Donna Parker: Special Agent: Not a Special Agent, but Definitely Donna Parker

         Well, sort of.  I mean…oh, how do I put this?  Donna Parker’s not a special agent in the sense that—she’s no junior CIA agent or that sort of thing, but she is a special agent in the sense that—ah, but we wouldn’t want to get too ahead of ourselves, do we?  You’ll just have to wait until page 257 (of 282) to find that out.

          Meanwhile, read about Donna Parker, our heroine, who as the story opens is just beginning her senior year of junior high school in the fictional city of Summerfield.  Of Summerfield, we know that it’s a small town with a massive junior high school (the characters go up to the fourth floor of the building at one point).  Donna finds herself in a quandary as the story begins—her best friend, Fredericka (who goes by Ricky) really wants to do drama club.  Donna wants to do whatever club her friend does, but she also really wants to be a newspaper reporter—and ultimately, she joins the school newspaper instead.  Ricky might have considered joining the school newspaper to, were it not for the tyrannical Joyce Davenport, daughter of the editor of Summerfield’s newspaper, who’s considered bossy and stuck-up by all who know her.  In fact, Donna’s friends all want Donna to be elected editor of the paper, but Donna’s never edited a newspaper before, so she convinces them to vote for Joyce instead.  As it turns out, Joyce is in a very bad accident shortly into the book, and Donna will wind up taking over as editor—much to the humbler girl’s chagrin, but she immediately gets to work organizing the Summerfield Sum-It-Up’s new project—a mock election for the school, designed to get kids interested in voting.

          But meanwhile, let’s meet some of the other characters.  In addition to Ricky, we are also introduced to Tommy Sheridan, son of the man who owns the local helicopter factory.  A humble kid by nature, Tommy has to be forced to tell his friends that he designed some clever new helicopter plans which are to be used in the plant.  So impressive are his accomplishments that Tommy fears spies might be going after them, in order to sell them to a foreign power for use against the U.S.

          And speaking of spies, let’s not forget about Roger Norcross.  One day, when Donna gets home from school, she finds her mother speaking with a strange man who introduces himself as her uncle Roger, Mrs. Parker’s younger brother who ran away from home over ten years ago and hasn’t been seen for quite sometime.  His business in Summerfield—well, it’s all rather mysterious.  In fact, he says his job has something to do with movies, but he never says much about it.  He also seems to be an expert on photography.  Despite his charming manners, Donna realizes that her mother and father didn’t really recognize him when he showed up, causing the observant girl to suspect that this man might not even be her uncle—but if he isn’t, then why does he say he is, and why has he come to Summerfield in the first place?

          This isn’t the first book in the Donna Parker series—it’s the first one I’ve read, but apparently it’s the fourth.  If you have run across this series before, and you recall reading one mentioning a French count, then that one will tie in before this book’s through (though you don’t need to read that one first to still enjoy this).  Certainly a mystery, the book’s not quite the same type as the Nancy Drew series.  If this were a Nancy Drew book, you’d have a pretty good idea of what the mystery was early on, and the book would be about Nancy solving the case.  This book’s a little different—it’s more about Donna Parker’s life, and what the case is about doesn’t become clear until around page 200—rather late in the book.  However, the whole thing’s fun to read, and those first 200 pages do set up the exciting climax later on.  My only complaint with the book is that it emphasizes the importance of voting, but doesn’t do a good job pointing out the need for voters to be familiar with their candidates, suggesting it’s a good idea to vote even if you know nothing about who you are voting for—something which anyone with a brain can see could have terrible consequences—but, like I said, that’s my only complaint.  The pace is fast on this story, Donna Parker’s a wonderfully nice individual who’s always putting others ahead of herself, and the book does a good job keeping you guessing.  If Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys aren’t quite long enough for you, give this thing a try if your lucky enough to stumble across it!

Sea Gold: One of the Greatest Stories Ever Written!

          I first stumbled across this delightful little gem at a church library.  Not having the same resources as most public libraries, this branch had to rely on donations, and somewhere along the way, somebody donated the practically unheard-of Sea Gold by John Blaine from 1947.  What a gift—even though it’s out of print, this has to be one of the greatest books ever written!  Why, it’s even more exciting than most Hardy Boys books—with no disrespect for the more famous series, but how many of those can you name that involved an explosion, a diving escape from thugs on a boat, more explosions (these involving grenades), a plane chasing a car, a pursuit on foot through a subway, and, of course, the cover scene where our two stars are trapped in a concrete vault that’s filling up with water—and those aren’t even all the action scenes!  Add in some surprising twists along the way, and you’re in for 214 pages that will make you laugh, gasp, and say “What!”—but more importantly, keep you on the edge of your seat the whole way through!

          But before I tell you what this book is about, you might need to know something about the main characters, especially if this is your first encounter with the series.  Rick Brant is a college-aged (the book’s not specific about how old) genius, son of the famous scientist Hartson W. Brant, who lives with his family on the fictional Spindrift Island off the coast of New Jersey.  He’s accompanied in all the stories by his best friend Scotty, an orphaned former Marine very close to Rick in age, who’s always there with him for the fight.

