Sweet Valley High

Do you remember those books? I read tons of them, along with Sweet Valley Twins, the middle school chronicles of the Wakefield girls, when I was a kid, and I loved them. I read them so often, apparently, that others noticed; there is a picture of me at my parents' yardsale, contentedly reading one of the books while my parents' friend Ned sat right next to me reading his own.

Anyway, I thought of the series today, kind of out-of-the-blue*. After a quick Amazon search, I discovered that the series appears to have been revamped. Mind you, I don't mean revamped in a Sweet Valley Medical School or Sweet Valley Corporate Law kind of way, but in a modernized, appeal to teenagers of the 2000s, not the 1980s, kind of way. Whereas the books I knew and loved looked like they came from the 80s (check out the mustache below!), the new covers look so sadly generic.


More disheartening are the more fundamental changes. The language is definitely different - again, modern. They describe boys as "yummy" and talk about their low self-esteem. They respond to each other with such witticisms as "You suck" (how articulate!). And the part that psychologists all the world over are going to pinpoint as symptomatic of body image issues everywhere? Jessica and Elizabeth, in the original versions of the series, were often (too often) described as a "perfect size six" and now, well, they've lost some weight and are now they're matching size fours. While they still have "shoulder-length blond hair, blue-green eyes, and perfect California tans," Elizabeth's mole that in 1984 was the only physical differentiation between the two is now a "beauty mark."
For my part, I've never been a fan of re-imaginations of anything much, be it books, movies, or songs, particularly if said re-imagining is less about imagination and more about dumbing down for or accommodating an audience that can't be bothered to appreciate something that came before its time.
What do you think?


* I've concluded, also, that this summer may have to in part be devoted to a re-reading of the originals, library style.