Tag: A Little Help for My Friends

The other day, I asked for some help for a friend tracking down a beloved series from his younger days.

there’s only one series I desperately want to remember what it was.

Was sort of spooky mystery, 1950ish settling with some siblings always visiting this wise professor who always made them chocolate cake and they were always getting on the wrong side of evil magicians and eldritch powers.

It’s a vague amorphous memory that gives me super nostalgia and angst that I can’t remember anything beyond that image lol

I think the series has been tracked down.

Blogger Murder by Death commented:

Would it be one of John Bellairs’ series by any chance?

and Sean Gibson agreed,

I was thinking John Bellairs! It sounded very Bellairsian…

I passed the idea along and got this response:

Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh! I think these might be it!!!

https://www.goodreads.com/series/66883-johnny-dixon

I’m so excited to investigate further

Thanks to all those who replied and those who spread the word. Particularly to Murder by Death and Gibson.

I was texting* with a friend yesterday and he said that he cannot remember the name of most of what he read in middle school. He was largely okay with that, but there’s one exception:

there’s only one series I desperately want to remember what it was.

Was sort of spooky mystery, 1950ish settling with some siblings always visiting this wise professor who always made them chocolate cake and they were always getting on the wrong side of evil magicians and eldritch powers.

It’s a vague amorphous memory that gives me super nostalgia and angst that I can’t remember anything beyond that image lol

Think back 15 years or so, does any one have an idea what he might have been reading? It’s not necessarily (probably not at all likely) YA. I can’t think of anything, and search engines aren’t working for me.

* I have to stress this conversation was in text–he’s a proofreader, and if it got out that he typed like this outside of a text environment, he’d probably stop talking with me outside of formal letters.