divorce—and no matter how silly you (and she) thought the characters might be, they were powerful protagonists.
Among other things she revealed to Newsweek/The Daily Beast, she tells us:
“You have to remember, these books were in the early 80s, at the height of the girl power movement. Up until then, romance novels were kind of a Sleeping Beauty syndrome—a girl had to be kissed before she woke up.
She continues:
There were many superficial things about them. But when it came right down to it, readers were getting my politics, my ethics, my morals.”
Those ethics and morals, it turns out, were of a down-to-earth New York Jew, who’d grown up in Queens.
via jessbennett:
Oh, Sweet Valley, you’re back, and we love you, even if we’ve seriously outgrown you. Three interesting factoids from the vault:
1. Francine Pascal had never set foot in California when she birthed the Sweet Valley series. A lifelong New Yorker, she grew up in a Jewish family in Queens.
2. In 1985, Sweet Valley High was the first teen fiction to ever appear on The New York Times paperback bestsellers list, alongside John Updike and Norman Mailer.
3. In the beginning, Sweet Valley was deemed too “commercial” for many booksellers, who refused to stock it. The Times snubbed the series (despite it appearing on their bestseller list), and librarians fought to keep their stacks free of the “skimpy-looking paperbacks,” as one library journal put it. Nevertheless, the series became a case study in how to get young girls to read.
(via newsweek)
