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One of
the great things about teaching English is the ability to
share my love of reading with my students. My current class
of seventh graders—most of whom are avid readers—especially
love that I sometimes bring in the advance copies of books
that I get for review. I have to admit, there is something
a little satisfying about watching a group of 12 year-olds
fight over who gets to read Thirteen Reasons Why or
Love, Stargirl first. But just last week, I caught
one of my female students reading something that completely
blew my mind: a Sweet Valley High book.
Sweet
Valley High, for those of you too young or too old to
remember, is a young adult series of mass market paperbacks
created by Francine Pascal in the early '80s and written by
a series of ghostwriters (all under the pseudonym Kate William).
The books focus on the lives of identical twin heroines, manipulative
Jessica and sensible Elizabeth, and their separate gangs of
WASP friends. Together, they traipse through fictional Sweet
Valley—an affluent California town with geographically
improbable rolling green hills and palm trees—indulging
in the sort of privileged teen mayhem normally reserved for
John Hughes films and afterschool specials. The books were
so popular that they spawned a small army of spinoffs (including
Sweet Valley Twins) and a TV series starring Doublemint
Twins Brittany and Cynthia Daniel.
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| The
original 1983 cover (top) and the new 2008 cover of Sweet
Valley High #1: Double Love. |
Other
than the time when I had salvaged a few of my childhood books
from my mother's massive house-purging spree, I hadn't seen
a Sweet Valley High book in years. But when I was a
kid, just about every girl I knew was engrossed with the Sweet
Valley books. It didn't matter if you were popular or
nerdy; hippy, dippy, or trippy; a voracious bookworm or too
cool for school—being a preteen girl in the '80s and
early '90s meant that you wanted Elizabeth or Jessica as your
best friend, and you wanted either nice guy Todd Wilkins or
rich boy Bruce Patman as your boyfriend.
From
the third to sixth grades, Sweet Valley High and Twins
were a significant part of my social world. In third grade,
I was supposed to star as Brooke Dennis in an unofficial school
production of Sweet Valley Twins book 6: The New
Girl, but seeing as the script was being written by two
fourth graders, that play was never produced. In sixth grade,
a friend and I had a debate about whether SVH character Cara
Walker pronounced her name "Care-uh" or "Car-uh." (We never
came to any conclusion then, but I'm inclined to agree with
her on "Care-uh" now.)
Naturally,
my students marveled at the fact that the series was so old
I'd read it when I was eight. Judging from what they'd read,
it meant that when I was a kid, there were no camera phones,
no laptops, and—the horrors!—no internet. Of course
in teenspeak, this means that I am old, and though I'm still
in my twenties, I felt a little old knowing that the books
I'd grown up reading were now horribly out of date.
Imagine
my surprise, then, when two days after talking with my students,
I received newly revised copies of the first two Sweet
Valley High books—Double Love and Secrets—from
Laurel Leaf Books, which is rereleasing the series this month
with some major facelifts. The covers, naturally, have been
modernized and now feature soap star Leven Rambin portraying
both twins. More notable, though, are the changes in the writing.
As my students love to point out every time we read literature
that is more than a decade old, teen and tech culture has
changed dramatically since they were born. By their standards,
1983's Double Love is a recap of the Dark Ages.
So, in
order to seem modern, the stories have been revised to appeal
to Generation OMG. Though the general plotlines remain intact,
Sweet Valley is now a miniature Silicon Valley, and each teen
is equipped with the latest in modern technology. Gossip queen
Caroline Pearce now spreads her juicy tidbits via cell phone,
and Photoshop provides some handy-dandy visual aids to those
lascivious rumors about French teacher Ms. Dalton and "tall,
dark, and Abercrombie hot" football captain Ken Matthews.
Even Elizabeth's beloved school newspaper, The Oracle,
is now a website. (Luckily, her anonymous gossip blog, "The
Insider"—formerly called "Eyes and Ears"—doesn't
take its cues from Perez Hilton.)
I brought
the revamped books to school to show my students, and in a
matter of minutes, five girls voiced an interest in reading
them—two were coworkers. In fact, my coworkers were more
excited than the students, and the three of us adults began
reminiscing about the series. Remember Regina Morrow, the
hot deaf girl who died of a drug overdose? Remember book 50,
Out of Reach, which actually featured a Chinese girl
named Jade Wu (gasp! A minority in Sweet Valley!), a dancer
who was being pushed too hard by her parents? Remember soccer
hottie Jeffrey French, whom Liz dated after Todd left for
Vermont but whom she dumped like a bad habit when Todd returned?
Like, ohmigod! We were totally 11 again.
For adults,
the obvious appeal of the books is the novelty of seeing how
they have changed since our collective youth. And, of course,
they beg the question of whether the books ought to be updated
at all. This is not the first series to be modified for content—the
Nancy Drew series has had its fair share of rewriting,
both to reflect the times and to quicken the pace—but
do the updates make the books relevant again?
I myself
was ambivalent about the revamping idea. On one hand, I didn't
see why the onslaught of '80s retrophilia had to include the
butchering of YA literature. Books such as Jane Austen's Pride
and Prejudice and Emma are constantly being remarketed
in their original forms for new generations; part of their
appeal is seeing how people lived in an era long passed. And
if people want to modernize the stories, they can adapt them
into new works such as Bridget Jones's Diary and Clueless.
My fear was that SVH's soap operatic slice of '80s life would
be long forgotten, mildewing in the bargain bin of used book
fairs nationwide.
On the
other hand, I've become accustomed to seeing my childhood
being repackaged for kids who would otherwise think Ferris
Beuller is a carnival ride and Fraggle Rock is a genre
of music. In malls, Rainbow Brite and Care Bears paraphernalia
are displayed next to posters for bands of twenty-somethings
in pseudo-Flock of Seagulls hairdos dyed black to look "emo."
Though the updates may seem novel, they make the old seem
socially relevant again. Maybe all the Wakefield twins needed
were a few cell phones and iPods to compete with Gossip
Girl.
[continued
on page 2]
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