Lurlene McDaniel Books

If you’ve ever watched a Kleenex-depleting Lifetime movie of the week and wondered what sparked within you this desire to be entertained by tragic life circumstances, it’s pretty likely Lurlene McDaniel and her deliberately tear-inducing young adult books can shoulder some of the blame. A satisfying cry can do all of us some good at times, but even the most fervently feeling among us have our limits. It may seem sort of fun at first to wallow in tragedy and despair, but after forty books featuring taglines about teens who “died too young” or “never had a chance,” it becomes a tad tiresome.
McDaniel’s loosely related teen book series operated on the principle that if one is good, several dozen must be better. Quantifying death and heart-wrenchingly tragic disease is a major undertaking--no in-bad-taste death pun intended--and apparently a challenge to which Lurlene McDaniel saw fit to rise. Even her biography on her personal website acquiesces that parents often find the themes of her books incredibly depressing and tiresome, which doesn’t sound like much of a positive sales pitch. In defense of her sob-story novels, the Random House website offers the following quote from McDaniel:

“I write the kind of books I write because I want to help kids understand that nobody gets to pick what life dishes out to them. What you do get to choose is how you respond to what life gives you. No matter what happens, life is a gift. And always worth living."

When she puts it that way sounds like an admirable endeavor--who doesn’t want to read an uplifting story full of promise and hope? Unfortunately, the books don’t always frame their inevitable tragedies in that light. McDaniel’s claim that people don’t get to choose their lot in life is certainly true and makes for a good writing philosophy in theory, though in practice her books are the stuff excessive juvenile hypochondria is made of.


I was, admittedly, a fairly devoted fan in my teen and preteen years. I can understand the mysterious allure of McDaniel’s themes. In some ways, her books romanticized the tragedy of young people suffering from life-threatening illnesses, casting them on the cover in soft-focus lighting with pensively forlorn facial expressions. While these books at times admirably offered a realistic view of teenagers with major medical issues, in other instances they veered into adolescent soap opera stock material. McDaniel clearly did put in the time and effort to research the medical terminology and circumstances, but all the underlying validity and realism in the world can’t save a premise about two friends vying for the same heart transplant.

In the case you never had the pleasure of crying your eyes out over one of these disease-stricken young adult novels, here’s a handy illustrative guide to their dripping sentimentality:

1. The books generally have a title a la Movie of the Week; something like She Died Too Young, Mother, Help Me Live, or Sometimes Love Isn’t Enough. Those are actual titles from McDaniel’s official book list--I couldn’t make this stuff up.

2. Many of Lurlene McDaniel’s novels begin with an average, healthy teenager who spontaneously develops a life-threatening condition. Though McDaniel does devote a fair amount of attention to teenagers born with some sort of medical issue, these cases are never as terrifying to healthy readers as those who go from playing soccer and shopping with friends to spending weeks at a time hooked up to monitors in the hospital. The element of “Oh-my-gosh-this-could-happen-to-me” is alluring in a terrifying way, and is justifiably one of the main criticisms issued by parents of young readers.

3. Cheesy dialogue and drama-ridden brooding is a key element of any good McDaniel work. To illustrate, observe the following passage from Reach for Tomorrow:

They returned to the canoe, got in, and paddled in silence back to the place they'd shoved off from. Once on land, Meg caught his hand. "Thank you, Eric. I really mean that."

"Um--yeah, sure," he said, but he looked totally confused in the pale light of the half moon.

Meg stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly on the mouth. Then she turned and hurried back toward her cabin, leaving Eric standing on the shore, shaking his head.

In nearby shadows, Morgan stood watching. So Eric had made a move and Meg had gone for it. Morgan felt an edgy spark of jealousy, an emotion he hadn't felt since before Anne died. It's a free world, he told himself. She can do anything she wants, be with anybody she wants. Still, his insides simmered.

