I loved kids’ series when I was, well, a kid. I still have fond memories of reading and collecting as many of the books as I could–I still have all my copies–and while of course times have changed, I feel bad for kids today who don’t have the plethora of series to choose from that I did when I was a kid.
Of course, I chose all of them, pretty much.
And while the most popular kids’ series were Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, my favorites were the ones that weren’t as well known, didn’t last as long, and vanished from print during the late 1960’s and through the 1970’s. I always preferred Judy Bolton, Trixie Belden, and Vicki Barr to Nancy Drew; I enjoyed The Three Investigators, Ken Holt, and Rick Brant far more than I liked the Hardy Boys, but you could get Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys books almost anywhere, whereas the others were incredibly hard to find. Our babysitter used to take us to the Goldblatt’s Department Store on 26th Street in Chicago when she went, pulling her buggy behind her (Dad says Mom used to pull me and my sister in hers to the grocery store, but I don’t remember that). Mom would always give my sister and I two dollars each to spend, and I loved going there because in the basement was the kids’ section, and while my sister was looking at dolls or single records (remember 45’s?) I discovered the remainder table, where Goldblatt’s marked down some of the lesser known Grosset & Dunlap/Stratemeyer Syndicate books on a big table, for like thirty-nine cents, which was a big deal because I could get a lot of books at that price. They were all series books I’d never heard of, but they sounded interesting. It was off that table that I got my first Ken Holt. Rick Brant, and Biff Brewster mysteries. The Biff Brewster books weren’t as good as the other two series, but today I want to talk about Rick Brant, and why I loved the series so much.
Rick Brant, being tall for his age, had no trouble making the final connections on his latest invention. He screwed the bell on solidly, then stepped back to view his handiwork.
The doorbell was now in an unusual position. Instead of being at waist level, it had been moved to the inside of the doorframe and placed up high.
It looked fine. A stranger might have to hunt a little before he saw the push button, but he’d find it all right. Rick went inside and threw the switch that would send electricity into the gadget and went to collect the family.
Mrs. Brant was in the kitchen, supervising the supper preparations for the family and the scientists who made their home on Spindrift Island.
Rick sampled the cake frosting in a nearby bowl and invited, “Can you come out on the porch for a minute, Mom? There’s something I want to show you.”
Mrs. Brant looked up from the roast she was seasoning, a twinkle in her eyes. “What is it now, Rick? Another invention?“
“Wait and see,” he said mysteriously. “I’ll go get Dad and Barby.”
And so opens the first Rick Brant Science Adventure. I bought four Rick Brant books that day (The Rocket’s Shadow, The Egyptian Cat Mystery, The Flying Stingaree, and The Flaming Mountain), all of which had some appeal to me. I wasn’t really that much into science or rocket ships, but I did buy the first because it was, well, the first in the series, and OCD Child Greg had to read the first book. I didn’t have to read the series in order–I did try that with the Hardy Boys, but gave up when it was time for Book 4 and the title, The Missing Chums, didn’t excite me so I got one of the later volumes, The Mystery of the Aztec Warrior instead. There was a pyramid on the cover. I’ve always been a sucker for pyramids–but I always felt obligated to eventually get to the first volume of every series. It wasn’t always necessary, but in some cases–The Three Investigators, Trixie Belden, Judy Bolton–they really did set the stage for the rest of the series and it helped to have read the first one.
I’ll be completely honest here, too: I was never good at science. I don’t know why that was, but I just was never good at any of it–biology, chemistry, physics; math and science were my two Achilles heels. I only read a couple of the Tom Swift books, and even those were because one was reissued in paperback and renamed In the Jungle of the Mayas (the Mayans built pyramids!) but I got the impression the Swift books were more about science than a case or a mystery or anything. The Rick Brant series, on the other hand, while having some insane titles (The Electronic Mind Reader, The Wailing Octopus) like all series did, there were also some that were called “mysteries.” So, yes, science, but also mystery.
I also had no idea it was going to become one of my favorite series.
When I first read The Rocket’s Shadow in the late 1960s/early 1970s, it was already significantly dated. Originally published in either 1946 or 1947, the background to the story was that the scientists on Spindrift Island, off the coast of New Jersey, were trying to build a rocket to send to the moon. Several different groups were trying to accomplish this, and whoever succeeds first was going to get a very lucrative government contract…and their efforts are being sabotaged. Rick’s father, Dr. Hartson Brant, is world-renowned, and of course Rick is very interested in science and is always inventing things to either save time or effort, and they aren’t usually very practical, even though they do work. Rick and his younger sister Barby go to school on the mainland–Spindrift is separated from the coast by tidal flats that are underwater during high tide–but everyone on the island is determined that their rocket will succeed and they’ll catch the saboteurs.
Rick soon figures out a clue and gives chase to some of the saboteurs, who turn on him and attack him–only he is rescued by a blond hitchhiker carrying a military duffle. He and Rick run the attackers off, and then Rick brings his new friend, Don Scott–“Scotty”–home with him because he has no place to go. He’s out of the military and has no family, was just wandering the roads to see where he wound up. The close bond between Rick and Scotty1 resonated with me, especially their sense of camaraderie and affection for each other. They had no girlfriends or even any girls who might be potential dates at first (some were introduced in the series later, Barby growing up for Scotty and a new scientist comes to the island and has a teenaged daughter Jan who is sort of an interest for Rick–but the girls are never more important to them than they are to each other.2
Obviously, by the time I got and read the book we were already into the Apollo space programs from NASA, and we landed on the moon in 1969–so all the science in The Rocket’s Shadow was off and wrong–also the rocket got there in like twenty minutes, not possible even now–and as such, the series could never really be updated and revised like the Hardys and Nancy Drew. The Rocket’s Shadow would have had to have been completely rewritten, and I’m not sure how you could introduce Scotty as a hitchhiker/war vet (he lied about his age) today.
I enjoyed all the books in the series. I did eventually get them all over the years and read them, and many of them are dated. High tech walkie-talkies don’t seem so impressive in a cell phone world, and of course, there are some trips to foreign lands (Asia and Pacific Islands) that are probably more than a little racist and dated now. But I loved The Lost City, where they are off to Tibet to set up a radio receiver on the opposite side of the world from Spindrift to triangulate with the rocket on the moon, and they discover a lost city of Mongols and the tomb of Genghis Khan. They also meet, in that book, an Indian youth named Chahda who helps them out and becomes basically a member of the family, and they take him off the streets of Delhi and pay for him to go to school. Chahda was incredible smart and adventurous too–but not sure how he’d hold up under modern scrutiny in these more evolved times.
And maybe when I’m retired I’ll reread the series critically. The books can be found on ebay and second-hand sites; some are available as ebooks, either on Amazon or Project Gutenberg.
- I am even now wondering if this character is why I’ve always liked the name Scotty, and have used it repeatedly for characters of my own creation. ↩︎
- I do find in also amusing that my parents–so worried about me reading books about girls instead of boys; did they not understand just how homoerotic the relationships between boys in these books were. This amuses me greatly now. ↩︎
Queer and Loathing in America 