The Great Brain Does It Again

The Great Brain #7

by John D. Fitzgerald, Mercer Mayer (Illustrator)

This seventh book in the series is a great combination of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Terrible Two series, and is perfect for fans of Roald Dahl.

Here he goes again! Tom, a.k.a. the Great Brain, comes up with many more schemes, most of them concerned with earning money.

Genres: Childrens, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Young Adult, Historical, Middle Grade, Humor

141 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1975

About the author

OFFICIAL WEBSITE REFERENCED REPORTS:
John Dennis Fitzgerald was born in Price, Utah, on February 3, 1906, to Thomas and Minnie Melsen Fitzgerald. His father had a pharmacy degree but engaged in a number of business ventures and served on the Price Town Council for four years. John graduated from Carbon High School and at the age of eighteen and left Utah to pursue a career as a jazz drummer. He worked in a variety of occupations during his life, including newspaper reporter for the World-Tribune in New York City, foreign correspondent for United Press, advertising and purchasing agent, and bank auditor. He also served on Wendell Willkie's staff when Willkie was running for president.

At the time his first book, Papa Married a Mormon (1955), was published, he was living in Los Angeles and working as a steel buyer. Fitzgerald had collaborated with his sister, Belle Fitzgerald Empey, to write this book. Her name was not included as coauthor of the book because it was written in the first person. Papa Married a Mormon was very popular and was reprinted in several foreign-language editions, including Chinese. Twice chosen as a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, it was also serialized in McCall's Magazine. A sequel, Mamma's Boarding House, appeared in 1958.

Fitzgerald moved to Denver in 1960 where he tried for a short time to make his living as a full-time writer. He later reported that "I quit my job and went to a mountain cabin to make my living writing. I had to sell my jack and a tire to get back to Denver. When I got there I sold my typewriter and swore I would never write again." His wife later bought him another typewriter and he eventually resumed writing.

He had a very successful writing career, publishing more than 500 magazine articles, as well as poetry and songs and two books on writing, The Professional Story Writer and His Art (1963) and Structuring Your Novel: From Basic Idea to Finished Manuscript (1972).

His most successful and widely read novels are the juvenile books in the Great Brain Series. They were loosely based on the adventures of his brother Thomas N. Fitzgerald. Books in this series include: The Great Brain (1967), More Adventures of the Great Brain (1969), Me and My Little Brain (1971), The Great Brain at the Academy (1972), The Great Brain Reforms (1973), The Return of the Great Brain (1974), and The Great Brain Does It Again (1976).

The Great Brain Series has led to one of the most asked questions in Utah literature: "Where is Adenville, Utah?" Adenville is a fictional town created by Fitzgerald, but most readers believe that the geographical setting loosely fits that of a small town in southern Utah.

Fitzgerald and his wife, Joan, moved to Titusville, Florida, in about 1972 where he continued his writing career. He died there May 20, 1988, at the age of 82.

Reviews

[Dominick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was hard to rate. It's an odd, interesting book. One tends to assume that this sort of series thing is going to be fairly light and generic, and I haven't read any of the earlier volumes so didn't much know what to expect. Furthermore, I usually find Mercer Mayer's art--though lovely and polished--a tad too saccharine.

However, this book is generally much better-written than the format might suggest. Fitzgerald uses a more complex vocabulary and style than one might expect. The book is still easily digestible (and short!), but it has some meat to it, stylistically and linguistically. A factor in the digestibility is that each chapter is essentially a self-contained story; there is some continuity to the book, reference to things that happened earleir, the passage of time, and so on, but esentially each chapter just offers another iteration of Tom, the "Great Brain," using his prodigious intellect to accomplish some feat, usually one designed to put money in his pocket. This aspect of the book was actually somewhat disappointing, as he doesn't seem all that clever to me--the story about the Indians, especially, depends not at all on Tom being smarter than everyone else but just on him being the only one willing to query the government about what's going on. I was hoping his tricks would be more clever.

