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Kid detectives. Also, how magic works. (Really.)

Jenn wasn’t feeling well, so I went to Johnzo and Victoria’s by myself. And since for a variety of reasons I wasn’t feeling like engaging in another round of sartorial combat with Mr. Snead (among them: I’d been painting a bathroom and trying to figure out how to build a wall all day; I didn’t feel like a tie; and anyway, I’d just worn my green three-piece to an office party the night before), I decided to dress down: jeans, white shirt, yellow sweater, black Chuck Taylors. Encyclopedia Brown, I decided, looking at myself in the mirror. Twenty years later, that is, and mumblety-mumble pounds heavier, and while I’d like to imagine ol’ Leroy’d grow up to look devilish in the right light with a dapper Van Dyke, the indications are not favorable. —Also, I don’t wear glasses.

Anyway, because I was thinking of myself as Encyclopedia Brown, twenty years later, the pear brandy sipped from a coffee cup seemed that much the sweeter, somehow. The Veggie Booty that much the spicier. It was with an edgy, naughty glee that I larded my sociopolitical rants with unexpectedly crude sexualized metaphor. (Though I rather imagine ol’ Leroy’d ascribe to more of a get-by-on-your-own-merits winner-take-all I-got-mine-screw-you zero-sum libertarianism, rather than [say] tendencies toward Bakuninist anarcho-syndicalism, but one can muse. Regardless, he’d be more willing than I was to cut George Will some slack. Because of the whole baseball thing.) And there was something deliciously wicked about nipping out to score some cloves, even if they were filtertips, and even if it did take me three matches to get one of the damn things lit. —I palmed the matches all the way back to the party, where I threw them tidily away in a dumpster. My two Chuck Taylors, it seems, were still goody.

But what the whole Encyclopedia Brown thing ended up putting me in mind of was Josie.

Josie Has a Secret is maybe my favorite thing over at Kristen Brennan’s shrine to go-go late ’90s hyperactive possibilities. It’s squarely in the tradition of the kid detective, with the puzzle in each chapter whose secrets are revealed at the ever-important back of the book. But unlike Encyclopedia Brown and Sally Kimball, the Dragnet of the kid detective set, Josie and Darla kick it up a little on the amoral, wicked side—more like the Great Brain, say (and those with a better memory for Fitzgerald’s books than me are hereby invited to open up the Wikipedia entry). —Josie and Darla are, after all, not detectives, but magicians (Penn & Teller, that is, and not Harry & Hermione). That’s what makes the book special.

For one thing—toying with magic whether staged or otherwise (?) takes us one big step closer to the thing detective fiction is “really” about. For another, staging the puzzles in each chapter around classic magic tricks that are revealed in the back of the book encourages critical thinking in a more (I think) successful way than pummelling kids through trivia (Encyclopedia Brown knows there’s no Q on the telephone dial, and that the Confederates would never have called it the First Battle of Bull Run until after the Second)—you’re learning the bare bones of pranks you can pull on your friends, after all.

But most importantly: Josie manages to pull off its debunkeries with grace and charm, never stooping to the acidly dismissive sarcasm that Randi and his ilk are all-too prone to fall prey to. It’s a heartening display of intelligence and generosity of spirit in a field that sees all too little of either. (Where the fuck are the sequels, already?)

—Plus, illustrations by Kris Dresen. How can you lose?

