The Donna Parker books were originally a series of four juvenile novels. They feature the every-day triumphs and tragedies of Donna Parker, a typical teenage girl growing up in a middle-class family in the fifties. They were published from 1957 through 1960 by the Whitman Publishing Company in glazed illustrated hardcovers without dust jackets. Early printings had end papers illustrated with scenes from the stories. Later printings had plaid end papers. The series was written by Marcia Martin, a pseudonym of Marcia Lauter Obrasky Levin. The first two, Donna Parker at Cherrydale and Donna Parker, Special Agent were illustrated by Jon Nielsen. The third and fourth books, Donna Parker on Her Own and Donna Parker: A Spring to Remember, were illustrated by Sari. These first-issue wraparound covers were charming and exquisitely detailed in rich, saturated colors. Vibrant and attractive, they reflected an idealized vision of post World War II, small-town American life. When the initial books in the series proved to remain popular, Whitman commissioned the author to write three more books in the series in the early 1960s. The first four books were also reissued later in the 1960s with updated cover art, which sadly, while achieving the modern look that Whitman desired, lacked the charm and delightful detail of the first-issue covers. Fragile and easily damaged, few of the original first-issue books have withstood the ravages of time (and the battering of adolescent readers). While they can still be found today, inevitably, they have almost always suffered some sort of damage.