.
How can you not love this ddbyhndyhb
story? Siblings Jack and Phoebe Gore, 10 and 7 respectively, hung out the proverbial shingle and started a detective agency in the northern Manhattan neighborhood of Inwood. They charge $6 a case and, according to DNAInfo’s Carolina Pichardo:
With only a few weeks in business — and using nothing more than a whiteboard, notepad, handmade fliers and a customized badge their grandfather, a retired lieutenant of the NYPD, gave them — the brother-and-sister duo have helped their neighbors find everything from a lost dog tag to an earring to a wad of cash.
The dog tag was their first find — they stumbled upon it in the park and called the phone number on the back. Okay, maybe not quite The Maltese Falcon. But the cash case was cooler. As their mom, Tara Kapoor, told DNA:
[Their] keen sense of observation helped them solve their favorite case — when they found $820 in cash tucked inside an envelope on the ground in the lobby of their apartment building.
The pair put up flier announcing they’d found the money and asking its owner to come forward.
“We asked them to tell us the exact amount, what it was in [and] where they were walking,” Jack said.
The real owner — a nanny who worked in their apartment building — called immediately and they were able to return the cash.
“It was her weekly pay,” Kapoor said. “She was so grateful.”
No word on how the grammar school gumshoes solved the Case of the Missing Earring (I’ve got about 27 cases of that they could solve for me). But clearly they have successful solved the most vexing mystery of our time: Why don’t kids get to have adventures anymore?
Their solution was elementary, my dear readers: Make some.
And have a mom who says, “Go get ’em!” – L
.
.
26 Comments
I always liked Brains Benton better than Encyclopedia Brown.
But good for Jack and Phoebe.
I loved Encycolpedia Brown when I was a kid, sadly the stories seem rather dated now.
“I loved Encycolpedia Brown when I was a kid, sadly the stories seem rather dated now.”
Where did this silly obsession with things being “dated” come from?
I had no trouble reading Sherlock Holmes when I was young, even though hansom cabs and such were history when my grandfather was young. it wasn’t “dated”, it just took place in another time (and place).
Same with Tom Sawyer, which was even older.
It was always like that. Some stories survive time and remain relevant or interesting, most don’t. When stories references problems of different era or relies too much on what was special in that era without being explicite, modern readers will miss a lot and thus not like it.
Exactly, Andy. Some things get better with time, some don’t. That’s true of books, music, furniture, cars, houses, etc. It’s the difference between “classic” or “antique,” and just “old.”
A story sounds “dated” when the author tries to make it sound like it’s happening “now” but has a lot of detail that actually are quite decade-dependent. If the author identifies the time period it’s happening in, those details are relevant (& can even, such as in the case of the latter Little House books, actually turn them into science fiction).
“It was always like that. Some stories survive time and remain relevant or interesting, most don’t.”
Sturgeon’s Law.
I recently got pointed to the Internet Archive pulp magazine repository… ll kinds of magazines from the 1920’s through the 1950’s. Mostly Science Fiction, but there’s also just about every other genre of fiction represented. I went there for “Worlds of If”, which now has its complete run available in the archive, but I got distracted by some of the other things I found there.
Perhaps we can modernize Encyclopedia Brown. His grandson EB the 2nd can solve an online dating scam.
“Perhaps we can modernize Encyclopedia Brown. His grandson EB the 2nd can solve an online dating scam.”
Well, first off, the grandson won’t be “Encyclopedia” Brown, he’ll be “Internet” Brown or, if Microsoft comes through on the sponsorship deal, “Bing” Brown. “The Case of the Callous Catfish” writes itself.
You guys all know that they’re developing a new “Nancy Drew” TV show, right? Except that Nancy won’t be a teenager anymore, or an amateur detective, and, oh yeah, she’s not white any more, either.
Precisely, BL! Some things have to be explained (what’s a charge plate?) but basically books are just period pieces, even if they weren’t intended to be. (For an adult example, see *The Hunt for Red October.*)
That being said, I’ve observed that [mostly] girls of these days will be baffled by the phones in older books: Nancy Drew dealt with phone lines that were cut, and the Babysitters Club used a teen’s private line for business “so we don’t tie up the grownups’ phone for our meetings.”
(I do know what a charge plate is. First example I thought of).
“His grandson EB the 2nd can solve an online dating scam.”
You mean WB. His grandson will be Wikipedia Brown.
🙂
It’s a silly thing to quibble over, but I think encyclopedia still has the same metaphorical meaning today as it did then. The kid wasn’t called EB because he used an encyclopedia, but because he was so smart his brain was like an encyclopedia. I’m pretty sure that metaphor is still live and recognizable today. Internet or Wikipedia just doesn’t have quite the same connotation.
