Visiting Another World: Donna Parker Takes a Giant Step by Marcia Martin

To take a break from serious reading, the pandemic, and now the murder of George Floyd and its aftermath, I decided to revisit the Donna Parker series of my late girlhood, hoping for a little comfort, and to see how the books held up, after buying a complete set of them from a member of my book society.

It's interesting to take another look at books that portray a particular middle-class teenaged world of the early 1960s. The series is set in a small town two hours from New York City, and everyone is white and has non-ethnic names. In this, the final book of seven, Donna Parker is fourteen going on fifteen and making the transition from junior high to high school. Her mother is a stay-at-home mom, her dad brings home the bacon, and there is a younger brother, Jimmy, who appears to be at play with his pals much of the time. A twist at the end brings him more into focus…

Looking past those clichés, the book is written with sensitivity and addresses what remain the concerns of teenagers: the ups and downs of friendships, conflicts with parents and the search for self-knowledge and the establishment of personal values in the advance toward maturity.

Fifty years or more later, things are very different. It’s not likely that books for tween girls would be so narrow in terms of showing ethnicities, races, religions and sexual preference, but like many older works, we must view the Donna Parker books in the context of their time, rather than judging them by current standards. As such, they are clear windows into the past, and something to learn from.

What I really wonder about is the backstory of the author, Marcia Martin. Goodreads has this information about her:

"Pen name of Marcia Lauter Obrasky Levin.

A popular children's book author, creator of the Donna Parker series, 22 books for beginning readers, and some of the first enrichment textbooks in the "New Mathematics". She was born and raised in Philadelphia, and lived in Rye, New York for 56 years."

Martin was Jewish. Did she feel she couldn’t write books under her more ethnic-sounding name? Did someone suggest she change it so she would be more successful? Perhaps she merely wanted to maintain her privacy. We will most likely never know. Here are her obituaries from The Jewish Exponent, Philadelphia’s venerable Jewish newspaper, https://www.jewishexponent.com/2013/0... and the New York Times https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nyt....