AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The creator of one of the most popular teen romance series of all time has died. Francine Pascal's "Sweet Valley High" series debuted in the mid-1980s and went on to sell millions of copies worldwide. I was one of those avid readers. Pascal died on Sunday at 92 years old. NPR's Elizabeth Blair has this appreciation.
ELIZABETH BLAIR, BYLINE: The "Sweet Valley High" series revolves around beautiful, blonde, identical twin sisters. Young adult fiction writer Morgan Baden says when she was a teen in the mid-1980s, she thought the books were written for her and her identical twin sister.
MORGAN BADEN: We weren't blonde. We weren't in California. We didn't have matching lavalier necklaces. But it was really exciting to have an entire series of books about identical twins.
BLAIR: In the "Sweet Valley" series, Jessica Wakefield is a bad girl. Her twin, Elizabeth, is the teacher's pet. There are crushes, jealousies, drug use, divorce, all from the teen perspective.
BADEN: I would run to the bookstore every time a new one was out and started a huge collection. And I've been a collector ever since.
BLAIR: Francine Pascal was born in New York City in 1938. She remembered her high school years as being pretty awful. In an interview for the publication "Authors & Artists For Young Adults," she said the "Sweet Valley" series was what she, quote, "fantasized high school was like for everyone else." Pascal wrote the first dozen stories and then oversaw a team of ghost writers who wrote dozens more. Rose Brock, a professor at Sam Houston State University, says Pascal found the sweet spot.
ROSE BROCK: The plot points, the beats that they hit, I think she really had a sense of what young readers wanted, the adventures they wanted, the drama that they wanted.
BLAIR: In an interview with NPR in 2011, Pascal said she very intentionally made the fictional stars of her books two teen girls.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
FRANCINE PASCAL: One of the reasons I wrote "Sweet Valley" the way I did it was because I wanted girls to drive the action. Up until then, in all those romance books, the girl was waiting to be kissed to wake up - Sleeping Beauty. And in "Sweet Valley," those girls do drive the action.
BLAIR: They also drove sales. There were spin-offs and a TV series. Morgan Baden says the "Sweet Valley" stories may not have held up, but she says the impact they had on an entire generation of teen girls cannot be overstated. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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