Comments on: Searching for the Great Brain

Searching for the Great Brain

weston — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 12:37:06 -0800

Searching for ~~Bobby Fischer~~ the Great Brain. "The Great Brain books are based on the true life stories of John D. and his family, in particular his older brother Tom, who is so clever he always seems to get his way... While we were reading the second in the series, More Adventures of the Great Brain, we learned about a camping trip that J.D.'s family went on in Beaver Canyon, Utah. We recognized some landmarks described in the book, and decided to go on a field trip to try to find the town of Adenville where the Great Brain lived.

By: Quartermass

Quartermass — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 12:44:37 -0800

I LOVED those books when I was a kid! Thanks. Seriously, any parents with grade school aged kids, get them onto this series.

By: CommaTheWaterseller

CommaTheWaterseller — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 12:46:30 -0800

I loved those books! I'm going to reread 'em now with the aide of my local public library. I just hope I don't look too creepy digging around in the kids section. Thanks for the link!

By: jonmc

jonmc — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 12:46:34 -0800

My god I loved the Great Brain books when I was young! I still have copies of a few of them. I so wanted to be wicked genius Tom, and I actually did spend hours looking over atlases for Adenville in the school library.

By: Keith Talent

Keith Talent — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 12:56:25 -0800

Add me to the list of people that poured over every single word as a kid. It's funny, because I thought I was the only person ever to read them.

By: scarabic

scarabic — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 12:58:32 -0800

Loved 'em too!

By: Hildago

Hildago — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 13:04:59 -0800

Never read The Great Brain.. but I wonder.. who would win in a battle of wits, him or Encyclopedia Brown?

By: britain

britain — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 13:12:07 -0800

Tom would manipulate Encyclopedia into clearing Bugs Meany, and then manipulate Bugs into paying him. Read them and loved them. What kind of a name is Sweyn?

By: nramsey

nramsey — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 13:18:37 -0800

I've got the first three books with the original Mercer Mayer drawings on the cover art and wish they would reissue the rest with the original covers (something about the current covers bother me). I still go back and reread the ones I have occasionally. I think these books are a perfect way for kids to get a feeling for the time period.

By: ilsa

ilsa — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 13:19:58 -0800

A battle of The Great Brain and Encyclopedia Brown must never come to pass. For what it's worth, here's Ramona Quimby's neighborhood. The other day I was trying without luck to find roughly where the Ingall's Little House might have been. Seriously, I did some volunteer work in a library this last year, and oh boy did the children's book section bring back memories. I hadn't thought about The Great Brain since fourth grade.

By: car_bomb

car_bomb — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 13:20:06 -0800

I haven't thought about these books in 20 years. I forgot how much I loved them. Thanks for the reminder!

By: loquax

loquax — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 13:24:59 -0800

Fantastic post. Thanks.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 13:29:19 -0800

The Little House series is well worth reading as an adult. Quick to read through, but a fascinating bit of true history. Also, her pa was a nutter.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 13:36:53 -0800

Oh man, I was so hooked on these books. Awesome, awesome books for a young kid to read. I still have them all. In some sense Tom was a classic hero but he could also be so heartless. I now look back on it as a primer on the morality of capitalism.

By: nramsey

nramsey — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 13:47:37 -0800

As someone who (a) lives in Portland and (b) lives a block down from Klickatat street and a handful of blocks away from the Ramona area, Ramona is a legend. If you go to the neighborhood library they have a huge wall with a map showing Ramona's house, Henry and Ribsy's house, all the Cleary characters. I wonder if seeing writers, who normally write for adults, writing for kids (ex. Coraline and Wolves in the Wall by Neil Gaiman; Hoot by Carl Hiaasen; Abarat by Clive Barker) has any influence on people in the 25-35 age group revisiting classics they remember from their childhood. Anymore some of the best things I have read have been "kid" books.

By: BrodieShadeTree

BrodieShadeTree — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 13:58:54 -0800

I read the Great Brain series to my classroom every year. They are well received. I only change the terms the author uses for Native Americans - not exactly accepted terminology these days... Great stories.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 14:01:03 -0800

I loved these books. But as said above, the new covers suck. It looks like only the hardcovers have the original drawings and the new ones were designed by some hack.

By: thomcatspike

thomcatspike — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 14:15:44 -0800

A battle of The Great Brain and Encyclopedia Brown must never come to pass. Only books I loved read during the summer. Flash back - Which Osmond brother played The Great Brain in the movie?