Whether you loved or hated these emotional novels, McDaniel’s various series and stand-alone books were a young adult literary phenomenon. The popularity of her books is undeniable, offering compelling evidence that young girls love to curl up with a good sob story or forty. And in case any of you aspiring writers out there are seeking some hope and encouragement, you may want to consider taking on the genre; McDaniel’s books have been deemed so influential that Six Months to Live made it into the Library of Congress time capsule to be opened in 2089. That’s either very reassuring or very depressing--I haven’t decided yet. Either way, you may want to try your hand at cry-fest fiction--if you fail, there’s always a market for Hallmark and Lifetime Movie Network scriptwriters.

In the Meantime, Please Enjoy this Classic Post: Where's Waldo

Children of the 90s is taking care of some business...The blog will be back with some new posts later this week. Until then, please enjoy perusing this classic post on Where's Waldo back from March of '09. Thanks, everyone, and we'll be back soon!

Oh, Waldo, how you continue to thwart our valiant search efforts. Despite your obvious penchant for flamboyantly candy cane striped red and white sweater/hat combos and your tendency to take along every possible piece of travel equipment on your obscenely crowded vacations, you still manage to boggle our minds with your mysterious whereabouts. In the original book, Waldo lugs along a walking stick, sleeping bag, mallet, drinking cup, binoculars, kettle, backpack, camera, snorkel, belt, another bag, and a shovel. Clearly, if he's going get lost in a crowd, he's got every imaginable amenity to walk, sleep, pound, drink, see, boil, carry, document photographically, dive, remain in pants, store more items, or dig his way out. That's right, it makes perfect sense.



Where's Waldo? originated as a British franchise under the name "Where's Wally?" Apparently, "Wally" is some sort of a British slang term that publishers feared would drive away eager young American Waldo-searchers with its distinctively red-coat recalling familiarity, so the only logical leap was to change the title to an equally unknown and unpopular name that in no way resonated with American youth. In our typical domineering American fashion, we pulled the rug from under the British Wally and U.S. Waldo sales quickly and consistently outstripped sales of the original. If that's not a legitimate way to assert our undeserved sense of national superiority, I don't know what is.

With "Waldo-mania" sweeping the country throughout the 1990s, there seemed to be no one without vested stake or interest in finding this bespectacled excursionist. There was something oddly if inexplicably satisfying about curling up with a big hardcover picture book and focusing on crowded, chaotic scenes until your eyes crossed. It wasn't just Waldo we were after, either; he brought with him a gang of of absurd cronies and/or nemeses. There was Wanda, Waldo's pal. Woof, his faithful canine companion. After that is where things got a bit weird.

There was Wizard Whitebeard, some sort of life coach/guru who was occasionally responsible for sending Waldo on his wacky expeditions. Then of course we had Odlaw, Waldo's bizarrely evil nemesis formulated from an inverted anagram of Waldo's name. He was nearly identical to the original Waldo only his clothing and glasses were of different colors, and he has a mustache. Even as children, we were aware that mustaches signified pure, unfettered evil (there was Hitler, Stalin, and Odlaw, and we were onto their mustachioed madness). We the readers were forced to infer that Odlaw was evil by his distinctive un-Waldoness, despite the fact that we never actually caught him doing anything more than lurking in the background.


And of course, there were the Waldo Watchers, because what bumbling vacationer would travel anywhere without their 25-member posse of lookalike devotees? That's right, Waldo had an entourage. These are clearly a cheap attempt by the authors to divert our eyes with Waldo-esque color patterns and hat-stylings, but were we really to believe that by the mid-90s Waldo had 100 faithful followers who joined him on every venture?

Silly characters aside, there were reasons that Waldo books held the top spot on the New York Times' bestseller list for a composite nearly-100 weeks. If nothing else, the books placated our parents with their hypnotizing ability to keep us unmovingly focused in a single spot for an extended period of time. Waldo had it all: books, comic books, cereal boxes, a short-lived magazine (with an impressive 2 issue run!), video games, and even a TV show. However, the plot-rich TV shows with only brief frozen-screen finding games interludes were never quite enough to hold our attention in the same way.

Despite the dozens of poorly-conceived franchising paths, the Where's Waldo? books were nothing less than a phenomenon. So long as we could continue our relentless searches for our beloved hero, all was right in the world. Like most 90s trends for children, the allure was not in the flashy effects or superfluous characters, but rather in the simplicity and forthrightness of the task at hand. There is just no recapturing the magic of the moment of actually locating Waldo himself amidst a sea of impostors and villains.

