Bobbsey Twins

The Bobbsey Twins is one of the longest-running American children's series, with seventy-two original volumes published between 1904 and 1979 under the Stratemeyer Syndicate house pseudonym Laura Lee Hope. The cast is consistent across the entire run. Bert and Nan Bobbsey, twelve-year-old fraternal twins, dark-haired and serious. Flossie and Freddie Bobbsey, six-year-old fraternal twins, blond and mischievous. Their parents Richard and Mary Bobbsey, and the cook Dinah and her husband Sam. The family lives in the comfortable small town of Lakeport, in an unnamed Midwestern state.The individual books typically take the family to a new setting, the seashore, the West, a camp, a city, an island, an ocean voyage, a farm, and follow an episodic structure with small misadventures, a low-key mystery, and a resolution that brings everyone safely home. The cast does not age across the series, despite the long publication run. Reading order does not really matter, since the books are largely interchangeable in structure. The series has been criticized in recent decades for its dated racial portrayals, particularly of Dinah and Sam, and most modern editions have been heavily revised.