Editing Stratemeyer Syndicate (section)

==Criticism==
For decades, libraries refused to carry any Syndicate books, considering them to be unworthy trash.<ref name="SS1">{{cite web| last=Andrews|first=Dale| title=The Hardy Boys Mystery | url=http://www.sleuthsayers.org/2013/08/the-hardy-boys-mystery_27.html |work=Children's books |publisher=SleuthSayers| location=Washington| date=2013-08-27}}</ref> Series books were considered to "cause 'mental laziness,' induce a 'fatal sluggishness,' and 'intellectual torpor.{{'"}}<ref>Romalov (1995), 115.</ref> Series books were considered to ruin a child's chances for gaining an appreciation of good literature (which was subsequently shown by one study not to be the case),<ref>Ross (1997).</ref> and to undermine respect for authority: "Much of the contempt for social conventions&nbsp;... is due to the reading of this poisonous sort of fiction."<ref>Rehak (2006), 97.</ref>

Franklin K. Mathiews, chief librarian for the [[Boy Scouts of America]], wrote that series books were a method, according to the title of one of his articles, for "Blowing Out the Boys' Brains",<ref>Romalov (1995), 117.</ref> and psychologist [[G. Stanley Hall]] articulated one of the most common concerns by asserting that series books would ruin girls in particular by giving them "false views of [life] ... which will cloud her life with discontent in the future".<ref>Romalov, Nancy Tillman. "Children's Series Books and the Rhetoric of Guidance: A Historical Overview." In ''Rediscovering Nancy Drew.'' Dyer, Carolyn Stewart, and Nancy Tillman Romalov, eds. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995. Page 116.</ref>

None of this hurt sales and Stratemeyer was unperturbed, even when his books were banned from the Newark Public Library as early as 1901, writing to a publisher: "Personally it does not matter much to me. ...&nbsp;Taking them out of the Library has more than [[Streisand effect|tripled the sales]] in Newark."<ref>Rehak, Melanie. ''Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her.'' NY: Harcourt, 2005. Page 97-98.</ref>