From ew, Donald J. Sobol, creator of the Encyclopedia Brown series for children, died at age 87 on July 11. Over the course of his mystery writing career, which began in 1959 with Two-Minute Mysteries, Sobol wrote more than 65 books and won a special Edgar Award in 1976.
The Encyclopedia Brown series centers on Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown, a boy detective nicknamed for his vast knowledge of facts, who helps his police chief father solve local cases, usually by dinner time. Sobol came up with the concept when he came across a book by chance at the New York Public Library. The book had puzzles on one side of the page and solutions on the other, and it occurred to him to write a mystery book in the same style. Since the publication of the first Encyclopedia Brown novel in 1963, the books have never been out of print and have been translated into 12 languages.
He is survived by his wife, Rose; a sister, Helen; three children Diane, Eric and John; and four grandchildren, Gregory, Bryan, Lauren and Nicholas.
4 comments:
I had a period of time when I read a ton of Encyclopedia Brown, but my success rate wasn't very high. I'm pretty sure the case depicted on that cover had to do with penguins being Antarctic, not Arctic critters.
I also read some Two-Minute Mysteries and Five-Minute Mysteries. I recall being annoyed one time because some kid my same age saw my book and did a "Oh, those are so easy!" which intimidated me because I did not find them so. Later I realized that kid was probably full of shit.
or had already read them all.
i read and enjoyed a lot of those books but rarely guessed the solutions; they were fun nevertheless.
I still remember the solution involving some kind of stolen note. The bully kid had taken it, but said he "found" it in a book, between pages 45-46. Scroll down for solution!
How did Encyclopedia know he was lying???
Page 1 in every book always falls on the front right page. So each even number is always on the reverse side of the same piece of paper. There's no way something could be found between odd/even pages with the odd page first.
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