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Most of the pop culture-related books I have in my collection date from the '60s, '70s and early 80s'. Of course it's not hard to figure out why--that's the era of my childhood, the era that holds a special nostalgia for me. (Actually, I'm too young to remember the '60s, but but re-runs and radio stations gave me a childhood intimacy with many of the decade's entertainments.)
I do have a couple of older Whitman authorized edition books--Whitman had a long tradition of placing celebrities in mysteries. Both Betty Grable and the House with the Iron Shutters and Jane Withers and the Swamp Wizard date from the World War II era. Later examples of the same thing include Annette and the Mystery at Smugglers' Cove, The Lennon Sisters The Secret of Holiday Island (someone received my copy as a Christmas gift in 1962) and Janet Lennon at Camp Calamity.
I also have a couple of older books, like 1941's The Quiz Kids Red Book, based on radio programs.
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Of course, along with stories about real-life figures, Whitman, Scholastic and other publishers created new adventures for many TV show characters. Hardback books in my collection include books based on The Waltons, F-Troop, Family Affair and Lassie.
I have paperbacks based on Room 222, The Avengers and Ben Casey, among others, along with quite a few based on The Partridge Family (a series that must have been popular judging by the number of books in it). I also have a TV show cover of Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House on the Prairie.
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There are also books other than novels that pop up in response to the popularity of a certain TV character, oddities such as Buffy's Cookbook, a cereal-premium paperback filled with kid-friendly recipies that really have nothing to do with the Family Affair character Buffy or her portrayer, Anissa Jones, or such as Barnabas Collins In a Funny Vein, a 1969 cheaply-printed collection of horrendously bad jokes about the Dark Shadows character (samples: "What does Barnabas use in his coffee? He uses crematorium" and "When Barnabas was in school, did he eat in the cafeteria? No, he ate in the bacteria."
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The movie novelizations I have tend to be from Disney movies such as Charlie the Lonesome Cougar, The Boatniks (both slightly before my time) and the Love Bug movies, as well as other children's movies like Benji and Annie.
(Of course, for the littler set there are many, many Little Golden Books and similar items based on kids TV shows, Disney movies and other entertainments.)
Another perennial type of book is one that collects shallow biographies of a group of stars into some kind of "scrapbook." My favorite example is Kids on TV, an extremely popular item in my grade school library. Although it includes child actors from many shows I've never to this day really heard of (Arnie, anyone?), its attention to such shows as The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, Nanny and the Professor and My Three Sons endeared it to me.
Other examples, include TV's Superwomen's Scrapbook, which profiles the Charlie's Angels cast, Lynda Carter and Angie Dickinson; Wonder Women of the Eighties (a group that included Mary Tyler Moore and Cheryl Tiegs along side Coretta Scott King and Rose Kennedy); 1971's TV Favorites, which featured Laugh-In, The Bugaloos and Julia; and TV Superstars Scrapbook, a Weekly Reader book with Diff'rent Strokes and The Facts of Life among shows spotlighted.
The same kind of compilation is popular in the music world-- some examples I have are Flip's Groovy Guide to the Groops 1969-70, 1987's Rock Video Superstars II (remember El Debarge and Mr. Mister?) and 1978's Nashville Music with Loretta Lynn, Mac Davis and Charlie Pride. This was part of the Spotlight Series, which I remember well from the school library. My favorite volumes were Laugh it Up (Carol Burnett, Bill Cosby and Mary Tyler Moore) and Stay Tuned (Valerie Harper, Lee Majors and Henry Winkler).
Of course, there are always books that focus on one music sensation like the Osmonds, as well as books with educational approach. Rock Music, from 1973, traces the history of the genre for kids and closes by urging them, "When you are listening to your radio as you read this--whenever in the future it may be--try to associate what you hear with what you have read in this book about traditional rock and roll."
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