Don’t recall that from the book (of course, I haven’t read it since I was Dunn’s in-story age, or younger). The only thing I can recall him inventing (out of sheer boredom) is a magnets-on-a-line rig to steal his mother’s fresh-baked pie off the cooling-sill. He also made a periscope once, or was going to, but that’s not really an invention (and he was stopped short when the friend from whom he wanted to borrow binoculars for their prisms asked him, if you’re trying to spy through Professor Bullfinch’s window, why not just use these binoculars?). Danny does sometimes improvise ingenious solutions to problems, but they’re not patent-ready inventions as such.
You mean, his “uncle” and his mother’s “employer.” 
(Hey, you were thinking it too – the series started in the 50s – translate that into today’s sensibilities and whaddaya got?!) But Professor Bullfinch is indeed very avuncular toward Danny. Not quite in a “Have you ever been in a Turkish prison?” sort of way, more in an intellectual sense . . . kindasorta . . .
. . . EinsteinsHund, please don’t ever let your 12-year-old read this thread. :o
I can’t quite believe that no one has mentioned this eighty posts into the thread, but my 11-year-old daughter (who is admittedly a very strong reader) adores The Martian by Andy Weir and has read it four or five times. I told her that just because I was handing her a book with swear words in it, didn’t mean I was authorizing her to use those words, and she’s been fine with it.
The only Danny Dunn book I (vaguely) remember involved a wooden rocket ship. Sound familiar?
First, thanks to all for your great recommendations. Phew, there’s lots to choose from, and I’m getting inspired to expand my own sci-fi horizon with all those great tips. Right now, I’m leaning to Bradbury’s “The Martian Chronicles” and a compilation of all the robot stories from Asimov for my nephew. I considered Jules Verne and H. G. Wells too, since I both read them extensively in the last months myself, but I don’t know how well the boy could handle the sci-fi perspective from the late 19th, early 20th century. Verne wrote very interesting stories, I read some of them myself at that age, but he’s just not a very good stylist and his style is often very clumsy and dated. H. G. Wells is much better in that regard, and maybe I’ll throw in “War of the Worlds”, “The Time Machine” or “The Sleeper”, the latter I found very interesting. But not yet “Dr. Moreau’s Island”, because I found that very disturbing (in a good way) when I first read it some months ago, but I think 12 is too young for that.
I was pretty young, definitely elementary school, when I stumbled across that story. It was disturbing in a good way back then. But I’ve got a fairly macabre reading sensibility; it’s gonna depend on the kid.
Did she like the movie?
The Mushroom Planet Books.
Diane Duane - So You Want to be a Wizard, and then there’s a whole series along those lines if he’s interested. http://www.dianeduane.com/ (All nine books in the series, for ebook readers are $25) book 10 comes out after New Years.
Not hard sci fi, but grounded in a universe full of alien species, with a magic that has consistent rules, well written teenage characters, and ongoing battles between good and evil. I started them at his age, and am looking forward to the next book nearly 15 years later.
So You Want to be a Wizard - Two kids learn they have the ability to do wizardry, meet a sentient white hole, and go save an alternate universe NYC.
Deep Wizardry - Meet undersea whale wizards and attempt to perform a ritual that will stop a series of massive earthquakes from destroying the east coast.
High Wizardry - The main character’s sister finds she has the talent, and massive amounts of power, then goes gallivanting across the universe, meeting scads of alien races while staying one step ahead of the embodiment of evil.
Seconded!
Interesting how those started out as such mindless fun, and then in the later books it got kinda weird, with Celtic mythology and stuff worked in . . . Welshmen are sentient mushrooms?!
Which are probably what you were thinking of.
(though I’ve never read Danny Dunn and the Antigravity Paint, so I’m not sure what the vehicle was made of there)
She was disappointed that they couldn’t put all of her favorite parts in, and in particular that they dropped the line, “None of you got laid in high school, did you?” But she also really enjoyed it for what it was. She didn’t even complain about the added scene back at the end when he is teaching at the academy.
That line was in there, when they were planning the Council of Elrond.
Good lord, I had no idea she was still writing, or for that matter, alive. I enjoyed the first few books in that series. Reminds me of Niven’s Corollary: “Any sufficiently rigorously described magic is indistinguishable from technology.”
The vehicle there was made of metal.
I have not read much of Hal Clement’s work, but I read Needle and *Through the Eye of the Needle * in junior high school, and enjoyed them.
12 years old is the perfect age to start reading Michael Moorcock. Elric of Melnibone is the patron saint of whiny teenagers. (Don’t get me wrong, I love the Elric series. But I would probably not enjoy it as much if I had started it as an adult.)
Heh–I didn’t try Moorcock until I was in my twenties, and I’ve never been able to stand his stuff. Maybe that has something to do with it.
“Mithridates, he died old.”
Hell, by that age, my Dad had already read The Martian Chronicles to me as a bedtime story, and I’d personally long devoured The Encyclopedia of Monsters for fun.