4 She's not Nancy Drew everywhere. The original proposal for Nancy Drew conjured up a series of generally alliterative appellations for her: Stella Strong, Helen Hale, and Diana Dare, among them. Thankfully, her creators abandoned those names. But overseas, Nancy isn't Nancy. In France, she's Alice Roy. In Finland, Paula Drew, and in Sweden, Kitty Drew. In Germany, Susanne Langen. Russia comes the closest: There, she's Nensi Dru.

5 TV cut into Nancy's word count. The original printings of the first 34 Nancy Drew books were each 25 chapters long. Later printings, toward the end of the 1950s, had only 20 chapters. "That started because television had really come up as a competitor to these books," Rehak says. "They were trying to gear them toward the shortened attention span of kids." The revisions varied dramatically from book to book. "Some were rewritten to take out politically incorrect things and dated language. Some of them had their entire plots rewritten, and other books just had small things changed or cut down." Not surprisingly, these days the early printings can fetch a generous sum on eBay.

6 She had girl power before it was cool. Nancy Drew "was pioneering when the books started coming out in the '30s," Rehak says. "For a lot of women who grew up in the '40s and '50s, she was the only female character they had to show them that they could get what they wanted and be smart and have adventures."