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Journal Entry 2 by goatgrrl from New Westminster, British Columbia Canada on Tuesday, January 23, 2007
 I can remember it as clearly as if it was last year. It was 1971, and I was a seven year old Canadian living with my parents in Guayaquil, Ecuador. My grandparents would send us care packages of goodies - - books, toys, and hard-to-find food items - - and in one such package my grandfather included two Nancy Drew books for me: The Secret of the Old Clock and The Secret of Redgate Farm (he remembered that my mother had loved them, back in the 1940s). At six, I'd turned my nose up at them -- too much text, too few pictures. But one night I took a second look, and was immediately hooked.
Reading "Nancy Drews", a whole new world opened up for me, one in which I could lose myself for hours in the exciting drama of an older and more worldly girl's life. I became a flashlight reader, and when the batteries in the flashlight ran out I learned to contort myself in bed to make use of the slim rays of light shining under the door from the hall. My devotion to Nancy Drew novels waned over time, but I'll never forget that first experience of being absolutely captivated by a novel. It has been a huge part of who I am ever since.
Girl Sleuth is primarily a history book, chronicling the history of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, which along with publisher Grosset & Dunlap began publishing the Nancy Drew series in 1930. The book documents the stories of both Mildred Wirt Benson (a ghost writer for Stratemeyer who wrote most of the Nancy Drews published between 1930 - 1950) and Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, daughter of the Syndicate's founder Edward Stratemeyer, who ran the company from the time of her father's passing until her own death in 1980. Girl Sleuth tells a good story and works well as a non-fiction read, though it falls short of the promise on its back cover to provide a "page turning history of the beloved girl detective". Nonetheless, well worth a read.
Even before I picked up this book, I found lots of interesting stuff on the web about Nancy Drew. Here are a few links:
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Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her
