Searching for the Great Brain

June 4, 2004 12:37 PM

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.
posted by weston (37 comments total)

I LOVED those books when I was a kid! Thanks.

Seriously, any parents with grade school aged kids, get them onto this series.
posted by Quartermass at 12:44 PM on June 4, 2004

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!
posted by CommaTheWaterseller at 12:46 PM on June 4, 2004

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.
posted by jonmc at 12:46 PM on June 4, 2004

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.
posted by Keith Talent at 12:56 PM on June 4, 2004

Loved 'em too!
posted by scarabic at 12:58 PM on June 4, 2004

Never read The Great Brain.. but I wonder.. who would win in a battle of wits, him or Encyclopedia Brown?
posted by Hildago at 1:04 PM on June 4, 2004

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?
posted by britain at 1:12 PM on June 4, 2004

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.
posted by nramsey at 1:18 PM on June 4, 2004

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.
posted by ilsa at 1:19 PM on June 4, 2004

I haven't thought about these books in 20 years. I forgot how much I loved them. Thanks for the reminder!
posted by car_bomb at 1:20 PM on June 4, 2004

Fantastic post. Thanks.
posted by loquax at 1:24 PM on June 4, 2004

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.
posted by five fresh fish at 1:29 PM on June 4, 2004

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.
posted by vacapinta at 1:36 PM on June 4, 2004

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.
posted by nramsey at 1:47 PM on June 4, 2004

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.
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 1:58 PM on June 4, 2004

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.
posted by smackfu at 2:01 PM on June 4, 2004

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?
posted by thomcatspike at 2:15 PM on June 4, 2004

BrodieShadeTree, how wonderful of you - do you by chance have room in your class for a 35 year old?
posted by thomcatspike at 2:18 PM on June 4, 2004

I was just thinking about those books yesterday, oddly enough.
posted by nickmark at 2:39 PM on June 4, 2004

Forget Encyclopedia Brown. Who would win in a battle between the Great Brain and Alvin Fernald? That's the real question.
posted by kindall at 2:45 PM on June 4, 2004

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.
posted by Tholian at 3:06 PM on June 4, 2004

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.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 4:49 PM on June 4, 2004

Thumbs up for the Great Brain. Though the Three Investigators were preferred at the time.
posted by rushmc at 4:55 PM on June 4, 2004

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.)
posted by LairBob at 8:04 PM on June 4, 2004

I loved the Great Brain, it beat Soup, and Encyclopedia Brown hands down.
posted by drezdn at 9:45 AM on June 5, 2004

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?
posted by jonmc at 10:20 AM on June 5, 2004

I loved The Great Brain! I read all those books...I wonder where my copies are.
posted by SisterHavana at 11:18 AM on June 5, 2004

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!
posted by filmgoerjuan at 11:28 AM on June 5, 2004

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.
posted by synecdoche at 12:08 PM on June 5, 2004

Jupiter Jones made me a reading addict.
posted by roboto at 3:23 PM on June 5, 2004

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.
posted by five fresh fish at 4:19 PM on June 5, 2004

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.
posted by kindall at 4:46 PM on June 5, 2004

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...
posted by mkhall at 10:31 PM on June 5, 2004

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.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:38 PM on June 5, 2004

What do kids do for books these days?

And are these books as well-written as I remember our books to be?
posted by five fresh fish at 10:38 PM on June 5, 2004

There's these "Harry Potter" books I've heard are pretty good.
posted by namespan at 7:23 PM on June 6, 2004

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.
posted by The Card Cheat at 8:19 AM on June 7, 2004