In the late 1970s I read every Nancy Drew I could get my hands on. I was about 10 years old. They were consistently interesting, with cool facts about geography, science, and history. They were not too scary or gory; they always ended well. Nancy had a steady boyfriend and two best female friends; she could drive and, though she didn't have a mother, had a loving mother-figure in her life, without the messiness of a stepmother or a parental divorce. At the time I attached no importance whatsoever to her having a boyfriend; I just knew, as I had been taught by my parents, that dating would have to wait until I was 16. I was okay with that restriction; it relieved me to know I did not have to worry about boys until then (I could either ignore them or be friends, without romance). That was the first extended series of books I ever read; they felt fulfilling and encouraging. It was what I needed. Of course, part of the bliss was that I had relatively few books to compare them with; my love affair with books was new.

I recently was at loose ends, wanting the ability to dip into a book and swim in it, uninterrupted, blissfully intrigued in the story. This book, The Clue in the Diary, I found on my shelf; my daughters read Nancy Drew occasionally now. I reread it so I could remember and rate it for my online book list on Goodreads. I felt again that Nancy's world is simpler and happier, though still challenging, than the adult world I now inhabit. There is a place for stories that do not challenge the frontiers of fiction, that encourage and refresh with the knowledge that sometimes things work out beautifully for everyone.

What I didn’t know until this time around is that my 1962 edition of the book is a rewritten version. This explains the 1960s model cars in the illustrations, and the pencil skirts. I've never read the original. Nancy Drew was rewritten again in the mid-1980s. The 'modern' paperbacks of Nancy Drew that I read in the mid-80s felt different, somehow, and not just because Nancy had feathered hair and wore capri pants. They didn't have the same 'everything will be fine' assumption. Children’s literature in general, mid-1980s, was dealing with societal issues earlier books had ignored: suicide, physical abuse, divorced parents, drug abuse. I hated contemporary literature when I was a teen then; it hurt to read. I missed the positivity of earlier books. For my children I've kept the older volumes, but also kept a lot of histories and autobiographies, for balance.

Having said that, when it was written in the 1930s, The Clue in the Diary was almost subversively progressive. It’s only blasé because our society has shifted so much. Nancy had a housekeeper but no mother; not once did anyone moan over the lack of her mom. Nancy drove all over in her own car, and her boyfriend helped her out with no condescension at all! I’ve read science fiction from the time, and histories; women were assumed to be some lower form of life, useful, vital even, but not intellectually up to snuff.