The “Trick” Book Series...another favorite children’s book series of mine,
written by Scott Corbett and illustrated by Paul Galdone
Scott Corbett’s Trick Books centered around the adventures (and misadventures) of a young boy named Kerby Maxwell, his friend Fenton, and his dog Waldo.
Kerby stops to help an eccentric old woman with her heel stuck in a drainage grating. Her name is Mrs. Graymalkin, and she is so grateful to Kerby for saving her shoe that she later rewards him with a mysterious old chemistry set that belonged to her son when he was a boy. But this is no ordinary chemistry set- when the mysterious chemicals are mixed to Mrs. Graymalkin’s instructions, they have the powers to create many wonderful, exciting effects!
Trouble hitting a home run at the game? A drop of a special mixture onto the ball will solve that! Your dog run away? A special concoction will make his whereabouts appear in the beaker! And so on and on. For every problem, there’s a potion to fix it!
Mrs. Graymalkin’s potions create such magical results, Kerby believes she is a witch, whereas levelheaded Fenton believes she is a genius scientist who happens to be extremely eccentric!
And who knows…? Maybe they’re BOTH right!
Here are some of my favorite books in the series:
The Lemonade Trick
Mrs. Graymalkin has some fun with Kerby in this, the first book in the Trick Series.
She tells him if he mixes two bad-smelling chemicals together, it will bubble and fizz together and end up smelling like roses. He goes home and tries it, but instead he is compelled to drink the concoction, which makes him do good deeds all day!
The Limerick Trick
This was the first Trick book I read, and maybe that’s part of the reason this is my favorite book in the series. Kerby wants to win a poem contest because the prize is a new bike. He asks Mrs. Graymalkin to give him a potion that will make him write the winning entry. She gives him what he wishes, but adds a little bonus- for his greediness, he starts to speak uncontrollably in limericks!
The Hairy Horror Trick
Kerby’s cousin Gaye discovers his Chemical set! The boys mix a concoction to make her forget that she has seen it, but unfortunately Gaye has moved around some of the chemicals when she was looking at it so the experiment goes wrong, the end results leaving Kerby and Fenton with beards and moustaches, and Waldo bare as a poodle!
The Hateful Plateful Trick
Kerby’s cousin is back, and they try another experiment which leaves all of them smelling like the type of food they hate the most. The terrible news is that the only way to get RID of the smell is to EAT the very dishes they despise! But where will they find a place to get all the dinners before their parents come home?
Like the THREE INVESTIGATORS series I mentioned before, much traveling around to other libraries was needed to read all of the books in the TRICK BOOK series. And even with all that legwork, I still didn’t get to read THE HOME RUN trick till I got a copy off of Ebay when I was trying to complete the set. (succeeded, too!)
My Scott Corbett "Trick" Books Collection:
The Trick Books:
The Lemonade Trick
The Mailbox Trick
The Disappearing Dog Trick
The Baseball Trick
The Limerick Trick
The Turnabout Trick
The Hairy Horror Trick
The Hockey Trick
The Home Run Trick
The Hateful Plateful Trick
The Black Mask Trick
The Hangman’s Ghost Trick
There is one book in the series that sticks out, though. It is THE MAILBOX TRICK, and there’s no trick in it. In fact, Mrs. Graymalkin isn’t involved with the story at all. Which is kind of weird when each dust jacket writes on the inside “Mrs. Graymalkin! No TRICK book is complete without her!” They should have taken their own advice!
In this story Kerby’s cousin Gaye mails out letters he wrote only to blow off steam and never meant to send out. So the whole book he’s trying to get the letters back before the recipient can read it. I remember reading it and WONDERING when the heck he was going to call Mrs. Graymalkin for help, and was pretty disappointed when the story ended with nary an appearance of her!
