It took 45 years for me to begin work on The Active Classroom (Corwin Press), which is now in three editions. You can no longer purchase those two early mysteries, however, and there will be no second editions. The books did sell out for a dime a piece. And they are on the desk to the left, a bit worse for the wear, but just as precious, if not more so, in 1960.
I never lost my fascination with the writing process, and I hope you, your colleagues, and your students can benefit from the books in this bookshop!
Long before The Active Classroom, there were two mysteries, a mimeograph machine, and a fifth grader who discovered the library.
When I was a fifth grader in North East, PA, on the Lake Erie shore, the distance from the school to the town's library was one block. After school, I walked through Gibson Park, trudged up the steps, and deposited myself on a stool near the stack that contained The Tower Treasure and The Secret of the Old Clock. They were the first books in the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew series of books for kids, and I was hooked.
When my friend Gary Stear and I were 11, we began writing our first mystery, The Underground Cave. We followed that with The Mystery at Broken Canoe, which was dedicated to our 49th state, Alaska. Our classmate, Eric Schwartz, illustrated both books. I typed them on an electric typewriter, one keystroke at a time, and we mimeographed them. We had a bestseller; we sold 50 copies at the Corner Store, which was, well, on the corner of Lake and Main.
A Stroll Through the Stacks