On the other hand, Fitzgerald does craft an odd and interesting character in Tom. He seems almost a sociopath in some stories, given his (almost) exclusive focus on his own profit and his fundamental inability to understand how others might feel. The story about the rocking horse, especially, paints a slightly chilling picture, as the tragedy of the situation eludes Tom, with him caring only about getting his reward, in contrast to his younger brother's generosity. (Bonus: having a kid in a kid's book die of diabetes is a rather daring touch.) In fact, Tom's intervention on behalf of the Indians being bilked seemed out of character, as there was never anything in it for him. And the final story, about Toming hitting the teens and beginnig to get interested in girls, seems oddly anti-climactic (I assume this is the final book in the series). Nevertheless, these are pleasant and entertaining stories.

And Meyer's art is a further bonus. His black and white illustrations are dense and busy, reminding me almost of Edward Gorey in their nearly gothic detail. This is not a cute, sparkling world; Meyer's art suggests the darker subtexts of the book without being macabe or baroque. They're excellent illustrations.

Overall, I'd say this series deserves to have wider recognition than it seems to have today.

[Susan Moxley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A childhood favorite that will remind you of days gone by when we were young.

[Heather Culley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Girls ruin everything.

[Michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the last book I had out of the Great Brain series as a kid. The odd thing is that I remember one of the stories (one of my favourite stories out of the series) ending very differently. It's the one about Frankie's rocking horse. In the book I just read, Tom asks for and gets his dollar reward for finding the stolen rocking horse, while for years I have remembered this as ending with Tom being shamed by Frankie's generosity into refusing the reward. Unfortunately I don't have my childhood books anymore - though I doubt there would have been this much difference in the editions. I guess I must've just remembered it wrong. Most of the rest of the stories are all right, with the Indian reservation story being another stand-out.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the previous joy is returned to the series with the buried treasure trick to get the other boys to turn over the garden. This would have fallen right in line with Tom Sawyer’s fence whitewashing, if TD hadn’t then turned around and only let the “winner” keep half his winnings after rigging the quadrant selection. The author sours some of the clever tricks by focusing on the “swindles.” One could argue he’s bitter because he did not come out ahead. But after six books, he should know that the odds are stacked highly against coming out ahead of his brother.

[Owen Daniels · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book

I thought it was a really good book and I’ve always liked the great brain and his funny tricks and the funny ones and him being so mysterious and it’s really adventurous and it’s a good book for kids.

[Lili · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was great

[Nathaniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

i liked it

[Galion Public Library Teens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review by O.P. : "T.D. is so intelligent and skipped 6th grade and mainly uses his brain to help his money loving heart."

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great story that fostered a lot of discussion with my 9-year-old

[Halle Burton · Rating 4 out of 5]

really funny book i would highly recourdmend it

[Ranette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set in southern Utah These boys get into all kinds of trouble, and then out again.

[Dorothy Weaver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of dated

2 chapters have to be heavily edited if reading to kids under 11. Funny though. Good for historic mood. Kids should know life has changed

[Anais · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn right he did

[Gunnar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked how Tom made the chute-the-chute.

[PK Kid · Rating 5 out of 5]

OMG he did it again no fucking way

[James Hearn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Story about the little boy with diabetes and the rocking horse is very poignant.

[Jeffrey Caston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another delightful romp through late 1800s Utah and thr adventures JD, Tom, and Frank have.

[Bridget Cunningham]

says he still believed in Santa clause, and a whole chapter about a horse they call a “jackass”

[Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last chapter was a boring chapter. I like that the Great Brain forced a kid into not eating anymore candy.

[Danielle Hardy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal. We just might have liked this one best of all 7 so far. The Herbie Stie chapter just might have had us laughing more than any other one of the books.

[Rhett Barton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This series doesn't disappoint. I get a kick out of the narrator.

[coyurin · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.6

Best story was the blood brother one but overall fine.

[Rachael Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A childhood favorite. My kids love listening to the various schemes of Tom D. Fitzgerald.

[Cassie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shenanigans and adventures galore. :)

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really don’t know how Fitzgerald keeps coming up with original stories for this series. The Great Brain Does it Again is a familiar mix of Tom the Exasperating and Tom the Helper incidents, with the Great Brain being praised just as much as he is criticized for his antics. Though there are new stories, the core of the book is the same as the others, and Tom is equal parts frustrating and brilliant, as always.

