What I Learned from Nancy Drew and Pippi Longstocking

Who were the heroines in your favorite childhood books?

By

Linda Yellin

 
Published May 29, 2025
pippi longstocking, collage
Stock credits (Pam and Penny Howard Courtesy Image Cascade Publishing; Alamy (4); Shutterstock; Getty Images)
Elena Lacey

In 1988, I made a mistake. My friend Susan was an editor at Mega-Books, the publisher for Nancy Drew books. I loved Nancy Drew. I spent my childhood wanting to be Nancy Drew. I wanted to search for hidden staircases and old clocks and have a boyfriend named Ned whom I treated like dirt. I wanted to drive around in a blue roadster with my friends Bess and George while my lawyer dad, Carson, was off working too hard. Nancy could golf, swim, pick locks, play bridge, arrange flowers, and was an ace at tennis. And even though Nancy didn’t have a mom, she had a cook named Hannah Gruen. I mean, how great was that? Her own cook!

Written by Carolyn Keene, the first Nancy Drew books were published in 1930 in response to the success of The Hardy Boys books. Spoiler alert: Carolyn Keene was not a real person. My apologies to anyone who did not know that.

“Carolyn Keene” was a pseudonym for all the series ghostwriters, and my editor friend Susan asked me if I wanted to ghostwrite a Nancy Drew book. I was scared I would let Nancy down and not do a good job, so I said no.

What was I thinking? If I couldn’t be Nancy Drew, at least I could have been Carolyn Keene. Nancy would not have been afraid. Nothing scared her.

Also independent and often solving mysteries was Nurse Cherry Ames. She had 27 books written about her and each time she had a different job. Cherry Ames Student Nurse. Cherry Ames Senior Nurse. Cherry Ames Army Nurse. Rural Nurse. Cruise Nurse. Cherry had quite the resume. She taught me the importance of dedicated work and being open to new experiences, though in retrospect, despite those 27 specialties, I don’t remember Nurse Cherry ever saying, “Maybe I should apply to med school.”

While Nancy Drew had her roadster and Nurse Cherry had her … cruise ship? ... little Laura Ingalls traveled around in the family covered wagon, moving from Wisconsin to Kansas and then on to Walnut Grove, Minnesota and that Little House on the Prairie. Laura had to churn butter, plant vegetables, feed cows, boil laundry, and was constantly fetching water from creeks, all while the family was fighting off locusts and blizzards. My only chores as a kid were making my bed and helping to clear the dinner table. Laura Ingalls taught me: It could be worse.

More than that, I loved how Laura defended herself against mean Nellie Oleson’s bullying. Nellie was the rich girl in town. And, yes, how great was it when Nellie went swimming and ended up with leeches all over her! Ha, ha, ha, Nellie! Laura Ingalls was the first person to teach me that revenge is, indeed, sweet. But it wasn’t until the television show when Nellie had the stupidest blonde curls in the history of hairdos that she really got her comeuppance. Ha, ha, again.

Sisterhood was the big lesson in the Pam and Penny Howard books. Pam and Penny were identical teenagers. I have two sisters, but neither of them is my twin. My very favorite scene — maybe even my favorite fantasy — was when Penny didn’t study hard enough for her math test, so Pam, who, of course, looked exactly like her, pretended to be Penny and took the test for her. Talk about wanting a twin!

Pam and Penny starred in three books: Double Date, Double Feature, and Double Wedding. They always wore identical dresses and identical shoes and had identical hairdos, right down to their identical wedding dresses and bouquets. Fortunately, they had different grooms.

Thanks to them, I learned a lot about boys and romance, which, considering I was around 9 years old at the time, didn’t come in all that handy. But I’ve never stopped wanting a twin sister. Especially one who’s good at math.

Under the heading of fantasies, Pippi Longstocking lived on her own with a monkey and a horse. Her mother died (why do so many heroines have dead mothers?) and Pippi’s father was a missing ship captain. Pippi was super strong — able to pick up her horse with one hand! — and had nobody telling her it’s time to go to bed or do her homework. She even stops going to school and basically spends her entire childhood totally free, doing whatever she wants. That lifestyle was not an option in my household, but it was enough to make me wish I were Swedish with red pigtails.

Anne of Green Gables made me wish I were Canadian with red braids. I’m sure you already know this because absolutely everyone has read Anne of Green Gables, but let’s recap: Anne was a full-fledged orphan shuffled from home to home until she was sent to live with older siblings, Matthew and Marilla, who were expecting a boy orphan to help work on their farm.

Of course, Anne wins them over with her charm and her ability to see beauty in the world. She arguably invented the sound bite, with quotes like: “Marilla — isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?” I love that. I want to embroider it on a pillow.

She’d also ask provocative questions, which must have helped liven up Matthew and Marilla’s lonely farm dinner conversations; questions like: “Which would you rather be if you had the choice — divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?” Anne was at least two out of three, clever and good. By the end of the book, she sacrifices a college scholarship to help Marilla on the farm after Matthew dies. Which, maybe, wasn’t such a good long-term plan, but in the book seemed quite noble. Anne made me want to be noble.

Nancy, Nurse Cherry, Pam and Penny, Laura, Pippi, and Anne were the friends in my childhood heart and head, and they still linger there now. All of them were optimistic and resilient and stood up for themselves. They were too busy solving mysteries or churning butter to suffer fools or dwell on regrets.

 

What book from your youth will YOU never forget? Let us know in the comments below.

Collage photo credits: Pam and Penny Howard Courtesy Image Cascade Publishing; Alamy (4); Shutterstock; Getty Images

Linda Yellin is the author of Such A Lovely Couple about her first marriage and The Last Blind Date about her second marriage. No new husbands were involved in the writing of her novel, What Nora Knew.