Sweet Valley High

Sweet Valley High turned Southern California adolescence into a serialized institution. Created by Francine Pascal and written by a rotating stable of ghostwriters, the books followed identical twins Jessica and Elizabeth Wakefield, one scheming and one steady, through romances, rivalries, and the occasional genuine catastrophe. The formula was reliable to the point of comfort, and that reliability is exactly what made it a phenomenon for a generation of young readers.

The series moved at the pace of a soap opera, churning out installments fast enough to keep readers permanently mid-crisis, and it eventually jumped to television in the mid-1990s. Underneath the cheerleading and the convertible was a surprisingly durable engine for melodrama, one that treated teenage feeling as worthy of full-length plotting. It is junk food, but it is junk food with an unshakable sense of its own audience.

The Sweet Valley High franchise spans 1 series, 10 books in the CrossBinge catalog.