brilliant fragments

Wow, this takes me back so much to my former high school library 15 years ago. Who knew I would be a sucker for pocketbooks?

jessbennett:

Oh, Sweet Valley, you’re back, and I love you, even if I’ve seriously outgrown you. And since I tried my very best to (unsuccessfully) convince the non-80s-reared editors in my office that you were a REAL phenom among us Gen X/Millennial gals, three interesting factoids from my profile of Francine Pascal, in advance of her latest, Sweet Valley Confidential:

1. Francine Pascal had never set foot in California when she birthed the Sweet Valley series. A lifelong New Yorker, she grew up in a Jewish family in Queens.

2. In 1985, Sweet Valley High was the first teen fiction to ever appear on The New York Times paperback bestsellers list, alongside John Updike and Norman Mailer.

3. In the beginning, Sweet Valley was deemed too “commercial” for many booksellers, who refused to stock it. The Times snubbed the series (despite it appearing on their bestseller list), and librarians fought to keep their stacks free of the “skimpy-looking paperbacks,” as one library journal put it. Nevertheless, the series became a case study in how to get young girls to read.

And now, all the 1980s chick-lit nostalgia to bring you back, in one tidy Daily Beast gallery.