On Christmas Day in 1974, 5-year-old Michelle Miller Burns received her first Nancy Drew book, The Thirteenth Pearl, from her parents.
Decades later, Burns is still collecting Nancy Drew books, which she says inspired her journey from when she was a young violinist to now leading the Dallas Symphony Orchestra as president and CEO.
In many ways, Burns saw herself in Nancy Drew.
“She was courageous and curious. She was smart, she was adventuresome. That showed me that a young woman could be all of those things in society. I feel like that is just as true today, and our need to make sure that there is continued representation for young women,” Burns said.
Even to this day, Burns said she’s using the lessons learned from Nancy Drew in her professional life. She was formerly president and CEO of the Minnesota Orchestra and served as an administrator at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Can you describe your book collection?
My Nancy Drew collection runs a range of time from some of the earliest editions in the 1930s to contemporary editions. I have all of the Nancy Drew books of the contemporary collection, which is at the very top shelf there.
Then in the middle shelf are the books that I read as a child. Those were published in the ’50s and ’60s. Then in the bottom left shelf, I have just a few of the originals that were published in the 1930s.
Where did you get your collection from?
When I was working at the Newberry Library in Chicago, we had a book fair every year of people who would bring throughout the year their books from their own home and their own collections and donate them. Then we would sell them as a fundraiser for the library.
My parents came to town and they brought a box of books with them and said this is our donation to the Newberry Library. I opened the box and there were a number of my Nancy Drew books and a couple of Hardy Boys from my childhood.
I opened the first book, and on the inside was inscribed in my own handwriting that I had gotten this and Christmas of the year when I was, like, 5 years old. I thought, wow, I can't let these go. I need to keep these, so I kept all of them. Then I had just little by little, started looking for them when I went to vintage shops and antiques stores and that's how the collection started. Like most collections, it was a slippery slope from there. Now I have so many of them, and I continue to look for them every time I'm at a vintage shop or an antiques store.
Where is your book collection in your home and why did you place it there?
The Nancy Drew Book collection is in the front room of our home, and it's a room that's a multipurpose room. We decided to turn it into a library.
We chose to put it here in this room because it's the only room that had enough wall space to accommodate the bookcase. It was a practical decision, but it's also so nice to be up front, to be able to sit on a sofa and take a look out the front windows and have some nice natural light at different points during the day.
How does having this book collection make you feel?
The books in this collection make me feel nostalgic. They make me feel empowered. They make me feel like I can sort of live vicariously through the adventures of Nancy Drew.
They're near and dear to my heart, and they just bring me joy when I read them, and also when I look at them as pieces of art here in my home.
How does this book collection represent home for you?
The Nancy Drew book collection, for me, is grounding. It's something that I've had now for a long time and has moved with me to each place I've gone in my life since childhood. It just feels like home to me.
They feel very comforting and in each place where we have lived, they provide something familiar. But also [in] each place they've been located differently and arranged differently and displayed differently. So, it also has been something that has been able to flex with the spaces in which we've lived over the years.
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