The Sleepyside Zone

The Trixie Belden Questionnaire

Earlene Fowler

Earlene Fowler is the Agatha-award winning author of 11 Benni Harper mysteries, including Mariner's Compass and Broken Dishes. Visit her at www.earlenefowler.com.

Q: AS A CHILD, WHAT DID YOU LIKE ABOUT THE TRIXIE BELDEN SERIES, AS A SERIES?
EF: She was one of my favorite characters when I was a child. What I especially liked was she seemed more realistic to me than Nancy Drew in terms of relating to my life. The family feeling and ensemble cast was something that, I felt, was a bit lacking in the Nancy Drew books (though my character, Benni, is without a mother, like Nancy Drew, but has a very involved grandmother).

Q: WHAT DREW YOU TO TRIXIE BELDEN?
EF: For one thing she was a little bit younger than other series characters. Nancy Drew and others were 17 or 18 years old. I started reading when I was fairly young. Her age, an early teen, appealed to me. Also her background seemed a bit more normal. Nancy Drew's mom dies and her dad is an attorney. It's definitely an upper middle class setting. Trixie Belden is more working class. I came from a blue collar background and so it was more believable to me.

I wish I could have lived the Trixie Belden life. She actually was a person that if she lived next door, I feel we'd be friends.

Q: AS A CHILD, WHAT DID YOU THINK ABOUT TRIXIE, THE HEROINE?
EF: She talked a lot, so I related to that. She was always getting into trouble. I was the annoying person who wouldn't let something go. I liked that tenacity that she wouldn't let things go. I think that's the thing that appealed to me. Plus, she was a good kid. Beneath her curiosity it was because she wanted to help somebody.

These are good books for kids. Compared to some of the books kids read now these taught how to be a better person. They taught ethics, but in an enjoyable way. You didn't know you were being taught ethics.

Q: BEYOND WHAT YOU LIKED OR DIDN'T LIKE ABOUT THE TRIXIE BELDEN SERIES, WHAT MADE THE SERIES MEMORABLE TO YOU?
EF: For me, I think it was the ensemble cast. All of the other series were single - the Nancy Drew or the Judy Bolton were more of a single character that you followed, which is the way a lot of detective fiction now is. I think as a child, because I grew up in a big family, the Trixie Belden series, with her and her best friends and older and little brothers was more appealing to me.

Q: LOOKING BACK AS AN ADULT AND AN AUTHOR, HOW DID CAMPBELL KEEP TRIXIE LOVABLE, EVEN ADMIRABLE, WHEN SHE WAS SO CLEARLY FLAWED?
EF: I think it was because you always knew that what she was trying to do was help somebody. She was a typical kid. That's what kids related to. She had good intentions, but she was immature and young and what she did wasn't always right. She sort of grew. If Julie Campbell could have written her in a way that Judy Bolton did -Trixie Belden would have been an interesting kid to see go from 13 to 15 - 18 years old. It would be interesting to see what kind of person she'd be. But, you knew she'd end up a good person.

Nancy Drew always knew the answer and didn't do anything dumb, wore the right clothes and drove the right car. She never screws up. With Trixie - that was the voice that was appealing. That's one of the things people like about my character, Benni, she's so flawed. Even at 35 she says dumb things, just like Trixie. That's why I wrote her that way. Most of the women I know are more flawed than what you see in hard-boiled fiction. So that's the thing with Trixie. She always had good intentions, but she didn't have the maturity to figure out the exact right way. Then things worked out okay and she learned a lesson.

For example, she had to study at the dude ranch (in the Mystery in Arizona). How nice for kids who got bad grades to read that.

Q: AS AN ADULT AND AN AUTHOR, LOOKING BACK ON THE TRIXIE BELDEN SERIES, WHAT DO YOU ADMIRE ABOUT THE BOOKS?
EF: The book I just wrote that's coming out (Sunshine and Shadows) is set at a dude ranch. So I went out and re-read The Mystery in Arizona. I remembered only that they went to the dude ranch and didn't remember about the plot. In Sunshine and Shadows I introduce a writer of young girls fiction and it's a series that Benni read as a child. I wanted to write as a writer but at more of a distance from myself - a mystery writer in the 50's.

Q: HOW WOULD YOU COMPARE THE TRIXIE BELDEN SERIES TO YOUR OTHER CHILDHOOD READING, E.G., STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, ETC.
EF: I read and enjoyed Nancy Drew, but you read it and know you don't know anybody like that and you'll never be like that. There's nothing in it that relates to your everyday life. Where with the Trixie Belden books, oh, yeah, I could know a person like that.

One of the things that was interesting was the relationship with Jim. Trixie and Honey found this kid and he's adopted by Honey's family. That was pretty advanced for that time. The whole idea that he came from a troubled family and was taken in as foster child. If you were a foster child at that time I think you could have related to that.

Q: IN GENERAL, HOW DID YOUR CHILDHOOD READING INFLUENCE YOUR WRITING (OR DID IT)?
EF: Reading is how I learned how to write. I was such a reader. I'm just one generation removed - on one side are cotton sharecroppers and on the other migrant workers. Dad was a welder and my mom was homemaker. That's why I didn't grow up to want to be a writer. I wasn't given that possibility. We were readers; we went to the library every week. So, all those years of reading taught me what a novel was about and what makes a novel and more than anything it taught me what I like to read.

Q: SPECIFICALLY, HOW DID READING TRIXIE BELDEN INFLUENCE YOUR WRITING (OR IS THERE ANY DISCERNIBLE INFLUENCE)? YOU MENTIONED YOUR CHARACTERS ARE INFLUENCED BY TRIXIE?
EF: When I wrote my first Benni Harper book in 1992, it was not a conscious thing. I hadn't read Trixie Belden in years. A fan wrote me and said, these books remind me so much of Trixie Belden. It's the same number of characters. Benni has a best friend and an uncle that was near her age and I brought in her cousin who was like a brother. I think I did this subconsciously.

Obviously, something in them that appealed to me. I think it had to do with the age, but I also think it had to do with the voice. I think voice is something that we can't control in our writing. Your true voice comes out and you will tell more about yourself than you realize. That's that subtle something that came through in the Trixie Belden books that appealed to me. I read the Nancy Drew books enjoyed them, but they were more like a fantasy.

It's neat to think about these books and how they influenced me. You want to know how the people you know in your life end up. For some people, I've done that for them. They feel that now we know how Trixie ended up. She did marry Jim!

Q: JULIE CAMPBELL CREATED THE SERIES AND WROTE THE FIRST SIX BOOKS. VARIOUS WRITERS USING THE PEN NAME, KATHRYN KENNY, WROTE ALL OF THE OTHER VOLUMES. DID YOU NOTICE A DIFFERENCE AS A CHILD? DID IT MATTER TO YOU? IF YOU DIDN'T NOTICE AS A CHILD, DO YOU NOTICE NOW, EITHER IN RE-READING OR RECALLING?
EF: I don't think as a child I noticed. I think it's something I knew as I got older. I wasn't one of those who got every volume. I might have stopped reading when Campbell stopped writing them. I remember the early books very well. My sister was a fanatical collector (of Trixie Belden). I'm sure there's ones I didn't read. By the time I was 13, I had moved up to adult fiction.

This site was last updated on February 16, 2004.

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