Hating the Hardy Boys

think I was about ten when I began to hate the Hardy Boys. I didn’t hate the books. I hated the actual Hardy boys, as people. As I followed them through their minor perils, I kept wishing they would die.

I still hate them, actually. They were so damned pleased with themselves each time they figured out which lock the stupid key opened or whatever. They were vapid and preppy and struck me as entirely too popular. The Hardy boys were never lonely or inexplicably sad. They got scared sometimes, but only because the cave was dark. Every ten-year-old worth his or her salt knows that caves aren’t nearly as terrifying as people.

And so I went looking for a book that featured characters I didn’t revile. I found the Baby-sitters Club, and I was in love. I was in love with Stacey, of course, because she was awesome and cute and industrious and also vulnerable and prone to getting herself into the kind of trouble that one does not often find in caves. But I was also in love with the books. The BSC offered me characters whose conflicts were like my own, or at least relevant to my own: they experienced interpersonal conflict, and even internal conflict. If I may paraphrase Faulkner when talking about the Baby-sitters Club: for me, at least, Stacey’s griefs grieved on universal bones.

I remained a fan of the Baby-sitters Club for a long time, even after I realized that the books were not — you know — that great. I once had an argument with my college girlfriend while staying at her parents’ house, and I ended up spending several hours locked in her guest room, refusing to speak to her. (Or perhaps it was she who refused to speak to me; that seems more likely.) The guest room happened to contain a sizable collection of BSC novels; I spent an hour reading Claudia and the Sad Goodbye, and by the time I reached its end, I felt much better. I was nineteen years old. By then, I needed more from books than the BSC could provide — but what they could provide, I still needed.

From the September/October 2007 issue of The Horn Book Magazine