So whether you grew up searching for Wally (UK) or Waldo (US), Valli (Iceland) or Walter (Germany), Effie (Israel) or Charlie (France), we were united in our common goal. No matter what you called him or where you lived in the world, we all knew Waldo as the greatest hidden holidayer of them all.

Easy Bake Ovens

You’ve got to give Easy Bake Ovens some credit where due--they managed to stay alive in the marketplace a good 40 years before Consumer Product and Safety Commission gave any consideration to the fact that children could burn their fingers while playing with the toy. They either had some really fabulous marketing campaigns or parents so loved the tasty pastry delicacies provided by their child labor bakery sweatshops that they were willing to overlook the potential risks. Then again, perhaps any kid that manages to burn herself on a dinky 100 watt light bulb probably had it coming. After all, that’s just a basic Easy Bake Oven evolutionary principle.

Regardless of their inherent safety risks, Easy Bake Ovens were a highly coveted item for young girls as early as the 1960s. The original Kenner-produced 1963 version was modeled after a conventional oven, though later incarnations were styled to resemble microwaves--which makes perfect sense, considering how often most of us bake cookies in the microwave. The sleeker design in the updated version gave it a more novel technological feel, possibly to counteract the raging stereotypes associated with continually providing young girls with toys that teach them the value of staying in the kitchen where they belong.




Feminists may not have been especially keen on little girls playing with model kitchens and learning domestic complacency, but the cultural implications did little to hamper kids’ insatiable desire to own one of these functioning appliances. Children tend not to care too much about the longstanding impact of their toy selection, though, so the head-shaking of women’s rights advocates held little bearing on their playtime choices. Kids just like what they like, and for the most part, a chance to bake cookies on their own under a little light bulb falls into that category.

As our moms (or dads, to be fair) were generally unlikely to relinquish kitchen privileges to an 8-year old, the Easy Bake Oven provided a small-scale alternative. Though parents usually aren’t especially keen on toys that are overpriced and prone to generating heavy clean-up, it was often a fair trade to keep us good and occupied for an hour or two. When weighing the options of cost, mess, and safety risk, sixty minutes of quiet tended to win out as a priority.

Like Power Wheels cars and Moon Shoes, Easy Bake Ovens were among the most status-building of 80s and 90s toys. Unsurprisingly, these toys building us the most playground credibility tended to also be the most expensive. We all had a friend whose parents were kind enough to grant them ownership of one of these enviable playthings, leading to incessant begging and pleading for our very own.

Even if you were lucky enough to have your own EBO, these devices were decidedly overrated. Baking anything took a great deal of effort for a relatively small payoff. Actually, a literally small payoff: many of the tasty treats that looked so life-sizedly delicious in the commercials were proportionately lacking in real life. Brownies and cupcakes are universally tasty, sure, but not quite as satisfying when the whole thing can be chomped down in two bites.



If nothing else, these ovens probably helped develop some patience in young children. Kids are usually driven by instant gratification, so it’s pretty incredible to think any of us had it somewhere within our antsy juvenile beings to wait the length of time it took for a lightbulb to bake a batch of cookies. I suppose the 100-watt bulbs in later models are a step up from the original 60-watt model, but I would never now consider trying to bake a mini bundt cake against the heat of my reading lamp. It’s bright, sure, but I’ve never really considered it as an oven-like source of heat.

In the mid 2000s, Hasbro issued a recall on Easy Bake Ovens due to some cases of severe burns, the most severe of which resulted in amputations. Apparently the aforementioned impatient children were greedily sticking their little hands into the ovenfront and getting their tiny fingers stuck in the heating chamber. Ouch.

Luckily the problems have since been ironed out (though hopefully not with a real iron--too much high heat.) The Easy Bake is back on the market and better than ever. Those ads are still as convincing as they were 15 years ago. Deep down, I know I can use the big girl oven like any adult, but there’s just something so magical about cooking by lightbulb. In that spirit, I think I’ll cook my next batch of cupcakes by lamplight as a tribute.. Yum.