I finished the Riddle Club section yesterday, proofread it again today, and placed it on the site a short while ago. I try to place a humorous or somehow important quote at the top of each new section. I particularly like the one I have used for the Riddle Club section:
"I read in a book that people with sense always watch things. When they are taking a walk, they see the trees and the plants. When they are out driving they notice the landmarks. I like advertisements—I always watch them. And when our car tipped to let the other go by, I looked right at that advertisement for orange marmalade and I remembered it. So when Polly said she dropped her pin I knew she must have dropped it there."
"My goodness, you read a lot of books, don't you, Artie?" Jess said, with manifest respect.
" 'Improving' ones," Artie said modestly.
"Huh, what about the story books you keep under your bed?" Fred suggested. "Nothing very 'improving' about Indians and pirates, that I ever heard of."
"That's because you don't read 'em," announced Artie. "Ward and I have an invention most made now—a new kind of arrow. Any book is 'improving' that teaches you something."
The quote is from The Riddle Club at Sunrise Beach. The reason I like this quote so much is that Fred comments that the storybooks that Artie reads are not very "improving." The type of books that Fred refers to are books like the Riddle Club books and all of the other Stratemeyer Syndicate books. Artie has a good answer when he states that "any book is 'improving' that teaches you something."
I feel like this statement takes aim at all of the people during the early 1900s who blasted the Stratemeyer Syndicate books as poorly-written, sensational books that would dumb down children. It is certainly true that even formula-driven series books can teach children new things, and even I as an adult have learned new things from these vintage books. I learned lots of new riddles while reading the Riddle Club books!
1 comment:
Thank you for the article on The Riddle Club series. I don't know why it suddenly popped into my head to Google those books - maybe because I was buying Babysitter Club books for my husband's granddaughters.
When I was a child in the fifties, friends of my parents gave me a box of old childrens' books, and there were three Riddle Club books in the box. I loved them, and read them over and over, even though I knew that the stories were written well before I was born. They were perfect for a lonely child who would have loved a club with such close friends. Wish I still had them.
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