Nancy, George, Bess

I would hope these names mean something to you. In case you are ignorant and missed out on amazing chapter books when you were in second to fifth grade these are the main characters in the greatest mystery books of all time! Nancy Drew! Of course she always has her trusty sidekicks and best friends, George and Bess who are cousins that always come with her on her trips. Bess was a tall, attractive brunette, and her cousin George was always described as slightly plump? interesting...

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Anyway, why am I rambling on about books from my childhood? Well you see, my family is moving and I have been packing up my room. It is amazing how much stuff you can accumulate in your room over 10 years. But as I was getting things out from under my bed, because that is clearly the superior way of storing things, I happened upon a white plastic bag. What was in this bag? Nancy Drew books! Books 1-50! Now you may be thinking there are 50 of those books? Well you would be wrong there are actually many many more. And I have probably read most of them. I would sit engrossed for hours reading about Nancy. Yes the books are probably only 180 pages long but that is a long book for an 8 year old.

For some reason my sister and I loved the mystery books. Without fail Nancy Drew would get kidnapped by the culprits because she would get to close to finding out the truth. Now she would either get rescued by her boyfriend Ned, or she would somehow daringly escape and expose the crime and save the dude ranch/hotel/old lady/haunted restaurant/etc. She also for some reason took a lot of showers in the books. She was always taking showers and getting cleaned up for something they were going to do later. Anyway Nancy Drew was amazing!

Another fantastic book series was the Boxcar Children. Also mystery, and my older sister and I loved them. There were many a times when instead of playing with our mega-mansion barbie house we would play with a shoe box. But not just any shoe box. This was a boxcar and we would play boxcar children with our little Kelly dolls that lived in the boxcar (shoebox) Oh the adventures of childhood. I'm a little tempted to read all of these books again. It definitely would beat reading my Athletic Training Text book. And no I have not seen the Nancy Drew movie, I'm scared that it will crush my longing to secretly become a red headed, crime solving, Ned Nickerson kissing, sleuth. Maybe this weekend I'll give it a go?