Some years ago, I told the story of how, as an adult, I reconnected with a writer I’d loved as a kid. The writer was Clifford B. Hicks, who penned a fun series about a kid inventor named Alvin Fernald. The series ran for 10 books, and inspired a Wonderful World of Disney TV movie.
The first book in the series is entitled:
The Marvelous Inventions of Alvin Fernald
I didn’t realize when I moved to North Carolina that Mr. Hicks lived about 40 minutes away. I wrote him a note and we exchanged a few emails, never meeting before he passed away.
I revisited the story a few months ago in a blog post I did for SleuthSayers. I think it’s little tighter than my previous take on the story. If you are looking for a wholesome mystery series to get a kid—probably a boy—hooked, you might want to check out these books by Hicks. The series began in 1960, and the last book pubbed about a year before Mr. Hicks died, in 2010.
The SleuthSayers post is entitled:
The Marvelously Inventive Mr. Hicks
Here’s a snippet of that article:
Alvin tackled issues that seem grown-up in retrospect, but Hicks somehow managed to make them seem “safe” and accessible to kids: corruption in city hall, kidnapping and extortion, stolen industrial plans, and water pollution. Always, in the end, Alvin managed to save the day with the help of his pal Shoie, his kid sister Daphne (aka the Pest), and an arsenal of kooky inventions.
These books enchanted me. More than anything, they seemed to radiate a gentler, more affectionate tone than many of the other books I was reading at the time. The Alvin stories were longer and more sustained than the Encyclopedia Brown mysteries.
Alvin’s world of the ‘60s and ‘70s seemed more modern and realistic than the world of the Hardy Boys. Unlike the Hardy and Nancy Drew books, the Alvin series was written by a single, real-life author, not a committee of ghostwriters. Hicks seemed to care deeply about the little town of Riverton, Indiana, he’d created, and even cared about the quite serious issues he was writing about.
My earlier post, first written in 2011, is archived here. The new post (October 2022) includes some links to recent articles I found about the series.
I’m still somewhat bummed that new editions of all of Mr. Hicks’s books are not readily available. I think they are just as sweet as some of the other kids’ mysteries from my youth, and hold up better than, say, the Hardy Boys. I was encouraged to learn from a commenter at SleuthSayers that many used Alvin Fernald books are available for sale on eBay, which is sometimes a really fun place to hunt for old books.
All photos by me.