One of the best moments in this book doesn’t revolve around the Great Brain. The story of Frankie and his missing rocking horse is heartwarming and a great lesson of sacrifice and sharing. Too bad Tom makes it worse at the end, but the contrast is striking and highlights just how crass Tom can be at times. Of course, we can’t have a bad!Tom story without having a good!Tom story, like how he catches the people swindling the Indians because he does have some good morals underneath all that greed.

I do feel as if Tom gets in trouble a little more in this book than in others. His schemes rightly get called out by his father and he rightly gets punished for them. And then, there’s the great chapter at the end that details J.D.’s horror that Tom might actually be growing up and putting his swindling ways behind him, perhaps even starting to—gasp!—date girls. It’s a good reminder that the reader, in a way, is like J.D.—hating Tom’s swindles, yet thinking life is boring without them. The thought of a normal Great Brain is as strange to us as it is to J.D.

There’s only one more book in the series, and I’m looking forward to it, not only because I think it will be a little more different now that Tom is hard at work doing more responsible things, but also because it is the end of a series that has gotten a little tiring.

[Michael Emond · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am on record as saying this is my favourite children series. Smart, well written, well developed characters and a main character that has flaws but also has heart. We get to see less of the heart on display in this book and that is a bit of a shame, but there is still one or two chapters that show us the Great Brain doesn't just have a money loving heart. My fav chapter is when his actions lead to helping out an Indian tribe and my least favourite one is when he fails to get a child to lose weight and the moral seems to be "don't try to help him lose weight - if he wants to eat himself to death that is his choice". An odd moral. Even though the Brain's methods are suspect he seems to be the only one who cares about this child's future (the child's parents and Tom's dad look especially heartless in this chapter.
I will say this - I think this is one of the weaker books of the series BUT it does give nice closure with the final chapter and even one of the weaker books is still miles above most children literature in this category.

[Christy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the first four or five books of the series, the adventures felt authentic. If they didn’t actually happen to the author, maybe they happened to someone he knew, or maybe he heard about them third or fourth hand. But by now, everything feels made up. Not to worry, however–they’re still very entertaining, although some of them strike a serious note. I was puzzled by the episode where Tom tries to help Herbie, a fat boy, lose weight, because it couldn’t possibly have worked. The boy’s father has promised him ten cents for each pound he loses, and of course Tom wants to get his own hands on the money. So he makes the boy do calisthenics and skip desserts, and he himself will collect the money. But what incentive does Herbie have? He’s going hungry, and exercising, and getting nothing except Tom’s promise that he won’t be teased any more. Of course Herbie won’t do it! There are other interesting episodes: Tom’s home-made roller coaster, Frankie’s stolen rocking horse, and some Indians being swindled. It’s all worth reading!

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another enjoyable edition. Tom returns back to his more selfish self in this one, though he still provides some excellent adventure for the town's kids. He is just frustrating sometimes in his apathy for others. John can also be frustrating - you just want to shake him, because he continually falls for Tom's blackmailing him by claiming John is a blackmailer type slick talk. Frankie is a breath of fresh air, because while he is a tattler, he has a common sense and knows when its time to tell the adults. Frankie is actually a very sweet boy, a very enjoyable character.

It's easy to get caught up in how frustrating Tom's selfishness and John's thick-headedness can be when you binge-read the series, as it builds up on you. Despite this though, I still highly recommend the series. Especially in this and the last book, I like getting to learn a few new things about life at that time. Never a dull moment with The Great Brain!

[Jeff Mayo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The great series came to an end here (at least for 19 years). I love the series, and this one is no different. Many people complain that this one is darker in tone, with the protagonist being more mean spirited. The characters were getting older, and although we don't hear about teen angst in the 1890's, some of that must have existed. Tom is more cynical here, but so are the townspeople, who have become used to his cons. I enjoyed it as much as the rest of the series. The characters have developed in a way a lot of readers didn't like, but this is a semi-fictional account of actual people, so you have to take that into consideration.