So now I’m rifling through old memories of long-since-lost books. Emil and the Detectives, of course, though I’m really thinking of the book I always called Emil and the Detectives but which wasn’t—it was German or Dutch or (just maybe) French, and I was reading an English translation (you read weird books when you’re a kid in Iran), and this book’s shtick was that each puzzle chapter had a full-page illustration teeming with Purloined Waldo-esque detail that hid the solution in plain sight. (Anyone?) —There were also some books about bear spies; I want to say they had something to do with Bearsylvania, but Google just brings up teddy bear hobbyist sites (when I go looking for 25-year-old kids’ books, yes yes). Also: did Gahan Wilson illustrate some books about Loonies who lived on the Moon? With a Space Navy? Or was it someone else who just drew like Wilson? Or am I having another flashback? And there’s a couple of books on the tip of the tongue about a kid inventor—more a step sideways from kid detective than a step closer in, I think—but he invented all sorts of wacky stuff, like a flying bicycle, or at least something he could use to make a bicycle fly. I’m remembering this haunting nighttime flight home over moonlit countryside on a bicycle, and a midnight picnic of sandwiches in a field in the middle of nowhere… Also, I think he tried to make his own soda pop once and instead derived a frictionless lubricant. (Anyone?)

(What? Magic? How it works? Oh. Right. Forget Crowley; read chapter three of Josie. Right there in one place is everything you’d ever need to know about magic—“magickal” or otherwise.)

  1. Vincent    Dec 10, 05:15 am    #
    Harry the Fat Bear Spy, written and illustrated by Gahan Wilson?

    Doesn't the bear go out in a ship or submarine or something? I've read the one about the kid who tries to make his own soda pop too.

    Searching allbookstores.com for Gahan Wilson returns:

    Bob Fulton's Amazing Soda-Pop Stretcher
    Matthew Looney's Invasion of the Earth
    both by Jerome Beatty Jr. and illustrated by Gahan Wilson.

    I was trying to remember those very books ... let's see, musta been 3 years ago now, during a convo with my housemate Jake about Daniel M. Pinkwater. I see that the Bob Fulton book is available for a mere $1.95, maybe I'll pick it up.

    Did you read Astrid Lindgren's Emil books? Emil in the Soup Tureen, Emil and the Piggy-beast, Emil's Pranks? I'm always disappointed when Emil and the Detectives isn't one of those.

  2. --k.    Dec 10, 07:41 am    #
    See, I Googled some Gahan Wilson bibliographies and turned up bupkes. Damn anti-kids'-book bias.

    Bob Fulton is right on the money about the soda pop and the frictionless lubricant, but now I'm thinking it isn't the one with the moonlit flying bicycle, maybe. And here are some of the Looneys. And Harry the Fat Bear Spy. How could I have forgotten that Gahan Wilson did that? (I note there appears to be a dearth of fan sites; those looking for a niche on the web, there you go.) --As a side note, found while dithering this AM: a nifty holiday present idea. Or Astrid, since I haven't read Pippi in frickin' years, and never read Emil. (Or more Moomintroll. You can never have too much Moomintroll.)

    But: not so much of a side note: Jerome Beatty, Jr., died 31 July this year. Aw, man...

  3. Vincent    Dec 10, 09:12 am    #
    Sad.

    The only boy inventor I read was Danny Dunn, Boy Scientist by um ... Google ... Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin. Dunno if he's your flying bike guy, though, unless:
    Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint

    Gahan Wilson is a god, of course, and deserves many fan sites. And I only have one Moomintroll book, Moominvalley in December maybe. I find Moomintroll kind of creepy.

    I'd recommend Emil highly, though. Emil in the Soup Tureen, for instance, is all about the time Emil gets his head stuck in the Soup Tureen.

  4. Mike Tatreau    Feb 27, 04:56 pm    #
    I've been looking for that "Boy Inventer" book too! The one with the flying bicycle, the haunting nighttime flight home over a moonlit countryside on a bicycle, and a midnight picnic of sandwiches in a field in the middle of nowhere... I don't think it's any of the Danny Dunn books. Any other suggestions?

  5. John    Feb 28, 02:01 pm    #
    Just found this site searching for Matthew Looney Books. I also loved Lizard Music, which was probably my favorite book as a child along with the Looney books. There was also one about a boy who builds a plane out of wood and scraps in an old barn with his brother. Any ideas?

  6. Mike    Mar 3, 06:26 pm    #
    The Furious Flycycle by Jan Wahl!

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