By: thomcatspike

thomcatspike — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 14:18:03 -0800

BrodieShadeTree, how wonderful of you - do you by chance have room in your class for a 35 year old?

By: nickmark

nickmark — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 14:39:34 -0800

I was just thinking about those books yesterday, oddly enough.

By: kindall

kindall — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 14:45:09 -0800

Forget Encyclopedia Brown. Who would win in a battle between the Great Brain and Alvin Fernald? That's the real question.

By: Tholian

Tholian — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 15:06:47 -0800

This brought a big smile to my face today. Hadn't thought of those books since I read and loved them as a kid. Thanks.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 16:49:00 -0800

who would win in a battle of wits, him or Encyclopedia Brown? Surely the Mad Scientist's Club would use them both as slave-labor to build a remote-controlled chupacapbra controlled by Henry Reed.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 16:55:09 -0800

Thumbs up for the Great Brain. Though the Three Investigators were preferred at the time.

By: LairBob

LairBob — Fri, 04 Jun 2004 20:04:37 -0800

THE GREAT BRAIN!!!! OMFG, talk about dredging up a treasured childhood memory that had disappeared for, like, thirty years. Thank god someone reminded me of these books before my kids got any older...awesome. (They're already on the way from Amazon.)

By: drezdn

drezdn — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 09:45:56 -0800

I loved the Great Brain, it beat Soup, and Encyclopedia Brown hands down.

By: jonmc

jonmc — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 10:20:57 -0800

Surely the Mad Scientist's Club would use them both as slave-labor to build a remote-controlled chupacapbra controlled by Henry Reed. I loved that book, too! And Encyclopedia Brown! I dug all the boy geniuses. They were my role models. What the hell happened?

By: SisterHavana

SisterHavana — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 11:18:11 -0800

I loved The Great Brain! I read all those books...I wonder where my copies are.

By: filmgoerjuan

filmgoerjuan — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 11:28:12 -0800

Great, now I have to go over to my parents' house and try to find my copies of these books (assuming my sister hasn't stolen them to add to her collection of every good book we had as children). Excellent post, weston!

By: synecdoche

synecdoche — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 12:08:10 -0800

This post and thread is bringing back so many fond childhood memories; I remember The Great Brain, Encyclopedia Brown, Soup, Henry Reed, and all of them-- they were all among my favourite books. Time for a trip to the library. Last year I got back into reading John Bellairs, so maybe I should revisit some other childhood friends.

By: roboto

roboto — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 15:23:47 -0800

Jupiter Jones made me a reading addict.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 16:19:17 -0800

Anyone remember a series involving a professor -- who may have been affiliated with a secret government agency -- and a couple of kids? The professor would create neat stuff, like a remote-control fly that sent video and audio back to the controller, and the kids would end up using it to solve mysteries and/or save the world. The book that I think probably got me really hooked (though I always was a bookworm) had "onion" in the title. For years I thought it was "The Onion Field," but that's a Wambaugh title and I'm sure I wasn't reading him at age eight. A quick google didn't find any likely candidates.

By: kindall

kindall — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 16:46:55 -0800

That's the Danny Dunn series by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin. However, there doesn't seem to be one with "onion" in the title.

By: mkhall

mkhall — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 22:31:38 -0800

Thank you very much, Roboto! The Three Investigators displaced the Hardy Boys from my childhood deductive Olympus way back in the day, but today they seem to be forgotten. How utterly marvelous to find them on-line...

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 22:38:02 -0800

Sorry, those were two wholly separate streams of thought there. One was a memory of a kid's adventure book; the other a memory of a kid's(?) fiction drama book. What I remember about the latter is a boy that would have been pre- or early-teen, a cave, an old man who I believe dies in the end, and the "Onion" ?Field? in the title. It seems to me to have been a bit of very serious writing for a kid as young as I was at the time.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Sat, 05 Jun 2004 22:38:37 -0800

What do kids do for books these days? And are these books as well-written as I remember our books to be?

By: namespan

namespan — Sun, 06 Jun 2004 19:23:31 -0800

There's these "Harry Potter" books I've heard are pretty good.

By: The Card Cheat

The Card Cheat — Mon, 07 Jun 2004 08:19:26 -0800

The story that sticks with me all these years was the one where (bear with me if the details aren't 100% accurate, it's been 20 years since I read these books) a rocking horse belonging to the Great Brain's little brother was stolen from their front porch. When he solved the crime, it turned out that it had been taken by a poor family on the other side of town and given to their son, who was dying of some incurable disease. In the end, they let the kid keep the horse. Great post, by the way.