Hello all!
I'm in the midst of packing for my week-long trip to Ireland, and so this post is a bit behind schedule. I'm sure some of you have read the Nancy Drew books, and possibly the Cherry Ames books. Well, those books are the ones which pretty much fill up my vintage mystery book collection.
These are all from the mid 1950's. I used to read them a lot when I was around 10 or 11, and sometimes I still enjoy reading them when I'm tired and just want a fun, easy read. These ones are titled The Scarlet Slipper Mystery, The Haunted Showboat, and The Mystery at Ski Jump.
These next couple of books are actually my favorite children's mystery series.
The Cherry Ames series is about a young nurse who solves mysteries while attending to her duties as a nurse. The stories mostly take place during World War II, though I haven't read all of the books (they're rather hard to find) so I'm not sure if all of them are set in war time. Both of the books which I have are from 1944, so they were published during the war. The titles are Cherry Ames Army Nurse and Cherry Ames Chief Nurse.
I've only ever read two or three of the Trixie Belden series, but I enjoyed them a lot and I'm hoping I can collect a few more of them. This one is from 1979. Similar to Nancy Drew, Trixie is a young girl who delights in detective-work and goes on adventures solving mysteries with her best friend and neighbor, Honey Wheeler. I found her to be a bit more like a real-life girl than Nancy Drew.
This book is one that I happened upon in an old bookshop, and seeing that it was written by the author of the Bobbsey Twins, I decided to give it a shot. In doing some small amount of research online, it seems that this series was actually written by Elizabeth M. Duffield Ward, and only published under the pseudonym of Laura Lee Hope by the Stratemeyer Syndicate.
That being said, I also love the fonts on the cover. The book was published in 1925. It was a very fun read, following three teenage girls whose parents are deceased. The girls live quietly and happily in an apartment in the city, until one day they receive news that Margy, the middle sister, has been left an inheritance by her namesake and aunt. There proves to be quite a mystery surrounding the inheritance, and of what it actually consists. The girls are lead on quite an adventure by the mysterious inheritance- crossing paths with dangerous characters and deciphering clues and riddles which were left by their aunt.
What's your favorite children's mystery book? Have you ever read Cherry Ames or the Blythe Girls?
I love Nancy Drew! I've never read any of the Cherry Ames books, although we once gave a stack of them to my grandmother, who immediately sat down and read one of them right through out of straight nostalgia!
ReplyDeleteMy favorite old mystery book, which I read several times around the age of 9 or 10, is Sea View Secret. It's great -- the setting is especially unique. I struggled for the longest time to remember the title...maybe at some point I'll be able to buy a copy! They're a tad expensive on Amazon...