          In this story, the boys are looking for a job over their summer vacation from college.  Their options are (1) help stack newspapers in the distribution department of the Whiteside, NJ paper, or (2) work at a sea mine.  They instantly pick the second.  And just what is a sea mine?  You aren’t the only one asking; many of the book characters are puzzled about this at first, as well.  As Scotty jokes, “[I] worked in a sea mine once.  I’ll never forget it.  You should’ve seen us drill the shafts.  Straight down a hundred fathoms.  The fish used to watch us go by, and their jaws’d be hanging open. Some of ‘em worked for us.  We hired sculpins to pull the bags up with gold.”

          No, it didn’t quite work like that—this is where the sci-fi twist comes in.  Two friendly entrepreneurs, Doug Chambers and Tom Blakely, have come up with a scheme (quite legitimate) to get metal out of water.  How?  Well, it seems to have something to do with “using the electronic characteristics of the various molecules of the compounds in the solution” to separate dissolved minerals from seawater—a process that could be done with multiple types of metal, gold being the most desirable—don’t worry if that explanation confuses you, it confused Rick himself when he heard it—though his father thought it was an amazing idea indeed.

          Amazing idea or not, though, Chambers and Blakely have been having a lot of trouble at the plant.  For one thing, they can’t get any of the local workmen in the town of Crayville (somewhere near Bridgeport in Connecticut) to work for them because of a rumor that the partners’ process will poison fish (thus killing Crayville’s major industry).  On top of that, someone has been sabotaging the partners’ equipment—Rick and Scotty witness this firsthand when one of the brother’s pressure domes blows up—threatening to doom the partner’s experiment, until a practical joke by Rick and Scotty gives them the answer they need to fix the domes—but as it turns out, this is just the beginning of the trouble Rick and Scotty will face as they help the entrepreneurial scientists out.  The key to the mystery seems to involve a mysterious man named Fred Lewis—a beady-eyed character with an unnaturally white face who always shies away whenever Rick and Scotty shows up—but is he involved in the plot to sabotage the plant?  Who is, and why—and will Rick and Scotty be able to stop them before its too late?

          You’ll have to read the book yourself to find that out, but the 214 pages will fly by in your hands—just be careful with them—my copy’s so old and brittle, the pages are literally falling apart each time I read through it.  One suggestion—if you can get a hold of The Rocket’s Shadow, Book 1 in the series, then read that one first.  The books aren’t all connected to each other, but Book 1 ties in very importantly to this story.  If you can’t find The Rocket’s Shadow, though, don’t worry about it too much—I couldn’t find it either, and I still loved this book the first time I read it.  Ten out of ten stars—a wonderful adventure well worth the read!



Best lines (in my opinion): p. 62, when Rick borrows a plane from his friend Steve Hollis:

“Of course you’ll have to leave a ten-thousand dollar deposit,” [Steve] added.

“What luck,” Rick replied.  “I just happen to have that much in my piggy bank.  You don’t mind pennies, do you?”

“Certainly not. With that many pennies I can repave the runway with solid copper.”

The Wounded Bookshop: Classic Kids’ Mystery and Adventure Series

          Howdy, folks!  Welcome to the Wounded Bookshop!  Have you ever been at a library booksale, an antique store, a thrift shop, a yard sale, or somewhere else and stumbled across an old book that you’d never heard of?  One that you thought might be interesting, but you weren’t sure, because you didn’t know anything about it?  If so, then you’ve come to the right place.  Drawing off my extensive collection of classic children’s literature, many of which books are out of print, I’ll give you a summary of the titles I own, so if you ever run across the book somewhere, you'll have a better idea of whether it’s something you want to buy or not.  This blog will cover everything from the Hardy Boys to the Bobbsey Twins, from the Mercer Boys to Nancy Drew, from Tom Swift to Rick Brant—and more!  My main job will be to summarize the plot, but I’ll also tell you what the series is about (especially for the more obscure series), provide information on the author (whose name often differs from the one on the book’s cover), and maybe provide the story of how I ran across it—which sometimes can be almost as interesting as the story itself!

          Usually, I tend to like books from this era, so most of the titles I review I recommend.  Of course, you occasionally find ones that aren’t as good, and I may review those as well, if only to point out why you might not want to waste your three bucks.  Those children’s novels from the first part of the 20^th Century are some of my favorite books ever written—they’re exciting, they capture the imagination, and they keep the reader entertained for a good two hundred pages or so.

          Obviously, there will be one important limitation on what books can be reviewed here—and that is whether I can get a hold of them or not.  After all, many of the series I plan on reviewing are long out of print, and I only own a few titles from them that I happened to stumble across somewhere.  Thus, no matter how much I like a series, I might not be able to review every book in it—but the one positive about these books’ elusiveness is that it makes finding them all the more rewarding.  There’s no feeling in the world like discovering a book you’ve never heard of, reading it, loving it, and later finding another one in the series and going, “Oh, my goodness!  I love that series!”

          As for how often I post…well, that depends on how often I can get these things read and write a review…so…we’ll find out!

          I hope you enjoy this blog!

          P.S.—A note on the title.  The Wounded Bookshop in Fredericksburg, Virginia, was one of my favorite used bookstores growing up.  My parents didn’t get me many books from it—in fact, I think the only one we did get was Trixie Belden and the Mystery of the Missing Heiress—but it was a terrific read, and the other books they had looked equally fascinating.  It’s out of business now, but its legacy is not forgotten.