The creator of one of the most beloved series of young adult novels is dead at 92. Francine Pascal died of lymphoma Sunday at a Manhattan hospital, her daughter tells the New York Times. Pascal, a journalist by training, got her start in showbiz as a writer on the 1960s soap opera The Young Marrieds. She went on to write a few young-adult novels and then started working on a treatment for a soap opera, but when a friend of a friend wondered why no teenage version of primetime soap Dallas existed, everything changed. She sketched out an idea for a book series about a pair of high school twin girls, and thus, Sweet Valley High was born. Bantam Books bought the first dozen books and the series was launched in 1983, according to a 2019 Entertainment Weekly interview with Pascal.
Pascal told EW at the time that she never had much interest in actually writing the books herself, but thanks to the extremely detailed character bibles she'd put together and the stories she sketched out, a team of ghostwriters churned out hundreds and hundreds of books in the SVH series and multiple spin-offs, including Sweet Valley Twins, Sweet Valley Kids, and even some supernatural or murder-mystery-themed special installments. There was even a TV show from 1994 to 1997. After SVH ended in 2003, Pascal herself wrote a 10-years-later sequel, Sweet Valley Confidential, in 2011, the Guardian reports. Pascal also wrote two adult novels, and another popular young adult series, Fearless. "The very important thing was, I was a liberal Jewish woman, and a New Yorker. So [my perspective] is going to be quite different from a lot of the people who are reading the books. I realized the power that I could have," Pascal said to EW. (More obituary stories.)
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