BOYS JUST WANT TO HAVE FUN

The Stratemeyer Syndicate wrote books for both boys and girls. Their books for girls mostly present idealistic heroines who were quiet and good. Their heroines faced light obstacles easy to overcome. By the end of their series the girls were married or near marriageable age and mature. In other words, they were boring.

Boys, however, had rough and tumble role models, boys who got into scrapes and had adventures. The first of these were The Rover Boys, whose antics lasted from 1899 to 1926 and covered 30 books that sold 5 million copies. Written by Stratemeyer himself under the pseudonym Arthur M. Winfield, three brothers - Tom, Sam, and Dick Rover were left in the care of their father's brother and sister-in-law. Their mother died - this was a common theme in Stratemeyer Syndicate books. Mothers told boys to comb their hair and to not get their clothes dirty. Mothers certainly wouldn't let boys traipse around getting into mischief, so mothers did not exist in syndicate land.

The three Rover Boys were students at a military boarding school. Adventure seemed to follow the boys wherever they went. After volume 21 the books focused on the sons of the three original Rover Boys. Boys who read the books found idols who lived in a world that touched on then modern travel innovations like automobiles and airplanes, as luxury travel was not yet commonplace for the poorer class. Most boys who read the books probably had never traveled away from their own home towns, but through the Rover Boys they could see more of the world than they ever thought they could.

Boys also had Tom Swift, (pseudonym - Victor Appleton) a young inventor. Swift had little education, like prominent scientific figures of the day Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison. Again Tom Swift had no mother. His father ran a company and a housekeeper filled the mother figure role. Tom Swift was the book series for science minded boys. Tom Swift started in 1910 and lasted until 1941 in various iterations. The series switched over to Tom Swift Jr. in 1954. As son of the original Tom Swift, junior took on the Sci-Fi interest of the 1950s. The Tom Swift series inspired a board game, but scripts for radio, film, and television series never came to be.

Somewhere in the middle of boy-lit and girl-lit was The Bobbsey Twins series. Focusing on two sets of twins, the series (pseudonym Laura Lee Hope) began in 1904 and lasted until 1979 an, astonishing 75 years. Bert and Nan were 12, Freddy and Flossie were 6, and came from an upper middle class family. 11 authors covered the twins during their initial run. Their father owned a lumberyard, but in this series the characters had a mother. Nan and Bert were dark, Freddy and Flossy, fair. The twins actually aged in the books, unlike other heroes and heroines of the syndicate. The books covered random family adventures until a mystery solving element was added to later books (due to the success of the Syndicate's more famous mystery solving series.) The Bobbsey Twins reflected life for many of their readers - younger kids could identify with having bossy older siblings; older kids identified with having pesky younger siblings.

That was the most important thing to Syndicate - that children find characters with whom they can identify, and keep reading.

SOURCES :

The Rover Boys. Wikipedia.

Tom Swift. Wikipedia.

The Bobbsey Twins. Wikipedia.