Nancy Drew, and her author, Carolyn Keene, were born out of two movements colliding: the rise of children's fiction and feminism. She was the last creation of Edward Stratemeyer -- the founder of the syndicate that produced the Hardy Boys, the Bobbsey Twins and Tom Swift, along with dozens of other child heroes -- and has been by far the most popular of the bunch. Mildred Wirt, a young college graduate filled with the ideals of suffrage and the women's movement, ghost-wrote the first volumes, and she injected Nancy with smarts, pluck and independence. Nancy was slim and pretty, titian-haired and sapphire of eye, and she existed perennially in the matrix of time between high school and college. With nothing else to divert her attention, Nancy devoted herself to sleuthing, and while her friends occupied themselves with school and jobs and marriage, Nancy was there to save them from the sinister plots to overthrow their good lives.

Nancy has maintained most of her basic characteristics in her newest makeover -- she's still smart, independent and pretty -- and it's true that much of what feels lacking in the new books might have more to do with my own nostalgia than anything else. In her old incarnation, Nancy was prone to proclamations like, "There is no such thing as an impossible crime!" and "Perhaps I've stumbled on a clue!" Such quaintness of language would, of course, sound hopelessly retro to today's girls (it was antique enough 20 years ago, when I was reading the books), no matter how sweet I find it now. So I shouldn't mind too much when, upon entering her new neighbor's house, today's Nancy says, "You have a lot of cool stuff," where the old Nancy would have exclaimed, "How charming!" But Nancy's new turns of phrase still feel wrong to me, like they belong to the latest teen-aimed Disney movie rather than a 75-year-old reading tradition.

The new Nancy is generally more likable, too. Because she narrates in first person, we get closer to her. She is funnier and a little less kind to the world; the new Nancy even has an arch-rival named Dierdre Shannon, of whom Nancy says, "She has a temper like an overcaffeinated Chihuahua."

With the old Nancy, her charm was less apparent, though we were told in no uncertain terms that she was the most popular girl around. Nancy "possessed an intangible appealing quality which people never forgot," we were gently reminded in the seventh book in the original series, "The Clue in the Diary," and her "abilities of leadership were welcome and depended upon in any group." We're told this as Nancy is picnicking at a carnival with her two best friends, but rather than wit or cleverness or any other such modern indications of an agreeable personality, the most immediate thing to recommend her is her generosity. Spying a poor mother with a small child standing outside the carnival entrance, Nancy pays their admission and takes them on several rides: a wonderful gesture, but hardly one that indicates her likability to a reader. Good deeds, after all, do not in themselves make a companion fun to be with.

The old Nancy also had a sheen of perfection that has opened her to accusations of coldness. "Nancy was a moralizer and her displays of modesty a bit too showy," wrote Ginia Bellafante in the New York Times a few years ago, on the occasion of Mildred Wirt's death. Going a little further last year in a Times Op-Ed, former Salon editor Amy Benfer declared, "However much I loved the novels, I've always hated Nancy Drew herself. In the third person, she came off as a prissy automaton of perfection." The conflict between love for Nancy and a slight distaste for her angst-less life is what the new series tries to resolve, both with the switch to first person as well as some well-placed character faults.

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