Francine Pascal’s bestselling series Sweet Valley High filled young adult readers with longings for starry-eyed cheerleaders and Valley Girl accents. With a series that captured the love of adults and teens alike, Pascal’s work will long be remembered.
On July 28, at the age of 92, Pascal passed from lymphoma, her daughter Laurie Wenk-Pascal said. Her surviving books tell the story of a woman with captivating writing and admirable storytelling abilities.
Pascal’s writing career started alongside her husband John Pascal, a journalist. Together, they wrote scripts for ABC’s television series, The Young Marrieds. She also joined John and her brother, Michael Stewart, to write the Broadway Musical book for George M!. It was around then that Pascal had the idea for her first book series about a teenager fighting with her mom. The Victoria Martin series was a success, and the first book Hangin’ Out With Cici was adapted into an ABC Afterschool Special, My Mother Was Never a Kid.
“When I started to write about Cici and Victoria, I realized I had a lot to say about those years,” she said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I knew how to do it.” Pascal also said that the idea for the series came to her while she was lying in bed.
After Victoria Martin and her 1980 stand-alone The Hand-Me-Down Kid, Pascal faced the pressure of her publisher’s deadline and rejection for a soap opera about teens in high school. From these two circumstances, Sweet Valley High was born.
Following the lives of identical twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, Pascal authored Sweet Valley High with a team of ghostwriters. Pascal saw the chance for countless stories following their early wins. After writing the first twelve books, their quick success prompted her to bring on a team of writers. They turned her plot outlines into monthly book releases.
Her books set in fictional Sweet Valley, California stole the hearts and fantasies of high schoolers, and all 181 novels tell a tame high school experience without drugs, alcohol, and sex. Her first novel in the series, Double Love, was about the twin sisters falling for the same boy.
Pascal’s high school novelty series has a timeless storyline that all of her readers can appreciate, whether starting high school for the first time now or in 1983 when Double Love was published. Sweet Valley High, the collection’s foundation piece, was adapted for a television series. The novels also sparked several spin-off series, including Sweet Valley Kids and The Unicorn Club.
Pascal’s writing career didn’t end with Sweet Valley High; in 1994 she published If Wishes Were Horses…, which she said was the closest she’d come to a memoir in an interview with Girls at Library. Her 36-book Fearless series also received reader acclaim, a mystery-thriller story about a teenage girl-detective.
As high schoolers, parents and teachers around the world prepare to go back to school this fall, pick up a copy of Francine Pascal’s Sweet Valley High in remembrance of an author who glamorized the varsity-letter academic aesthetic.
