In terms of prolificacy, no author in the history of children's literature can approach the output of Edward Stratemeyer. Added to his own works, there are hundreds of series books whose plots he outlined for a highly secret, constantly changing corps of ghostwriters using house names that still remain the property of the Stratemeyer Syndicate. Available documentation attests that between the years of 1886 and 1930, Edward Stratemeyer published 150 titles that were exclusively his own and that he also masterminded a literary machine which produced some 700 titles published under more than sixty-five pseudonyms and translated into a dozen languages. In 1926, the American Library Association sponsored a survey of juvenile reading preferences, querying 36,000 children in thirty-four different cities about their favorite books; ninety-eight percent of these children responded with a Stratemeyer title. Although the syndicate's series list has greatly shrunk since World War II, figures indicate that the Stratemeyer Syndicate still...