Citizens Library to host Nancy Drew talk Friday
Tara Rotuna was 8 years old when she purchased her first Nancy Drew book at a flea market. Today, 44 years later, she owns more than 1,000 of them. And, yes, occasionally, she still reads them.
Nancy Drew books are still written and published today, 93 years after the teenage girl detective first appeared in titles such as “The Hidden Staircase,” “The Bungalow Mystery” and “The Secret of the Old Clock.” In some cases, the books have had outdated words modified, and the custom of having 25 chapters per edition was changed to 20 simply to save on paper. Some of the editions Rotuna has collected are written in foreign languages.
Rotuna will share her love of Nancy Drew during a presentation at 6 p.m. Friday at Citizens Library. Friends of Citizens Library is sponsoring the event.
“Even if you’ve never read a Nancy Drew book, you’ll enjoy it,” Rotuna promised.
A Friends of the Monroeville Public Library member, Rotuna has been giving presentations on Nancy Drew for more than 12 years at libraries, senior citizen centers or other interested organizations. She was a guest speaker at the Neumann University Cultural Forum last year. During the pandemic, she gave virtual talks to libraries in the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia areas.
The popularity of the Nancy Drew mysteries has led to a TV series, movies and even annual conventions. A co-worker once suggested Rotuna do some sleuthing of her own to see if there were get-togethers honoring the teen detective. It turns out the Nancy Drew Sleuths host conventions, and Rotuna has attended five of them. Upcoming conventions are planned to April 2030, when the 100th anniversary of the books will be celebrated in Hawaii.
Hard to believe, but there was a time when some libraries banned the mystery series, said Rotuna. One reason was that librarians believed the books were too trivial for children and perhaps not good for developing language skills. Rotuna would disagree, noting that the wording in the original manuscripts was far from trivial. In fact, a word in one book sent her looking it up in her dictionary.
The popularity of Nancy Drew is due, Rotuna believes, to the adventures Nancy had, coupled with her desire to help other people.
“What I enjoyed was that Nancy could do anything, and it made me feel like I could do anything,” she said. “She was always solving problems, she was always helping people, always the best at everything. I grew up accepting that women could do these things and adults would look up to a young person.”
A business analyst for UPMC, part of Rotuna’s presentation will include Nancy Drew trivia and having the audience help create a ghost story using places around Washington.
For more information, call the library at 724-222-2400.