Another Children's Series I remember really, really liking was Donald J. Sobol’s juvenile mystery sleuth ENCYCLOPEDIA BROWNbooks. The first book I read in the set was ENCYCLOPEDIA BROWN AND THE CASE OF THE SECRET PITCH, (a book I found buried within three filled spindles of paperbacks at the back of the school library as part of the honorback system) and at the time I wasn’t really aware that it was part of an ongoing series. But I liked that one book so much that I went down to the local library to see if there were any more, and was excited to find that there were about ten books in that set, and even now, I can’t find the words to describe how COOL all those books looked together on the shelf! In any case, I immediately made it my mission to borrow each one, two at a time…til I’d read ‘em all!
One of the things that made Encyclopedia Brown stories so much fun was the way you were given all the clues to each case (read: chapter) and was given a moment to try and “figure it out for yourself”. Though some solutions were based on knowledge no average 3rd grader would know, (Ambergris floats? Who Knew?!) most of them were based on plain common sense, and these were the ones you could either solve yourself or at least go “Oh, yeah!! I shoulda known that!” (Like that story where the guy claimed to have hit his leg on the table, where there was a delicately stacked house of cards…!)
Besides Donald J. Sobol’s smart and fun storytelling, one of the BEST things about the book was the fantastic artwork by Leonard Shortall. Shortall illustrated in a very 1950’s suburban family style, perfectly suited for depicting Idaville, the “average American Town”. In the early books he drew with thick brush strokes, but as the series went on, Shortall’s work took on a very thin, spindly style (somewhat akin to Roald Dahl’s drawings in his Charlie and the Chocolate Factory books.) and these were my favorite illustrations of them all!
And while we’re on the subject of Shortall’s artwork, a kind of a funny thing, but back when I was obsessively and voraciously reading and re-reading the Encyclopedia Brown books, I developed this strong attraction for Sally Kimball, Encyclopedia Brown’s tomboyish second in command!! Something about how Shortall was depicting Ms. Kimball invoked images of the my ideal American sweetheart a la Lisa Whelchel or Maureen McCormick in my mind, but unlike Marcia Brady, all I got from my friends when I made this confession was strange looks!!
I once mentioned to Car about my childhood attraction to Sally Kimball, and she looked at me like I’d gone off the deep end! “But she was only a drawing in a BOOK!” she exclaimed, and…well, I really didn’t have anything to back me up! To me it didn’t seem so weird, but then again, I’m the guy who regularly posts about crushes he’s had on comic and cartoon characters, so my opinion’s probably not that great!
For me, the “Golden Age” of Encyclopedia Brown was the books I grew up with, that is, from Book 1 (Encyclopedia Brown: Boy Detective) through to Book 12 (The Case Of The Dead Eagles), and It had always been my wish to someday get all those books so I could reproduce that wonderful sight of the complete set with matching spines that I’d seen back during those early library visits!! Alas, the paperback versions for sale at the bookstore had entirely different covers (and some not even illustrated by Shortall!) so it seemed an impossible task.
As I got older, I’d occasionally see stray copies of Encyclopedia Brown books at rummage sales and book fairs, and on those rare occasions one of the editions from the library turned up, I grabbed it up, and with the arrival of EBAY (great at finding ex-library copies of books you remember reading as a kid, I tell you), I was finally able to complete my 12 book series with the covers I remembered from the library- the same covers I've uploaded here...! I even came across some of the paperback editions that I remember seeing growing up, which I ALSO bought! Can’t have too much nostalgia!
On the Subject of the Original Titles:
As I’ve mentioned before, I got into Encyclopedia Brown when it was on its tenth or eleventh book, and one thing that I really liked were the ambiguous titles that presented Encyclopedia Brown as the neighborhood “Ally of Justice”, with names like “Encyclopedia Brown Shows the Way”, “Encyclopedia Brown Saves the Day”, or “Encyclopedia Brown “Gets His Man”. The only one that was unlike the others was the second book entitled, “Encyclopedia Brown and the Case Of The Secret Pitch” which, for some reason, was named after a random case in the book.
It always bothered me, as it was SO unlike the other titles. Then I was to find that “Secret Pitch” was initially entitled “Encyclopedia Brown Strikes Again”, an appropriate title for his second outing, and very much keeping theme of the other 11 titles. Why was it changed? I guess the term “Strikes Again” sounded a little sinister, and not at all like the “Encyclopedia Brown: Ally of Justice” themes the other titles have.
Ah, but it all became a moot point when book 12 in the series came out, as that one was named after a case, too: The Case of the Dead Eagles. Then all the books after it followed suit, i.e.: The Case of the Midnight Visitor, etc… Why I’ve even noticed that they’ve gone back and changed some of the OTHER original titles into “case” titles; books like Encyclopedia Brown Lends a Hand have been retitled “The Case of the Exploding Plumbing”, proving nothing is sacred as far as childhood nostalgia!
Not that this has anything really to do with Encyclopedia Brown, but the same thing happened to Gary Larson’s FAR SIDE collections. The original books all had titles like “It Came From The Far Side” “Bride of the Far Side” and Beyond The Far Side”, etc, etc. Then one day, the seventh or eight book came out, and it was called “Night of the Crash Test Dummies” or something like that. I was like “WHAA!!”Ahahahaha!
