Great-nephew. With stories about his “weird Uncle Daniel” who dissapeared under mysterious circumstances but left his lab or notes or something to his namesake nephew.
Oh, man, now I have to get working on The New Adventures of Danny Dunn’s Great-Nephew Danny Dunn. Of course, since the original Danny had no siblings, this is going to be tricky. I wonder if I’ll need permission from the original authors. Or if they’re still alive. I think one of them was extremely disabled, and died … or something …
Also, it’s too bad you didn’t read Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint, Chronos. That was the very first book in the series! Pre-Irene, even.
Oh, and I love The Great Brain too. I was a Mormon when I was reading those, so I was irritated at the way Tom kept putting one over on the Mormon kids of Adenville, but they always had nice things to say about the Mormons, so it was all good.
Having read all of the books mentioned above I will state that you are mixing two boy geniuses. The paper launcher is Alvin Fernald in the book The Marvelous Inventions of Alvin Fernald. The bent chimney on the train is Tom Fitzgerald from [url=]The Great Brain at the Acadmeny.
Until I read those books I never knew Mormons in Utah called non-Mormons “gentiles.”
At that, the engineer (or conductor?) to home Tom suggested the idea gave several reasons why it wouldn’t work; mainly, the soot would build up in the pipe too quickly. (The point was to make it possible to open a moving train’s windows without letting in cinders. Moot since the introduction of diesel and electric engines. And air conditioning.)
“. . . to whom Tom . . .”
Quoth me:
Correction: I remember him doing plenty of things like that; like I said, it was in his general style. What I meant to say was that I don’t remember him doing that specifically.
I had a funny little coincidence to this thread today. I read it this afternoon, and remembered the book about the boy named Alvin, but couldn’t remember the title. I only remembered his name was Alvin because he says at some point that he liked to think Thomas Alva Edison’s name was really Thomas Alvin Edison.
Anyway, I was at a cookout at my parents for the Fourth, who are getting ready to have a rummage sale. They had my brother going through a box of his stuff to see what they could get rid of and he pulled out “The Great Inventions of Alvin Fernald”! Or at least the first part of it. The back is ripped off and it’s missing some pages.
I thought it was funny to find it the same day I read this thread. I remember liking that book when I was little.
Of course, neither Tom Fitzgerald nor Danny Dunn can hold a candle to *Tom Swift!
But Frank Reade did it first!
I was indeed combining two similiar characters in my mind. But with the mention of the money making schemes, and the basketball game, I’m positive that the Great Brain books are the ones I was trying to remember. And after looking at the links, I see that the other character/book was Alvin Fernald as a couple of posters suggested. Whoo, that was really bothering me, and I roamed the children’s section of Barnes and Noble for some time one day, looking for inspiration.
This message board is an Og-send.
What WOULD I do with out Dopers?
Danny Dunn–yep! Fantastic memories from my elementary school.
Daniel
Looks like this thread is just about finished, but since I loved all those books as well, I’ll throw in another recommendation along the same lines: The Mad Scientist’s Club, by Bertrand Brinley. There were some sequels too, which I haven’t read. Maybe I should go track those down…
Yay, Dopers read my favorite children’s books, too! 
Ah, the nostalgia. My favorite parts:
The Great Brain - He was a bit of a Tom Sawyer, in that he conned kids out of their money and stuff. However, it tugged my heart when he taught the boy with the broken leg how to do all his chores more efficiently than a regular person would.
Danny Dunn - Absolutely loved how his foster father, the Professor, would never yell or hit the kid and actually encouraged Danny’s love of science and adventure (despite Danny’s rashness). Also the first series I read whose main characters were two boys and a smart, hesistant-to-break-the-rules-kind-of girl; parallels to Harry Potter, anyone?
Alvin Fernald - Before Da Vinci Code, there was Alvin Fernald and the Secret Code. My first primer in code breaking. Discussed the frequency table (most frequently used letters in the English alphabet: E T A I N), common three and two-letter words (the, of), and how simply breaking phrases into five letter chunks can confuse the uninitiated (apenn ysave disap ennye arned = a penny saved is a penny earned).
Now look what you guys did. I have the urge to visit the library and enter the Children’s Room without looking like some scary grown-up.
Hey, just because I’m old doesn’t mean I don’t get to read the *good * stuff anymore! 
I didn’t think this was worth a separate thread, but these series made me remember the “All-of-a Kind-Family”, a similar series about a family of Jewish girls living in New York around the Teens.
Has anyone else read or at least remember these? I loved them as a child; they made me understand what my ancestors went through at that time in history.
Robin
Was that the kid with the peg leg? Or was there some other broken-leg-chores part that I’ve forgotten?
Yeah, that was Andy. He’d lost his leg to gangrene after stepping on a nail and was going through a bout of depression when Tom taught him how to function with his wooden leg.
Robin
The author was Sydney Taylor, if you’re looking. I haven’t read them myself.
The All-of-a-Kind Family books are *wonderful. I own them all and have read them many times. They are still in print in both hard- and paperback editions, and are also readily available used. I’m the whitest of white-bread WASP, but I loved these books (and many others) for the glimpse into a different. The books always made me hungry – wonderful descriptions of food.
BTW, they were based on Sidney Taylor’s childhood memories od growing up with her stair-step sisters. She had told the stories to her own daughter and eventually wrote them down. She was the oldest sister (Ella, in the books).
See, those books are so good, thinking about them made me mess up my coding!