KidCrunch

Smart kids love solving the mysteries presented in the Encyclopedia Brown series of books by author Donald J. Sobol.

As a parent, I like Encyclopedia Brown books because they encourage kids to read carefully and to notice and remember the details of what they are reading.  I also like that our hero, Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown, is celebrated for being smart.  He is nicknamed “Encyclopedia” because his brain is filled with knowledge gained by reading a lot of books.

Encyclopedia Brown is a super-smart ten year old detective.  He lives with his parents in the fictional town of Idaville where his father is the local police chief.  Each Encyclopedia Brown book is a collection of short mystery stories solved by Encyclopedia Brown (often with the help of his partner Sally Kimball) by finding a mistake or inconsistency in a suspect’s story.  The fun of reading Encyclopedia Brown books is trying to solve each mystery without peeking at the solutions in the back of the book.

Following are a list of the books in the Encyclopedia Brown series in order of first publication:

• Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective (1963)
• Encyclopedia Brown Strikes Again (1965)
• Encyclopedia Brown Finds the Clues (1966)
• Encyclopedia Brown Gets His Man (1967)
• Encyclopedia Brown Solves Them All (1968)
• Encyclopedia Brown Keeps the Peace (1969)
• Encyclopedia Brown Saves the Day (1970)
• Encyclopedia Brown Tracks Them Down (1971)
• Encyclopedia Brown Shows The Way (1972)
• Encyclopedia Brown Takes the Case (1973)
• Encyclopedia Brown Lends a Hand (1974)
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Dead Eagles (1975)
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Midnight Visitor (1977)
• Encyclopedia Brown Carries On (1980)
• Encyclopedia Brown Sets the Pace (1981)
• Encyclopedia Brown Takes the Cake (1982)
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Mysterious Handprints (1985) 
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Treasure Hunt (1988)  
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Disgusting Sneakers (1990)
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Two Spies (1995)
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of Pablo’s Nose (1996)
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Sleeping Dog (1998)
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Slippery Salamander (2000) 
• Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Jumping Frogs (2003)
• Encyclopedia Brown Cracks the Case (2007)
• Encyclopedia Brown, Super Sleuth (2009)

I loved reading Encyclopedia Brown books as a kid.  I read one after another and vividly recall my disappointed when I ran out of new ones to read.  I moved on to read The Great Brain books by John D. Fitzgerald - which had a similarly brainy main character and were good, but not quite the same.

Buy Encyclopedia Brown books through Amazon at the KidCrunch Store.

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The past few weeks have been difficult for many families in Georgia as flood waters have devastated homes and tragically taken lives.  As my kids watch the evening news, it is unnerving for them to see disaster hit so close to home.  I can only imagine how painful and scary it must be to those kids directly affected by this and other life-changing disasters.

At the same time, all across the nation, there are families experiencing financial crisis.  To a child, losing a home to foreclosure is not much different from losing a home to flood or fire.  When kids hear of neighbors and other families losing their homes, they must wonder if it could happen to them.  And they are probably worried.

All of this brought to mind a book I recently read with my daughter called A Chair for My Mother by Vera B. Williams.  It is not a new book–it was published in 1982–but it is new to us.  Our neighbor, whose daughters are now grown, recently gave it to us along with a few piles of wonderful books that belonged to her daughters.  A Chair for My Mother is an excellent book for difficult times because it is a story of a devastating loss and a family that works hard to recover.

A Chair for My Mother is the story of a young girl named Rosa and her mother who are dutifully saving their money to buy a chair.  Their savings–which accumulates as coins in a big glass jar–includes tips from her mother’s job as a waitress and Rosa’s occasional job helping out at the diner.  Rosa and Mama are saving for a chair because their old chairs, and their sofa, and everything else they owned burned in a big fire (”that wasn’t such a long time ago.”)  Rosa’s Grandma and her cat were safe, but everything else was turned to charcoal and ashes.

In A Chair for My Mother, we see the devastation, but we also see how Rosa and her family get through it.  Rosa’s aunt and uncle take them in and other relatives and friends pitch in to help, bringing them food, household items and some furniture.  After a year of hard work and saving, Rosa and Mama have saved enough money in their jar to buy the chair of their dreams.  The book ends wonderfully with Rosa and Mama happily cuddled in their new chair.

A Chair for My Mother is an excellent book for difficult times.  It does not hide the fact that bad things sometimes happen, but it also shows how families and friends can help each other to recover.  The book also offers some great lessons about goal setting, hard work and saving money.

A Chair for my Mother is a Caldecott Honor Book, an ALA Notable Book, a Reading Rainbow Feature Selection and won the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for Illustration.

Buy A Chair for My Mother and other great kids books through Amazon at the KidCrunch Store.

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