Not Allowed To Grow Up / Literature

• The Hardy Boys:
  • As one of the most prominent examples in literature, with sixty-plus years of (at least) five book series and 248 volumes, the Amateur Sleuths Joe and Frank started at 15 and 16 years old when first introduced in the 1920s and stayed there until the books were overhauled in the 1960s. The brothers were then allowed to become 17 and 18 years old, respectively, and have stayed at those ages ever since, with the occasional grade-school foray that de-aged the brothers into third-graders. Assuming that both Joe and Frank were born on the same birthday, that would be about 1.47 days per mystery. They must be the most obsessed detectives in existence.
  • Averted in its media adaptations, likely due to the problems of using children in a lengthy series that involves many dangerous situations. The short-lived Nelvana series in the mid-1990s aged them a few years: Joe was in college and Frank had a job as a newspaper reporter, with their father retired and living in Europe. In the 1970s The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries, because the actors had become noticeably older, the brother were implied to graduate high school in second season, while the third and final season allowed them to be hired by the Justice Department. Also, a film and script were in development for The Hardy Men in which they would finally be adults, but has since been scuttled.
  • Also averted in many fan works. While the majority of fanfics for the franchise play it straight, there's a sizable minority that focuses on the brothers being grown-up.
• In the original Nancy Drew books, Nancy was always 16. In the revised versions, she's always 18. Either way, Nancy must have solved approximately 175 mysteries in the span of one year. If the multiple spin-off series are added in, it's even more mind-boggling.
• Both of the above instances were deliberate on the part of the Stratemeyer Syndicate, after seeing sharp drop-offs in readerships of books that averted this and had the characters grow up (notably the likes of Judy Bolton and Cherry Ames) they decided eternally youthful was the way to go.
• The Boxcar Children. Over a hundred books, most of which take place over a whole summer, and not one of them is past college age... They age in the first 19 books, written by Gertrude Chandler Warner; Henry actually makes it to college age, and Jessie, Violet, and Ben all have summer jobs... but the publishing company punched the Reset Button so hard that the characters were all slammed back to their original ages from book one when the series was turned into a Franchise Zombie after Warner's death.
• The girls in the The Baby-Sitters Club series aged normally for the first 10 books (during which they all had their 13th birthdays) but were afterward frozen in time no matter how many holidays, summers, birthdays, moves, or events had passed by—and even though they often acted much older than 13- and 11-year-olds. They finally moved on from middle school with an eighth-grade graduation at the end of the series. The spinoff Baby-Sitters' Little Sister had Karen age from six to seven early on, then froze her at "seven and a half" for the rest of the series. Ann M. Martin later explained that when the series started, she had intended to let them age—which they did for the first ten books—but as it took off and became popular, she was obligated to freeze their ages to maintain the continuity—so anyone could pick up any book and still follow the story of thirteen year old baby-sitters.
• Similarly, the protagonists of The Saddle Club go through multiple Christmases and summer breaks but never advance beyond their original ages (12 for Carole and Stevie, 13 for Lisa), despite the fact that the series actively acknowledges the passage of time (for example, one Christmas book references the events of an earlier Christmas book and indicates that those events took place over the previous Christmas — but somehow everyone is still the exact same age they were in the earlier book). It makes the whole thing rather hard to parse out. Sidestepped in the much shorter Pine Hollow spinoff series, which actually takes place entirely within a single year (and even then, Carole has a birthday in Book 10).
• The original Henry Reed books take place over three consecutive summers, and Henry and Midge (short for Margaret) age realistically (Henry from thirteen to fifteen, Midge a year younger). Enter the fifth book, written years later, and their ages are rebooted back.
• In Richmal Crompton's Just William series, William Brown lives through the twenties, thirties, second world war and up to the first moon landings, all the while remaining 11 and having quite a few birthdays (whether these are his 11th or 12th is never stated.)
• Jennings is introduced at the age of 10 years 2 months, and after his birthday in the fourth book, remains permanently 11 from then on. There are few indications of precise external time, but he has far too many ends-of-terms for this to be plausible.
• This is a prevalent trope in many children's series books. Prior to the 20th century, series-book characters aged in real time: witness the Rover Boys, who grew up, married, and eventually had to hand the adventuring off to the next generation of Rover Boys. The first set of children's book characters who qualified for this trope (as distinguished from being prevented from growing up, as was the case with Dorothy Gale) were the Bobbsey Twins. In the original editions of their first several volumes, they aged in real time; but the editors at the Stratemeyer Syndicate soon realized the characters would age beyond their readership. So they, and their fellows Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, the Happy Hollisters, and many others, got caught in a chronological stasis, never aging beyond where the series began.
• In-universe example in John Varley's The Golden Globe, the narrator, Kenneth Valentine, is an actor who had played the same child role for decades.
• According to the books, James Bond was born in 1924. The books started in 1953, and the movies in 1962; his twenty-third movie appearance was in 2012, where he most definitely did not look 88. His inability to age beyond early middle age is, if not taken as EON Productions simply adapting the stories to modern eras, considered proof of the theory that 'James Bond' is an alias assigned along with the designation 007, and there have been several people using that name/number combination over the decades.
• In Galaxy of Fear, the protagonists were twelve and thirteen years old when Alderaan was destroyed, the series starts at six months after that, and ends around a year after the destruction. Their ages are mentioned frequently. In The Brain Spiders, Tash (the older of the two) says that she'll be fourteen in a few weeks, but while later books take place months after that she is still called thirteen.
• The characters of the Stephanie Plum series don't age, although plenty of references to the passage of time are made (such as Stephanie's sister's marriage and subsequent pregnancy).
• Averted at first with Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Greg Heffley and his generation moved through Grade 6 in Book 1, then through Grade 7 in books 2-4, but has since stayed in Grade 8 middle school for more than two summers; Word of God says that's where he will stay.
  • In "Rodrick Rules" Manny says he's "onwy thwee". Thirteen books later in "The Deep End" his age is STILL mentioned as 3.
• The kids in The Famous Five don't age much despite the series being several decades old. J.K. Rowling specifically mentioned them when discussing how she didn't want her Harry Potter characters to be like the ones from The Famous Five.
• Played for Drama in the young adult novel Elsewhere. In the afterlife depicted in the novel, people enter at the age they die at which point they age backwards until they're babies at which point they are reborn on earth. This is a major source of angst for the main character of the book Liz, who died when she was only 15 and therefore will never get a proper chance to live a full life.
• Roys Bedoys: Despite years passing, no one gets any older.

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