The books by Blue Ballot are great! 3 middle school friends roaming around Chicago solving mysteries.if you have been in the area they are even funner to read because the landmarks and streets are real
The books by Blue Balliet are great! 3 middle school friends roaming around Chicago solving mysteries.if you have been in the area they are even funner to read because the landmarks and streets are real
Fandaltastic!
I am 67, I can remember reading the classics of “The Happy Hollisters-of children aged 4-12 who liked
to solve mysteries.
I read them from 1959-1965.
This made me want to read books like;
-The Real Book of Crime Detection
-Crime Scientists
Youth and the FBI
Love it!
Good for those kids. My son is always asking me how he can make money, but unfortunately we live in a location where the neighbors don’t interact with each other unless it’s absolutely necessary.
Regarding the comment about some books being dated, overall, I think when the writing is well done, the book transcends time. I’ve read several book series to my son (The Great Brain and Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet). Both have some outdated ideas, but my son loved the stories, and I’d use the outdated ideas to teach him about history, gender equality, etc.
I don’t get it – they charge $6 a case, but it seems they often are the ones initiating the case. How does the cash case work, for instance? If I prove that it’s mine, and don’t want to pay the $6, is the plan to just keep my money?
I wonder how much of a problem the “dated” stories really are. One of my sons just read and loved an Encyclopedia Brown book. My oldest son went through a Fibber McGee and Molly phase. We’d been listening to them on XM radio and then he found some cassettes at an estate sale. Its unbelievable how much you can learn if you look up every single reference from an episode or two.
I keep hearing that kids don’t like dates books and movies, but you sure couldn’t tell by talking to mine.
“they charge $6 a case, but it seems they often are the ones initiating the case. How does the cash case work, for instance? If I prove that it’s mine, and don’t want to pay the $6, is the plan to just keep my money?”
If you wouldn’t pay $6 to the two kids who found your $820 and went to the trouble of locating you to return it, there’s a special part of Hell set aside for you.
I learned about the different patterns of fingerprints people have and how to fingerprint from The Hardy Boys Detective Handbook!
I learned how to make plaster casts of foot prints and tire tracks while messing around with my sister’s old craft kit.
It was fascinating.
I don’t think dates stories are just a question of bad writing. Humor dies first – it is just not funny anymore after a while even if reader rationally gets what was supposed to be funny. Scary dies second – I read a couple of supposed horrors from 19 century popular back then and they were comparatively weak sauce. Symbolism gets lost, political references gets lost.
Dekameron used to be outrageous and funny and now is not so much. Three Musketeers were not supposed to be positive heroes for children and most people would interpret them in context of contemporary politics – not like heroes worthy of admiration. I love Pratchetts books, but jokes about current society will be lost on readers few years from now.
Pure adventures survive alright most often, but even the dialog can start to feel artificial or forced where it felt natural originally. It gets “nobody talks that way” and “nobody would said that in that situation” effect.
A book that assumes reader to know something about current society is not badly written, it is often great writing, but it will age with time. Clear reference to neonazi now (for example) may be impenetrable thirty years ago because “uniform” change. A type of clothing or behavior that was clearly bad for a girl years ago and is meant to say something about character has no meaning for readers now (ok it is getting increasingly puritanistic now).
Taboos that used to be only hinted are now talked about openly, so people are not fine tuned to those hints anymore. All that makes the same book more boring to read.
Where are the comments about the cleverness of city kids living in a big building finding adventure and independence? And how that applies to how we are raising kids today.
It is nice to know how well read we all are. On that note, I liked Nancy Drew. She was a role model for girls growing up in a male-dominated society.
Ah, Nancy Drew. I read pretty much only ghost stories and the like (vampires, werewolves, zombies, etc etc) when I was a kid and the Nancy Drew books were among the first books I read with actual human, live villains 🙂 (Then I moved on to Elizabeth George.)
I remember I used to think they were all 18 (or at least Ned, the boyfriend) because they could drive – took me YEARS before I realized they were American and so probably only 16 🙂
@Andy: “Pure adventures survive alright most often, but even the dialog can start to feel artificial or forced where it felt natural originally. It gets “nobody talks that way” and “nobody would said that in that situation” effect.”
I had that very strongly with Lord of the Rings. I don’t know whether it was written in that style or if it was just the translation, but the dialog felt soooooo old-testamenty to me, even when the characters had barely survived the battlle they’d still talk super super archaicly polite to each other. Tedious.
@Papilio, as a modern American, I can confirm it isn’t the translator; the dialog in LOTR really is mildly archaic. It probably wouldn’t have sounded as much that way back in the 1940’s when Tolkien was writing the book, but even then, he was a scholar of Old English consciously imitating the style of ancient epics. And, as an LOTR fan, that’s one of the qualities I like about it.