Summary
- The Cheerleaders series had 15 authors, including Christopher Pike and Caroline B. Cooney, who wrote only 4 out of 47 books in total.
- The series was hugely successful, with a new book released every month for four years, offering readers frothy, catty, teen drama filled with romance.
- Cheerleaders were a hot YA topic in the ’80s and ’90s, especially in horror-thriller series like the Fear Street Cheerleaders and Caroline B. Cooney’s Vampire’s Promise trilogy.
The ’80s were known for their explosion of pulpy YA series, and one of the most popular – Cheerleaders – has a very unusual origin. While Caroline B. Cooney is best-known for her YA horror-thriller books, the longest-running series that she started is her Cheerleaders series. The series followed the trials and tribulations of high school cheerleaders, including friendship troubles and rivalries, romance, and heartbreak.
It’s hard work writing any series, let alone one that has dozens of installments. To that end, publishing companies often utilize a stable of writers to keep a series going, rather than risk the output of the series being slowed down. Even with that, though, the Scholastic Cheerleaders series of the 1980s used that trick in the extreme – and found a lot of success doing it.
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The Cheerleaders YA Romance Series Had 15 Authors Behind It
Some Authors Only Wrote 1 Book Of The Series
Even though Caroline B. Cooney started the series, she didn’t finish it. In fact, she only wrote four books out of 47 in total. The Cheerleaders series is a strange one in that it is an ongoing series handled by a revolving cast of writers. While it’s not unusual for a new writer to take up the mantle of a long-running book series, particularly if the original author passes away, it’s a little more uncommon for multiple writers to tackle a series from the start. It’s even more uncommon for so many authors to work on a series.
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Cheerleaders has 15 authors in total who have written for the series. Some of them have written only one book, including the legendary Christopher Pike, who wrote Getting Even, the second book in the series. Other authors have had more substantive roles writing the series, such as Jennifer Sarasin, Lisa Norby, and Diane Hoh, who wrote eight, eight, and six books, respectively. While they’re not necessarily the deepest books, it’s a testament to the skill and cohesion of the authors that each one has been able to pick up where the previous author left off, or to return to the series without the quality dropping off or tone changing much.
|
Author |
Number of Books |
Titles |
|---|---|---|
|
Caroline B. Cooney |
4 |
Trying Out, Rumors, All the Way, Saying Yes |
|
Christopher Pike |
1 |
Getting Even |
|
Lisa Norby |
8 |
Feuding, Forgetting, Hurting, Scheming, Coming Back, Talking Back, Telling Lies, Starting Over (with Patricia Aks) |
|
Jennifer Sarasin |
8 |
Splitting, Cheating, Living It Up, Taking Over, Together Again, Acting Up, Getting Serious, Here to Stay |
|
Diane Hoh |
6 |
Flirting, Betrayed, Staying Together, Pulling Together, Proving It, Spring Fever |
|
Jody Sorenson |
2 |
Playing Games, Waiting |
|
Carol Stanley |
1 |
In Love |
|
Anne Reynolds |
1 |
Taking Risks |
|
Patricia Aks |
1 |
Starting Over (with Lisa Norby) |
|
Carol Ellis |
4 |
Looking Good, Going Strong, Showing Off, Fighting Back |
|
Ann Steinke |
5 |
Rivals, Stealing Secrets, Falling in Love, Saying No, Having It All |
|
Susan Blake |
1 |
Making It |
|
Leslie Davis |
3 |
Moving Up, All or Nothing, Pretending |
|
Judith Weber |
2 |
Changing Loves, Dating |
|
Vivian Schurfranz |
1 |
Overboard |
The Cheerleaders Series Was Wildly Successful
One Book Came Out Every Month For Four Years
Considering there are almost 50 books in the series, it’s needless to say the Cheerleaders series was successful; book series don’t get four dozen entries if they’re not. It’s not necessarily the strongest writing, nor the deepest, but it’s exactly the sort of frothy, catty, romance-filled teen drama that readers of a certain age eat up. With a pulpy, easily-written book series like Cheerleaders, having multiple authors writing meant a new book could be released every month. With Cheerleaders, a new book was released every month (only once was a month skipped) from January 1985 through November 1988 when the series wrapped.
Cheerleaders Were A Popular YA Topic In The ’80s & ’90s
Cheerleaders Were Especially Big In The Horror-Thriller Space
Those scanning the titles of the above Cheerleaders list might be confused, thinking of a different series. That’s not a surprise. Cheerleaders were a huge topic of YA books in the ’80s and especially in the ’90s when they started to become the subjects of YA horror-thriller series. Along with the more teen romance Cheerleaders series piloted by multiple authors, there was also R.L. Stine’s wildly popular Fear Street Cheerleaders high school series.
Even more confusingly, Caroline B. Cooney herself had another series, this one a vampire horror trilogy known as the Vampire’s Promise trilogy, that focused on a cheerleader. The first book of the series was even titled The Cheerleader, leading to many understandably conflating it with her earlier Cheerleaders series. That trilogy was a title under the Point Horror series, which, just like Cheerleaders, saw multiple authors, though it was less a singular series and more of a broad label.