Read Girl Sleuth for Free Online Page B

Spanish squadron at Manila on May 1, 1898, in one of the United States’ great victories of the war, Stratemeyer was ready with the Old Glory Series for Young People.
    The first volume was entitled
Under Dewey at Manila; or, The War Fortunes of a Castaway.
Requisitioning the country’s top hero of the moment, Dewey’s executive officer Charles Gridley—who had let off the first shots of the battle at Dewey’s famous command, “You may fire when ready”—the book chronicled the adventures of a boy named Larry Russell who was “lost overboard while on a trip with his folks from Honolulu to Hong Kong. Adrift on a bit of wreckage, he is picked up by the ‘Olympia,’ Captain Gridley, Commodore Dewey’s flagship.” A publisher bit, and the book came out, with blinding speed, in August of 1898. Its sale price was $1.25, and it was resplendent with a sailor on the cover waving a brightly colored American flag that was three times his size. As one account embellished the event rather grandly, adding to the Stratemeyer legend: “Almost before the smoke of battle had cleared away, Stratemeyer had produced
Under Dewey at Manila.
And as the popularity of the Little Admiral swelled and soared, so the book sold edition upon edition. It established Stratemeyer as a writer of juveniles.” By Christmas of that year,
Dewey
had sold six thousand copies—no mean feat for a wartime publication.
    Not one to waste a smash hit, Stratemeyer immediately sent out a proposal for the series that would become his other early success: The Rover Boys Series for Young Americans—affectionately known, in no time at all, as “the Rovers.” The exploits of Dick, the sober eldest brother; Tom, the fun-loving practical joker in the middle; and Sam, the straight man for his brothers, were set at a military school. Their mother was dead and their father was away “exploring in Africa,” so the boys were sent off to boarding school, free from meddling adults once and for all. They (and later their doppelgänger sons) would go on to break sales records for clothbound books. At the peak of their success, according to one reporter, “The Rover Boys broke out upon the country like measles.” As far as their adventures were concerned: “Motivations were of the essence of simplicity. A face at the window, a missing suitcase or the overheard conversation of the enemy was sufficient to send the Rovers off on stirring trips that lasted for 52,000 words.”
    It was the first series that bore a resemblance to those that would make Stratemeyer’s fortune. In contrast to his historical stories, the Rover Boys were anything but timely; instead, they were ageless, and their “author,” Arthur M. Winfield, was, too. They were also middle class. The familiar Alger story had become outdated, and the Rovers, as one critic put it, “were never embarrassed by a lack of funds . . . they had less to strive for than to protect.” Both boys and girls loved the brothers without reserve and hoped they might come alive right off the page. One young man, Luther Danner of Loudonville, Ohio, received the following gentle letdown from Stratemeyer in response to a passionate fan letter: “Although many of the incidents in the stories are taken from life, the Rover boys are not real individuals, and consequently I cannot send you their address.”
    For the next five years, Stratemeyer turned out series after series. He was by now firmly established, and expectations were that he would stay that way. One critic wrote, “Mr. Stratemeyer thoroughly deserves his popularity, and he drives his typewriter without becoming careless or indolent as a result of the remarkable success he has attained.”
    Proving the point, in 1904 Stratemeyer dreamed up another wildly successful series of stories about a group of well-off children who had adventures all over the world and