To Be Continued . . .

In answer to those complaints, Stratemeyer devised the character of Nancy Drew, a bright, inquisitive, plucky teenage sleuth—one of the first intelligent, independent female protagonists featured in children’s books. “They were an instant success, so much so that the series was written about during the time in flabbergasted terms,” Rehak says. “It was an amazing thing that it went on to outsell every single series, including boys’ books.”

The Nancy Drew books, like many of the other series during the early part of the century, were mysteries. Series books of this era also contained much role modeling of appropriate conduct. By the 1950s, though, the children’s book business had to compete with television and other forms of entertainment and polite, clean-cut characters stepped aside for daring, spirited, even troubled heroes and heroines.

The underdog, the outcast, and the orphan took center stage in series like C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia, the Time series by Madeleine L’Engle, the Fudge books by Judy Blume, and the Ramona Quimby series by Beverly Cleary. By the end of the twentieth century, series expanded to include schoolyard tales, science fiction, and horror. And then came a dark-haired wizard named Harry Potter.

Post-Potter
Harry Potter created a groundswell for the fantasy genre, but was also the first children’s series to appeal equally to adults and kids. Despite serious competition, even within the fantasy genre, Harry Potter is still far and away the most popular children’s series ever published (see “The Making of a Blockbuster” on page four).

Competition though has come from such diverse series as The Adventures of Captain Underpants by Dav Pilkey, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, Junie B. Jones by Barbara Park, The Magic Tree House by Mary Pope Osborne, and Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan. Riordan’s Olympians series has at times even surpassed Harry Potter on the bestseller charts. The first book, The Lightning Thief, was selected by The Today Show for its summer reading group and will be made into a movie directed by Chris Columbus.

“I didn’t consciously set out to write a children’s series,” says Riordan, who credits his son’s interest in Greek mythology for spurring the story of Percy Jackson, a twelve-year-old dyslexic boy who discovers he’s the son of a Greek god.

But the former teacher admits that he was “very conscious of the fact there needed to be another series out there for kids to enjoy. Kids would read [Harry Potter] fourteen times before picking up another book. There was room out there for more fantasy.”

Somewhere in the middle of writing The Lightning Thief, Riordan knew he wanted to continue the story in the guise of a series. He had always preferred reading series and as a teacher he found young readers of fantasy also tended to like series. “The familiarity of a series is something they come back to again and again,” he says.

Riordan’s third-grade son counts himself a fan of the popular Magic Tree House fantasy series by Mary Pope Osborne. The books follow Jack and Annie, who travel to different places and times by opening the books they find in a magical tree house; so far, they’ve visited ancient Pompeii, the Arctic, the Titanic (pre-sinking), even the moon. Since the first book was published in 1992, the series has sold more than 40 million copies and been on The New York Times bestsellers list roughly the same amount of time as the Harry Potter books. The latest installment, Monday with a Mad Genius, was published last month.