#CAR IN NANCY DREW TV SHOW HOW TO#

This revision is emblematic of how Grosset & Dunlap chose to deal with the racism in the original textsвЂЉ-вЂЉsimple erasure. At the police station, Jeff Tucker shares his version of the story with no trouble and is advised to call his son for a ride back home. Nancy comforts him when he frets over losing his job rather than scolding him. In the revised 1959 version of The Secret of the Old Clock, Jeff Tucker is white, and he hasnвЂ™t been tricked into drinking by the thieves, but is instead locked up in a shed. While Nancy only reports the robbery, her privilege as a wealthy white woman, demonstrated again and again in the book, is never as clear as this moment in the policeВ station. It brings to mind Emmett Till and the many instances of white women accusing Black men of various slights with deadly consequences. The contrast between Nancy and JeffвЂ™s treatment at the police station is particularly disconcerting to me today. Tucker is вЂњgentlyвЂќ pushed back from the car and left behind at the station while the rest, including Nancy, go after theВ thieves. Even when Jeff Tucker corroborates her story, they pile questions upon Nancy to clarify what he says. At the station, Nancy marches to the front desk and demands to report a robbery, resulting in the marshal and several officers immediately emerging to hear her tale. Nancy scolds him for abandoning his post at the bungalow and grows frustrated when he slows her down by hosing himself off to sober up before they go to the police. Jeff Tucker is an African-American man who is portrayed as a child-like, speaking in dialect and easily fooled into intoxication by the robbers. Eventually, she is freed by the bungalowвЂ™s caretaker, Jeff Tucker. There, she interrupts a burglary in progress and is thrown into a closet and left to starve by one of the thieves.

In the original 1930 version of The Secret of the Old Clock, the first book of the series, Nancy chases a clue to a lake bungalow. Librarians, parents, and teachers have found themselves asking: What do we do with these beloved booksВ now? The revisions to the original Nancy Drew books came in 1959 under the order of publisher Grosset & Dunlap for a variety of reasonsвЂЉ-вЂЉto modernize the series, to diminish publishing costs by shortening the books, and to rid the books of racist stereotypes. While the ALA has firmly stated the name change is about the award and is not a statement or recommendation regarding reading the classic Little House on the Prairie series, librarians, parents, and teachers have unsurprisingly found themselves asking: What do we do with these beloved booksВ now? The recent controversy around the renaming of the American Library AssociationвЂ™s Laura Ingalls Wilder Award has propelled this question to the forefront of literary conversations in recent months.

#CAR IN NANCY DREW TV SHOW HOW TO#

These revisions offer one possible answer to the question of how to tackle outdated and harmful aspects of literature: try, try again. Since that first transformation the books have gone through a dozen iterations. River Heights became less overtly racist but also more white. Nancy aged to 18, drove a blue convertible, gained a surrogate mother in the form of her housekeeper, Hannah, and became, arguably, more docile. Thirty years after Nancy solved her first mystery, the original books were revised and shortened. However, the Nancy we know today is not the same Nancy readers first fell in love with. When the first books were released in 1930, Nancy was an instant hit to date, more than 80 million copies of her adventures have sold. Before Buffy slayed her first vampire, before Wonder Woman lassoed the truth out of bad guys, before Leia led the Rebel Alliance, sixteen-year-old Nancy Drew sped her blue roadster all over River Heights catching criminals, getting dirty, and inspiring young girls to step outside of gender expectations. Women of many generations could claim a similar love of the girl detective.

To me, it was the perfect homage: like Nancy, my car was pretty, capable, and ready for adventure. I named my first car, a mint green Toyota Prius, after my first role model, Nancy Drew. Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work.

Car in nancy drew tv show