LONG BEFORE WOMEN DONNED “I’M A CARRIE”
T-shirts, girls around the world categorized themselves
as one of the Wakefield twins—the aspirationally per-
fect stars of Sweet Valley High. Francine Pascal’s
blockbuster young-adult book series followed the
charmed yet dramatic lives of impetuous, boy-crazy
Jessica Wakefield and her studious, sensible sister,
Elizabeth, two 16-year-olds with nothing in common
but their “perfect size-six figures,” “sun-streaked blond
hair,” and “sparkling blue-green eyes.”
Kicking off in earnest 35 years ago with a packaged
trio of soapy installments—Double Love, Secrets, and
Playing With Fire—SVH and its multiple spin-offs
spawned dozens of imitators (lookin’ at you, The Baby-
Sitters Club!), ran for 20 years, were translated into 27
languages, and reportedly sold 150 million copies
worldwide. For many women between the ages of 30
and 50, these books and the characters within them
are their Star Wars, their Avengers, their Lord of the
Rings. Even a glimpse at one of SVH’s 181 covers—with
their varsity-style lettering and gorgeous, soft-focus
illustrations by James L. Mathewuse—prompts a rush
of nostalgia endorphins. That’s probably why the
series remains a hot property to this day: In 2011,
a sequel titled Sweet Valley Confidential hit the
New York Times best-seller list; Dynamite Entertain-
ment released an SVH graphic novel in August; and
the movie adaptation, long stalled, is newly in the
works at Paramount.
Sitting in the living room of her elegant midtown
Manhattan apartment, Pascal, 81, attributes SVH’s lon-
gevity to the universal agony of the adolescent
experience. “The saying ‘The more things change, the
more things stay the same’ really applies to those years.
There’s such similarity, no matter how different today’s
teenager thinks she is,” says the
author. “She’s the same in here
[points to her heart] and in here
[points to her head] as I was—but the
clothes are different.”Hangin’ Out
W ith Cici
(1977)Pascal started her writing career
alongside her husband, journalist
John Pascal, crafting scripts for the
ABC soap opera The Young Mar-
rieds. “It was something neither of us
cared about,” she says. “We needed
the money.” Around the same time,
John, Francine, and her brother,
Tony-winning librettist Michael
Stewart (Hello, Dolly!, Bye Bye
Birdie) wrote the book for the Broad-
way musical George M!, about the life
of musical-theater icon George M.
Cohan, which ran for a year. Then one
night, an idea came to her—fully
formed, as she says most of her ideas
do—for a book about a teenage girl
who can’t stop fighting with her
mother. Pascal went on to write three
books in the Victoria Martin series;
the first, Hangin’ Out With Cici, was
adapted into the 1981 ABC AfterschoolSpecial My Mother Was Never a Kid,
starring Holland Taylor as the mom.
FRANCINE PASCALI was lying in bed,
and it just hit me. I jumped up and I
said to my husband, “This is it!” The
whole thing was in three lines:
A 13-year-old girl today who can’t
get along with her mother goes back
in time to her mother’s childhood
and becomes her mother’s best
friend. When I started to write about
Cici and Victoria, I realized I had a
lot to say about those years. I knew
how to do it.Sweet Valley
H i g h
(1983)Like so many great ideas, Sweet Val-
ley High was born out of two key
circumstances in a writer’s life: rejec-
tion and deadline pressure. After the
success of Hangin’ Out With Cici and
her 1980 novel, The Hand-Me-Down
Kid, Pascal pitched networks a soap
opera centered on teens in high school.
“They were not interested,” she recalls.
“They said it was too girly.” Then a
casual comment from a friend—plus a
looming obligation to her publisher—
combined to spark magic.