Francine Pascal was an author who helped revolutionize young adult literature with her popular “Sweet Valley High” series and its spinoffs.
- Died: July 28, 2024 (Who else died on July 28?)
- Details of death: Died at a New York City hospital of lymphoma at the age of 92.
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Francine Pascal’s legacy
Pascal began her writing career working on the 1960s soap opera “The Young Marrieds,” and in 1977, she wrote her first young adult novel, “Hangin’ Out with Cici.” In the early 1980s, Pascal had the idea to combine her two past writing experiences into a soap opera for teens. She initially pitched the idea as a TV show, but when networks weren’t interested, she pivoted to envision a series of novels, and “Sweet Valley High” was born.
Debuting in 1983 with “Double Love,” the “Sweet Valley High” collection focused on Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, blonde California twins with “perfect size-six figures.” Over the course of 181 books – and dozens of others in subsequent spinoffs – the twins’ lives and loves at the titular high school developed.
Pascal did not actually author all the books in the various Sweet Valley series; she wrote the first dozen, creating the characters and writing what she called a “bible” with deep detail on their lives, looks, personalities, and surroundings. She also developed the stories for each and every book, but she then passed those stories off to ghostwriters to bring them to fruition. Pascal oversaw that team of wordsmiths, requiring that they painstakingly follow the elements in her primer as they penned the books. She described the ghostwriters’ work as “like paint by numbers” in a 2012 interview for the Culture Brats blog – she created the outlines, and the writers filled them in.
Pascal’s formula was a winner, and teen girls of the 1980s and ‘90s absolutely devoured the “Sweet Valley High” books. With the popularity of the series, Pascal first spun it off into a series for younger readers, “Sweet Valley Twins,” flashing back to the Wakefield twins’ sixth-grade year. Other spinoffs followed, for a variety of ages: “Sweet Valley Kids,” “The Unicorn Club,” “Sweet Valley Junior High,” “Sweet Valley High: Senior Year,” and “Sweet Valley University.” The Sweet Valley novels were young adult literature juggernauts for 20 years before Pascal wrapped them up in 2003. She returned for an update in 2011, “Sweet Valley Confidential,” which looked at the Wakefields’ adult lives.
While she oversaw the Sweet Valley writing squad, Pascal also wrote books of her own. Beginning in 1999, she authored the “Fearless” series of young adult books about a teenaged girl who was born without the ability to feel fear. More than three dozen books followed, including the “Fearless FBI” spinoff. Pascal also wrote the adult books “Save Johanna!” and “The Ruling Class.”
Notable quote
“At least a quarter of the fan mail that I got started off with ‘I used to hate to read…’ It was sometimes from the kid, and sometimes from the parent, who would say, ‘She used to hate to read…’ That’s the best thing that happened [with ‘Sweet Valley’]. That and money.” — from a 2019 interview for Entertainment Weekly
Tributes to Francine Pascal
Full obituary: The New York Times
