Book Review: The Mad Scientists’ Club

Author: Bertrand R. Brinley
Illustrator: Charles Geer

5 Stars

I was delighted to learn that The Mad Scientists’ Club has been reissued. I loved this book when it was new, back in the 1960s. Years later, I wore out my only copy and found that it was out of print. However, there was a brand-new thing called the Internet.

I did some investigating and eventually located the author’s son, who was living in Texas. He informed me that his father had passed away and he was planning to re-release the stories, which by then comprised several books. It was to be quite a while before they would be released.

Well, when he found out that I was living in Mexico and was not likely to steal them, he gave me access to all the stories online in a Top Secret location. I was rolling in the hay! Or, more correctly, rolling in a beautiful wave of nostalgia.

What fun it was to accompany the boys on their incredible adventures: building a functioning sea monster that attracted national attention, rigging an old mansion to be ‘haunted,’ and finding and hatching a dinosaur egg.

“The Great Gas Bag Race,” a story a participating in a balloon race, was largely responsible for me buying my own hot-air balloon and going into the passenger-ride business back in the 1980s.

I find the stories to be as fresh now as they were when I first read them. It is truly amazing what a group of intelligent, determined youngsters can accomplish! (I know—I raised four boys.)

The Mad Scientists’ Club is good, clean, happy fun for the whole family. I’m sure you will enjoy it, even if you are ‘all grown up’ now.