Cherry Ames, Favorite Nurse

After my newspaper column about the Cherry Ames novels, I received what seemed like a record number of emails from readers who also remembered and loved the WWII nursing heroine from childhood.

Some wrote to say that Cherry's adventures inspired their career choices: "Those books did shape a lot of my beliefs in what I could accomplish as a woman.  I was born in 1948, and  am now a professor of Electrical Engineering, Sadly, I had no daughter to leave the books to, but they are still on my shelves, and I cherish them.  I try to inspire my own female students in the way that a fictional character inspired me."

Another reader tipped me to a real-life nurse's blog that compares actual nursing-school experiences to those described in nurse books.

A third wrote to say that girls weren't the only readers charmed by intrepid female heroines: "Your story reminded me so much of furtively reading my sister's Nancy Drew books. I worried whether boys were permitted to read books with girls as the hero!"

The publisher of  Free Public Domain E-Books in GoldenArk's School Reader Catalog wrote to ask if I knew of any K-12 stories in the public domain that were as inspirational as the Cherry Ames series. "If so, we can can publish them in our School Reader catalog." So I'm asking for suggestions. Please email me.

Comments

[rickey gold]

For the publisher of Free Public Domain E-Books in GoldenArk's School Reader Catalog looking for inspirational books: I think you'd have to include the Nancy Drew books (already mentioned by a male reader!) -- she was definitely a feisty girl. Also, the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The narrator, whose name I can't remember, would probably be an entrepreneur today.

[pushkina]

As a girl in the late sixties and already a fan of biographies, I was given a book of a collection of bios of real nurses who were NOT Flo Nightingale. No, I can't recall the title but it was a really great one. Clara Barton was in there, Lilian Wald, a French nurse who was at the battle of Dien Bien Phu and some other war nurses.

Also, as I went to a pre-Vatican II Catholic convent school, we had LOADS of biographies of saints and martyrs(one of my personal favorites was St. Maria Goretti)that were aimed at the 3rd to 7th grade reading levels. After Vatican II and when they closed the Junior school part of the school, all those great books just disappeared. Again, I have no idea who wrote or published them, just that they all had the correct imprimatur. As our nuns were very hip, I am convinced that the books were jettisoned in a spirit of VERY early political correctness. Even though I'm not Catholic, I'd SO love to get my hands on some of those! Some of the martyrdom stories were just so deliciously gruesome....(quoth the lion, "yum, yum!)