The Great Brain

Rating:
Summary: timeless entertainment
Review: As a young Mormon boy in Australia, 'The Great Brain' series was one of my fondest boyhood reads. I enjoyed the series so much I recently forced my wife to read the book. She loved it and has just finished reading it to my 3 month old son. I am considering buying the entire series so that my boy can grow up loving it like it did. The fact that it is set 100 years ago is meaningless as everyone of any age can enjoy the stories and simple childhood fun of the Fitzgerald brothers and the rest of Adenville.

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Series
Review: As with many of the other reviewers, I became hooked on these books in grammar school. The "Great Brain" was the first in the series that I read, and before the end of the first chapter I was addicted! I've begun reading them to my 5 year old son, and he loves them as much I did (still do!).

As a parent, there are several aspects of the stories that I really appreciate. The first is to use your brain and think through situations to find a solution. Tom's problem solving is usually pretty creative.

The other lesson from these books is they teach that there is a consequece to one's actions. Tom may have a great brain, but being a child he doesn't always know the boundaries he should live within, and his great brain sometimes lands him in trouble. He's not simply punished. He also receives as explanation as to why there was a punishment. This is an important lesson for children.

You know, there are times when, after finishing a chapter with my son, I'll take the book with me and read ahead a few chapters. All the while, experiencing again the joy and fun I had reading them for the first time.

Rating:
Summary: It's a shame you can't buy the series in a set.
Review: I like most of the other reviewers loved these books as a kid. I recently saw a copy at a relatives house and remembered how much I enjoyed them. I wanted to get the series in a set to give to my 8 yr. old daughter for Christmas this year but can't find it available anywhere. My mother teaches English as a second language to foriegn students and last quarter she used The Great Brain as the book they had to read and report on. She has taught this class for a couple of years and always has a difficult time getting her students to read the book she has chosen. Last quarter was different, most of the class read the book ahead of schedule and she had to come up with something else to finish the quarter. I highly recomend the whole series for children and adults.

Rating:
Summary: Mr. Locker's 4/5 grade class reading group, loved this book!
Review: I read these books as child by checking them out of a library. Now almost 20 years later, I have decided to reread them all starting from the beginning. The Great Brain book is as good as I remembered. Some things may seem goofy at first from an adult perspective, but give the book a chance and read the whole thing. Many things come together later or at the end. John Fitzgerald gives every book a complete feeling, so you feel satisfied after completing each. Keep in mind the time and setting of the book and you'll be able to enjoy it. The book is written from JD's viewpoint, but is largely about TD aka the Great Brain. I enjoyed these books a child, I am enjoying them now, and my friends in their 50's are enjoying them too. These are for all ages and are my all-time favorite children's series. Now, I hope that they re-release the books or I'll have to look for them used.

Rating:
Summary: Best book ever
Review: I was so excited to see that these books are still in print. I have ordered all of them for my two sons. I can not wait for them to arrive. I have the fondest memories of these books. I remember lauging at how The Brain would get in trouble, but yet his parents always loved him. Unconditional love, the silent treatment and all. These are great books and I look forward to sharing them with my children and some day grandchildren. Thanks Amazon for making my day!

Rating:
Summary: I hope these never go out of print
Review: John Dennis Fitzgerald intended to chronicle his youth in Utah for adults, not children. His publisher thought otherwise and the result are these gems. I don't even call them children's lit gems because I find them just as enjoyable as an adult. Before I go on, you should know that Fitzgerald wrote one book about his youth that is for adults, called "Papa Married a Mormon". It is one of the most amazing books on the American west that I have ever read. Sadly, it is out of print, and you may, like me, have to pay an exorbitant sum to get a copy. Trust me, save up and do it. Now back to this book. Every single Great Brain book in the series is pure gold, and the entire set can be had cheaply, so I say buy them all at once. I "put my money where my mouth is" as Tom the Great Brain would say, and bought the lot.

Rating:
Summary: Two stars in the story--Tom D. and John D.
Review: Many books have complex plots or narration and attempt to pull together many characters or ideas, or they take place in some annoyingly exotic location. John D. Fitzgerald's books feel natural being in the town of Adenville, Utah and chart the progress of two brothers. Best yet, it introduces you to Adenville so you feel like you're there in a few pages and is overall nice and short--the chapters can stand alone as stories, but the book's short enough you'll have no problem reading it in one sitting. But the best part about this short book is--it has several sequels at least as good.

