The discussion in Princhester’s Trying to ID a Children’s Book Series thread stirred up long dormant memories of a book I read when I was in elementary school/early middle school, which for me was late 1970s. I’ve done some searches but haven’t come up with anything.
What I remember: a boy in the suburbs “finds” (or creatively acquires, shall we say) a huge bag of popcorn kernals. Maybe it fell off a truck, or he found it in a barn, I have no idea. Anyway, he and a couple of friends (including a girl) get the idea to sell the popcorn to other kids in their neighborhood. Maybe the friends were trying to save up for some special item, which is why they decided to earn money?
Anyway, I seem to recall that the neighborhood gets bored of buying/eating popcorn and the friends – who are just as sick of the whole thing as their neighbors, not to mention parents – need to find some clever way of rekindling their interest in the whole deal. So they eventually hold a parade/carnival to help sell the remaining batches. Or something like that. I remember the girl in their group dresses up as a fortune teller named Fatima.
There were probably complications along the way that I’ve forgotten but these are the points that stuck with me. It was a cute book, not a great one, but I know it helped launch my love of popcorn!
I think it was one of those books we’d order from a catalogue in school, remember those? All the kids gobbling up the catalogue so we could find cool stuff to read. I believe I read it around the same time as How to Eat Friend Worms, so I kinda associate the books with one another. For all I know it was a reprint of an older book. It was a paperback with a red cover, I think.
Bang! Straight to the bullseye!!! 100 Pounds of Popcorn it is. Holy cow, kaylasdad99, thank you. Did you remember the book yourself or was it the result of clever searching?
Wow, that cover brings back such memories…! Okay, it’s yellow, not red, but hey, what’s the difference, it’s a primary color.
1961, eh? I bet it was one of my older sister’s or brother’s books. (They were born 10+ years ahead of me.) Or it might’ve been something from my mom’s bookstore. (She had a used bookstore and I read a lot of stuff from her inventory, ranging from ancient Campfire Girls series books to Shirley Temple/Annette Funicello novelty books to the wonderful Ginnie and Geneva series. This could’ve been one of them.)
I thought it was something Henry Huggins or Rupert Piper might have got themselves into, so I just googled those names, along with the keyword “popcorn”. I found the title as part of an ebay hit, so decided to try googling that title.
Man, that’s great. I don’t recognize the names Henry Huggins or Rupert Piper – looks like they were stars of their own series of kids’ books?
And doing the same search led me to this Flickr page, which is a tribute to the Scholastic Book Club of the '60s and '70s. Right up my alley! In fact, the very first pic in that set is of Ginnie and the New Girl, which was my first Ginnie book, much beloved. I’m certain that originally belonged to my oldest sister, so I bet 100 Pounds was hers, too. What fun!
Oh, wow, I’m too late! And I knew the answer, too, without any Googling!
Somewhere, I still have that book in my collection. I remember enjoying it a lot as a kid. I think I got it through the Tab or Arrow Book Club, which had a lot of books from the 60s and 70s. I was in grade school in the mid-70s, so the time period was about right.
One of these days I keep thinking I’ll hunt down a lot of those old book-club books from that era and have a big nostalgia-fest reading them all. If I could ever find a bunch of them for sale at once (somebody selling off a collection, for example) I might just do that.
Henry Huggins was the first Beverly Cleary character I ever heard of. In the books with his adventures, his neighbors Ramona and Beezus were the minor characters. I haven’t read a lot of Beezus and Ramona books, but I don’t recall Henry and Ribsy (his dog) making so much as a cameo appearance.
Rupert Piper was a stereotypical girl-hatin’ suburban kid, the star of Double (and later Triple) Trouble for Rupert. And, of course, in most of his adventures, it was the Alpha girl in the neighborhood who figured out how to make it end well.
I discovered both series in the Scholastic catalog (c. 1965-1969), btw.
I was lucky too, in that I had parents who thought reading was really important. Every time I got the flyers from Tab and Arrow, I was allowed to pick any books I wanted–as many as I wanted. I ticked off anything that looked interesting on the order forms, and when the books arrived my box was always chock-full. Those were happy days for me–my own little stack of 15 or 20 books to take home and devour.
To this day I still have many of them. I’ve never been any good at getting rid of books.
Ohhh, yes, I remember Henry and Ribsy – I’m sure I had a book just called Ribsy. I never read the Ramona series but yes, now you’ve jogged my memory. Good times.
When I was in Grade Three, one of the stories in our reader was an excerpt from a Henry Huggins book – it had to do with Henry attending the opening of a shopping center and eating dog food.
As long as this thread is open, can anyone help with this series of books from a fairly vague description?
The books were basically centered around a teenage boy who spent summers with his grandparents. Each book was a different summer. He started at maybe 13, and I think he was college aged by the end of the serires. he was a skinny kid with glasses, and he had adventures with a friend who was a girl (but was not a girlfriend), who I think was sort of a tomboy and might have had a boy’s name.
The books were told as first person “journals.” The stories were humorous and droll, not slapstick, more on the dry side.
I remember one book in which he accidentally made a bunch of hamburgers out of horsemeat and people loved them. I remember another which involved a cross-country car trip that involved the Grand Canyon.
I think the kid’s name might have been Henry something, but it’s possible I’m just conflating him with Henry Huggins. In any case, I’m pretty sure his name was in the book titles.
They were oriented towards teenagers, not little kids. They were older than Beverly Cleary.
Henry Reed was the character. Author was Keith Robertson. There were 5 books in the series. His father worked for the State Department and he lived with his aunt and uncle in New Jersey during the summer. His best friend was a girl (Midge, I think).
