The Final Solution: R.I.P. Donald Sobol

Hail and farewell to Donald J. Sobol, the creator of the character who first made it cool to be smart in school! Encyclopedia Brown, the erudite hero of Sobol's fifty-plus-year-old series, introduced millions and millions of kids to the detective mystery genre with tales all set in Idaville, U.S.A.

With memorable characters like the original tough-chick sleuth Sally Kimball and bad guy Bugs Meany and his gang the Tigers, illustrated iconically by Leonard Shortall, Sobol made it respectable to know stuff and taught generations about the fictional device of foreshadowing (clues)! Each book gave readers the short but well-written scenarios of ten hometown mysteries and gave the youthful sleuths a chance to solve the case on their own, backed up with an appendix of solutions.

Sobol's final E. B. book, Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Soccer Scheme is forthcoming in October.