It doesn’t ring a bell. But in these situations I always plug www.logan.com. It’s a booksite that has a section called “Stump the Bookseller” Go to the homepage, find the link(left hand side) that says “book Stumper” and enter. I’ve both found answers and provided solutions there. There is a modest fee to post one’s query, but you’d be amazed at how often you find answers there. Almost as good as asking a Doper!
Oh, I think I know what you’re talking about! It was (They were?) a Scholastic book, and he was on the cover, sitting in a jumble of mechanical devices, with a sheepish smile on his face. The character’s name was in the title of the book (some Funky Winkerbean type name). I bet if I went back to my mom’s home I could still find it on the book shelves in the basement.
The Danny Dunn series tried to be scientifically plausible. The book I’m thinking of, and perhaps what MrPeabody is thinking of, had a comic, screwball quality.
Thanks for the help so far. I don’t think it’s the Dunn series, that also was my first thought.
The two stories I remember most vividly are when the boy enters a huge contest with many famous magicians. Every year the magicians gather to attempt the Indian or Hindu rope trick. This was the one trick no modern magician could accomplish.
The boy used a ball of the anit gravity material to raise the rope out of the basket and then climbed up the rope to collect the prize.
The other is when he invents a ball that instead of steadily slowing down when dropped this ball steadily increases height with each bounce until it gets out of control.
My first thought was of Danny Dunn as well, but then I remembered the Alvin Fernald series. If that’s not it, feel free to search this alphabetical list of juvenile series of many genres – the linked page just covers the “A” entries. The site is pretty exhaustive, but not complete by any means – among others, it neglects the Brains Benton books mentioned earlier in this thread. I owned several of those novels.
It does sound a bit like Danny Dunn…in one adventure, our man Dunn either invents—or a friend of his family invents—antigravity paint, which is used on a spaceship that (accidentally) launches towards Saturn.
I can’t recall any of the other plots points being in a Dunn book, but I’m definately sure they weren’t in Encyclopedia Brown.
That really sounds more like “Peter Graves” by William Pene du Bois (1950). The inventor was actually “Horrible Houghton” Furlong who invented Furloy antigravity matter. The teen Peter accidently destroyed Furlongs house and had to raise money to rebuild it. Copies are hard to find … alibris only lists one. Pene du Bois also wrote “The Twenty-one Ballons” and “Bear Party”.
You have helped me with a fruitless ten year search. If can do anything for you in Oklahoma or donate to you favorite charity please let me know.
Thanks again to all.
Don
aw, I love you too … how’re we going to tell Sherman?
But really, glad to have been a help — William Pene du Bois is one of my favorite childhood authors.
Enjoy the book and don’t forget the Twenty One Balloons, its cool too.
Hanna