Danny Dunn and…

I recently sold a tatty old book I had bought on ebay. It was from a series, begun in the 50s, called Danny Dunn and…’.

When I was about 8 or 9, I found a book in my school library (Bybrook Junior School) called ‘Danny Dunn Invisible Boy’ by Jay Williams and Raymond Abrashkin. One abiding memory I have of it was of one day my teacher had called my name several times to attract my attention and I had not heard her. When I eventually looked up and apologised, she said it was so nice to see someone so distracted by a book and she just let me carry on! Thank you Mrs Samuel.

At some point I managed to track down another title, ‘Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint’ and that was every bit as distracting. And that was that… Roll on 30 years and ebay came along and I remember thinking perhaps I could use it to track down further copies of the series, as they had long been out of print. Sure enough they appeared from time-to-time and I managed to win them. There were other bidders after them too, so there should be others out there to read this post!

The premise of the book is that Danny Dunn, a young lad, lives with his Mother who is housekeeper to a Professor Bullfinch. Each story is arranged around a ‘happy accident’ that Danny causes with one of the Professors experiments which leads to great discoveries and adventures.

Over time I managed to obtain a full collection as a mixture of hard and paperbacks. Writing this has made me realise I do not have a full set of each so I may look again. I have read a couple and they are still distracting to this 50 something! I was wary that I could destroy the magic, but I wasn’t disappointed and it brought back many happy and warm memories.

If you have a chance to read one, or pass one to your son or grandson, it may well create a life-long memory of ‘that book’ that completely took their attention, like it did for me.

Edit 29th December, 2021:
Well, it seems ‘we’ are getting there. Just read this interesting article on hackster.io. Not far to go now!

Here is a list of the fifteen titles I know of:

Danny Dunn, Scientific Detective
Danny Dunn and the Weather Machine
Danny Dunn, Invisible Boy
Danny Dunn and the Heat Ray
Danny Dunn and the Swamp Monster
Danny Dunn and the Fossil Cave
Danny Dunn and the Smallifying Machine
Danny Dunn and the Voice from Space
Danny Dunn on a Desert Island
Danny Dunn on the Ocean Floor
Danny Dunn, Time Traveller
Danny Dunn and the Anti-Gravity Paint
Danny Dunn and the Automatic House
Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine
Danny Dunn and the Universal Glue