Great Brain (Paperback)

On the one hand, there's John D., the narrator, who's sentimental and well-meaning but easily pushed around. Being eight he also overreact to everything, yet at the same time the narration tells you exactly what's going on. Then there's Tom D., who uses his Great Brain for swindling and occasionally for helping schoolmates and even adults.

One chapter involves his charging money for kids to see the first instance of indoor plumbing in their hometown and trying to swindle John D., whom he hired to do the dirty work, into paying more than he should when things go wrong. Another involves his teaching a Greek immigrant boy how to be a 'real American'--for a fee, as he pulls some sharp deals along the way. But later Tom helps a friend who is seriously depressed without looking for repayment. You sense it can't last, and you don't want it to, because his hijinks are amusing, and as a reader, you don't have to worry about getting caught by them.

Mercer Mayer's illustrations fit the book wonderfully, and the whole Great Brain series tends to cover issues of potential inferiority without being the least bit whiny. Although this book doesn't contain any of my favorite Great Brain swindles, it focuses more on emotions and people trying to fit in. The whole series is an overlooked set of contemporary classics.

Also recommended: The Great Brain at the ACademy, Me and my little Brain, THe GREAT Brain does it again, More Adventures of The Great Brain

First, I don't agree with some of the reviews that suggest books today like Harry Potter for kids are trash. This series is truly fantastic, but so it Harry Potter. You don't have to hate one to like the other.

Second, the audiotapes for this series are terrific, and you can play the tapes and listen as a whole family as these stories are just as fascinating for adults as they are for children.

Although the stories recount the childhood of a boy almost a hundred years ago, the perspective in which they are told is a very modern one, and cannot be faulted for language or accessibility or naivete in the way that many of our childhood favorites (if like me, you grew up during the 1950s) could be criticized today by uninterested children. Additionally, the stories offer the perspective for children brought up in a world of television and computer screens how people amused themselves before radio and television handicapped childrens' imaginations and made them dependent upon electronics for amusement.

The moral aspect of the stories is an additional attraction to the sheer delight of the tales themselves. I was so pleased to hear the moral sophistication of the parental attitudes in this tape as I listened along with my daughter--there was nothing except the community's tolerance of physical punishment that was unacceptable to me, and even that punishment was neither wholeheartedly accepted by the parents in the story, nor was it portrayed in a way that made it sound like the author was nostalgic for the days when parents and teachers had total authority and whipped their kids. In fact, one child's leg has to be amputated in the story, and the author makes it very clear that it was the child's fear of a whipping from his parents that was responsible for keeping the child from reporting the injury until it became infected.

We listen to audiotapes in the car on a regular basis, and often after dinner while doing puzzles or knitting or doing dishes,etc. This activity allows us to be together as a family in the evening and to have readings in common to discuss together as well. These particular stories lend themselves well to family discussions because many issues raised by the children's behavior--as well as that of the adults in the stories--remain morally relevant. The differences in the ways people lived and their access to technology is also of great interest to kids and adults alike. For example, the family had a telephone but only got a "water closet" in the first of the stories that is told about the Fitzgerald family growing up non-Mormon in Mormon Utah.

I highly recommend both sets of audiotapes, as well as, of course the books.