Share for friends:

The Mad Scientists' Club (2005)

The Mad Scientists' Club (2005)

Book Info

Author
Genre
Rating
4.23 of 5 Votes: 1
Your rating
ISBN
1930900104 (ISBN13: 9781930900103)
Language
English
Publisher
purple house press

About book The Mad Scientists' Club (2005)

Almost unknown; but one of the most hilarious and memorable laugh-out-loud books you could ask for. A gem. Its never mentioned; never recommended. Perhaps it bewilders people. Maybe they're shocked. Perhaps parents realize that we can't go back to thinking about kids this way.I have a GR list of 'good kids books' and yeah, there are plenty of books for *small* children represented there--however, this is a book for the age in-between smallness and adulthood--and its a standout. There need to be a LOT MORE books like this which help define that interval. Its the age when you create a few CATASTROPHES; the age where you learn how to make a mess and how you clean it up afterwards. And have a blast doing so.What've we got these days? We don't let kids have secret clubs; codewords; mysterious friends. They're not allowed to have 'shenanigans'. We're rule-mongerers and control freaks. If you let kids do whatever they want these days, why, they might wreck your $4,000 flatscreen tv right? They might ruin your Wii?Adults are stuffy and uptight these days, just like the townspeople in these stories. When kids want to go a little nuts? First, we monitor their diet and then maybe--maybe--if they're not having 'an episode'--we take them to Chuck E. Cheese (bins of plastic colored balls) or we set them down in from of a computer. Its all so safe, bland, sterile, and antiseptic. Condescending. Today we've got books written by committees and programs overseen by psychologists and task forces. Prescribed activity: soccer, swim class, softball, karate, e-readers, dance, gymnastics, blah blah blah.No one gives kids any ideas on just what is possible ...if they were turned loose... to do whatever they want. To be who they are. That's what this book is about. Wildness. Unpredictability.Just one example: in one of the adventures undertaken by the Mad Scientists, they build their own hot-air balloon and enter it in the town's annual home-made hot-air balloon race. With no adult supervision. They're engaged in a running battle with their arch-foes and firing potatoes and slingshots back-and-forth in mid-air; manage to send the enemy balloon into the lake. Can you stand it? I can't friggin' stand it, can you?America is no longer the land of fun. This book reminds you of how things could be; if we weren't all scared out of our wits by molesters and semi-automatic weapons and drugs and porn and goth and computers and homeland security. This book reminds us that children used to be perfectly capable of taking care of themselves if allowed to.

Do You like book The Mad Scientists' Club (2005)?

This was simply a great childhood book for any inquisitive kid who likes science, haunted houses, dinosaurs, flying machines, etc. I read this book in about seventh or eighth grade and actually a couple of times since. I believe this book helped me on my career to being a rocket scientist but it also gave me many ideas as I was growing up. Brinley managed to capture the perfect mid-west US town and the guys in the book were great caricatures of fun loving, science minded boys with a bit of good natured mischief up their sleeves. Then Brinley took this setting and boys and produced a series of wonderful stories capturing so many things that so many boys growing up find so intriguing. I bought a copy recently for a nephew and he was enraptured by it. The follow ups while good never really reached the level of this first book but were fun in their own right. It will always hold a special memory of growing up back in the '60s.
—Robert

This was one of my favorite books from my youth. It made me dream of forming my own Mad Scientists' Club.The book contains a series of short stories about the exploits of the Mad Scientists' Club of a fictional town, Mammoth Falls. I understand that the stories were originally published in Boys' Life, and that they were so popular among boy scouts that they were gathered up and published in a single volume.To this day, very few people seem to know about this wonderful little book, except, of course, former boy scouts from the 1960's.I kept my little paperback copy and read the stories to my own son when he was a young lad. That will remain a treasured moment for both of us.
—Robert Palmer

download or read online

Read Online

Write Review

(Review will shown on site after approval)

Other books by author Charles Geer

Other books in series mad scientists' club

Other books in category Fiction