Returning to the Scene : Generations of Praise for Nancy, the Hardy Boys

The two most enduring series books are the Hardy Boys (launched in 1927) and Nancy Drew (1930).

Simon & Schuster, which bought the rights to the two series from the Stratemeyer Syndicate in 1984, now publishes three separate Nancy Drew series and two Hardy Boys series under its Archway Paperbacks and Minstrel Books imprints.

The new Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew adventures are aimed at 8- to 14-year-old readers. But a new series launched this month, “The Nancy Drew Notebooks,” is aimed at younger readers--ages 6 to 7--and features an 8-year-old Nancy just beginning her amateur sleuthing career.

Not bad for characters first created more than 60 years ago. But these are all new adventures, and the settings have all the modern trappings such as answering machines, mobile phones and VCRs.

Grosset & Dunlap, the series’ original publisher, continues to publish the 58 original Hardy Boys and 56 Nancy Drew volumes. The old stories, however, have been modernized several times since they were first revamped in 1959 to appeal to modern audiences.

For purists, Applewood Books, a Boston publishing company that specializes in reissuing books from America’s past, has reissued a handful of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew titles as they were originally written.

Applewood publisher Phil Zuckerman recalls that a few years ago he was reading his 6-year-old son his favorite Hardy Boys book, which he had read as a child in the ‘50s, “The Mystery of Cabin Island.” And, he says, “I realized there was something different from what I remember.”

When he discovered that the books he had read as a kid had been dramatically altered to make them more contemporary--critics say the language and plots were oversimplified and the detail and emotional depth drastically reduced--Zuckerman “determined then and there that we had to reissue the originals.”

Since 1991, Applewood Books has published three hard-cover Hardy Boys titles and five Nancy Drews. (They’re exact replicas of the originals, down to the colorful book jacket art.) Two more Nancy Drew titles will be out this fall. “The Nancy Drews,” Zuckerman says, “outsell the Hardy Boys by two to one.”

As for the enduring appeal of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, in both the original and updated versions? Anne Greenberg, executive editor of Archway Paperbacks and Minstrel Books, figures it’s “the nature of the characters themselves.

“They’re very smart, very independent, and they’re free of adult supervision, which I think is every kid’s fantasy. They function very competently in the adult world, which is what makes them good role models.”