What's extraordinary is that those books remain the favorites of small boys everywhere. The Hardy Boys franchise has turned out hundreds if not thousands of more contemporary knockoffs
over the years. These are all quickly forgotten, yet those original McFarlane potboilers, disdained by everybody with fancy taste (including the OP), still excite passion among early readers.
Is anything comparable? Children's literature that survives that long is usually regarded as classic; but these have survived whilst being regarded as trash. They keep going on the literary pleasure of children alone - an audience that can't be fooled. Each new generation just seems to discover them.
The passion of those first adventure novels
only lasts a year or two before one begins to find them a little embarrassing. So even older children share McFarlane's opinion on the "juveniles". My son mocks their stilted dialogue now. But he devoured the entire series with fervor.
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What's extraordinary is that those books remain the favorites of small boys everywhere. The Hardy Boys franchise has turned out hundreds if not thousands of more contemporary knockoffs over the years. These are all quickly forgotten, yet those original McFarlane potboilers, disdained by everybody with fancy taste (including the OP), still excite passion among early readers.
Is anything comparable? Children's literature that survives that long is usually regarded as classic; but these have survived whilst being regarded as trash. They keep going on the literary pleasure of children alone - an audience that can't be fooled. Each new generation just seems to discover them.
The passion of those first adventure novels only lasts a year or two before one begins to find them a little embarrassing. So even older children share McFarlane's opinion on the "juveniles". My son mocks their stilted dialogue now. But he devoured the entire series with fervor.