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.

Rating:
Summary: Ditto Everyone Else
Review: The Great Brain, Tom D. Fitzgerald, is a very smart, but also very greedy boy, who finds all kinds of ways to make a penny (back when a penny was worth something). The chapters mostly involve him trying to con people out of their money OR trying to make money from schemes that most of us would think of as unethical.
Yet he also uses that great brain to solve problems for others kids, such as Andy who thinks he is so plump useless without his lost leg that he tries to kill himself or the Jenson kids who got lost in the Skeleton Caves.
The chapter on Abie, his strongbox and his pride really got to me and I'm not sure how a kid, even a mature one, will respond to the issues brought up in that part of the book.
The book is bitter-sweet, the fantasy of the good old days mixed with realistic themes of every day life.

Rating:
Summary: Loved it as a child
Review: These stories made me feel warm inside and out even though my mom never read them to me, I liked them. Even though I haven't read all of them I enjoy the ones I have read and it's so fun because I get into some bad scrapes but man these kids make some of my pathetic scrapes look alright and I could relate to them if they were real. I could understand them and I can sometimes almost feel like I am right there in the given situation but not alone, just with a very special someone.

Rating:
Summary: Not to be missed
Review: To my knowledge, John Dennis Fitzgerald never won any of the prestigious children's book awards or accolades for this book or any of the others in the series, but it is my opinion as an avid reader from childhood that these books constitute some of the best available children's literature. Fitzgerald was in his sixties when he started this series, but he clearly never lost touch with his childhood self and all of these books are brilliantly written so that J.d. and his big brother seem like kids you know, even though they lived in a small Utah town at the turn of the century. These books have it all: an interesting historical setting; believable characters that develop as the series progresses; plenty of humor, of both the laugh-out-loud and subtler varieties; tenderness and pathos; and even a few good scares.

I picked up a copy of More adventures of the Great Brain, the second in the series, at a book fair in elementary school. (It isn't strictly necessary to read the books in order, though of course it's nice.) I was the most avid reader in my family, though the youngest, and for some reason one summer day when we were bored I started reading the book aloud to my older sister and my uncle, who was only five years older than me (I was nine or ten at the time.) Pretty soon, all three of us were devouring the rest of the series, swapping them among ourselves. I can't be sure, but I think the books may have started my sister's love of reading, though my uncle had always been a reader and had turned me on to the Lord of the Rings. At any rate, these were favorites for years.

Parents, please, please don't be put off by the fact that these books are about a mischievous boy with a penchant for swindling his pals out of their prized possessions. I have not raised children myself, but from my own reading I think children's books that don't have an element of mischief and rebellion in them or quite dull, and as a kid I hated nothing worse than to read a book where I felt like I was being preached to. T.d. gets into plenty of trouble, but his conscience develops as the books progress and he learns that his great brain can be used to help others as well as to cheat them. Unlike some other kids' books where the grownups are simply the bad guys, the adults in these stories are firm but supportive, strict but loving. Despite their tendency to disobey, T.D. and his brothers love and admire their parents and their beloved Uncle Mark, the town's marshall and deputy sheriff who is portrayed as both heroic and down to earth. J.D. says at one point that he really likes his uncle because "he never talked down to Tom and me, but treated us just like grownups," and like his fictional uncle (who may have been based on a real person) Fitzgerald never makes the mistake of condescending to his readers. The tragic story of Abie Glassman in this first volume isn't the last time readers will encounter hard truths in these stories, but Fitzgerald writes about the ups and downs of life in a way that kids will find delightful to digest. The author also lets kids know that grownups screw up, too, and that we all have to learn from each other.

The Great Brain series, as a whole, has the very best of a Wild West adventure, one of Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer stories, and the best coming-of-age fiction. There are a few old-fashioned notions here that might not go down well with the PC crowd, like the episode in the second book in which the Fitzgerald family takes on the task of trying to get a tomboy to act more feminine, but none of this should keep you from reading these great stories or giving them to your kids. Despite J.D.'s quip in the first chapter of this book about there being noone more tolerant or understanding of your differences than a kid you can whip in a fight, these books are all about tolerance and treating your fellow man with decency and fairness and love. I am glad these books are still in print and I sincerely hope a whole new generation discovers them, as it would be nothing short of tragic for them to be lost in the dustbin of forgotten kids' lit. Buy them, read them, and pass them on.