R.I.P.

‘Sweet Valley High’ Creator Francine Pascal Dies at 92

A generation of readers imagined life at an L.A. high school through the New York writer's books.

Just as The Beach Boys hailed from Hawthorne, a forgettable suburb a few miles inland from the nearest shore, and only one member (Dennis) actually surfed, Francine Pascal grew up in Jamaica, Queens, and had never visited Southern California when her first Sweet Valley High books were published in 1983. The series quickly became a phenomenon, defining the aesthetic of the quintessential Valley Girl amid the jocks and cheerleaders in the fictional L.A. suburb of Sweet Valley for Generation X and beyond and selling more than 200 million copies in the process. Pascal’s books created a young adult market that barely existed before identical blonde, blue-eyed twins Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield introduced a rapacious teenage girl readership to the innocent high school shenanigans in 181 novels and any number of spinoffs. Pascal, a former soap opera writer, lived most of her adult life in Midtown Manhattan, where she died on Sunday at the age of 92.

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