Redbook: Remaking Role Models

Remaking Role Models

Redbook, October 2008

Call it a case of Bratz and Britney overload: Addie Swartz, a mom of two in Boston, got more and more frustrated every time she saw some questionable role model offered up to her daughters.

"The turning point came when Aliza was 9," Swartz explains. "We wandered into a popular clothing store at the mall, and hanging on the wall was a huge photo of a young woman naked from the waist up." That image—and her daughter and her friends' bewildered reactions to it—got Swartz thinking about new ways to boost girls' self-esteem instead of crush it.

After two years of research, focus groups, and brainstorming with her daughters and other kids, Swartz (who knows a thing or two about branding from previous gigs at Disney and Reebok) created Beacon Street Girls, a book series about five friends navigating seventh grade.

"The girls are struggling to succeed, living normal day-to-day lives, making good and bad decisions," says Swartz. The characters are faced with issues familiar to any tween, such as fitting in, dealing with body image, striving to succeed at school—and, of course, along the way, finding their fair share of romance and adventure.

Since the first book's debut, in 2004, the series—now numbering 18 titles—has sold more than 600,000 copies, and Swartz recently signed a distribution agreement with publishing giant Simon & Shuster.

Swartz ensures accuracy and sensitivity by recruiting experts on tween issues to weigh in on each book as it's developed. But the most important experts are right under the publisher's own roof: her daughters, now 16 and 13. "Chloe read one manuscript and said, 'You have Charlotte talking to a stranger, and you tell us never to talk to strangers,'" says Swartz. "Of course, she was right, so we changed it!" For more info, check out BeaconStreetGirls.com.