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Join other followers. Try again later. Blog Stats 2,, visits. Blog at WordPress. Follow Following. The Chawed Rosin Join other followers. His death was first announced Monday by a method unheard of in Idaville: via a tweet from Publishers Weekly.
He is survived by his wife, Rose, who is also an author, their three adult children and four grandchildren. Sobol said once.
Craig Pittman can be reached at craig tampabay. Subscribe Manage my subscription Activate my subscription Log in Log out. Regions Tampa St. Letters to the Editor Submit a Letter. Investigations Narratives Pulitzer Winners. Connect with us. About us. Obituaries Homes Jobs Classifieds. Careers Advertise Legal Contact. Log in. Account Manage my subscription Activate my subscription Log out. Encyclopedia Brown author Donald Sobol dies in Florida at By Craig Pittman.
Published Jul. Explore all your options. Up next: Seminole resolves flap over flag, will display banner on fire trucks. Add receiver Chris Godwin to list of injured Bucs starters on offense Nov. That meant he needed a tough sidekick, a Hawk to his Spenser. Then he tried making his sidekick a reformed bully. His mother was a very strong woman, too.
Encyclopedia regarded her as more than just muscle. She was his best friend and a full partner in his detective agency. While doing research, he asked a librarian to bring him four books. That one was a puzzle book.
As for his back-of-the-book solutions gimmick, Sobol got the idea for that from a library mix-up. In glancing at it, Sobol realized it had the solution for each puzzle in the back. It dawned on him that he could use the same idea in writing mystery stories. Once Sobol was done with that first Encyclopedia Brown story collection, he was sure he had a winner.
Yet the manuscript was rejected by more than two dozen publishers. Once it finally found a home, though, it took off with young readers.
The Encyclopedia Brown mysteries have never been out of print. They have been around long enough that their original audience has passed them along to their own children and grandchildren. When my kids were old enough, I started reading them the Encyclopedia Brown stories at bedtime. They ate them up just like I had when I was their age. Some of his fans have gone on to write their own mysteries.
I really loved the fact that Encyclopedia was the brain and his friend Sally was the muscle—she was the one who had to beat people up when they were threatening Encyclopedia Brown. Sobol wrote every day, taking about six months to produce each of the Encyclopedia Brown books. The one time of day they saw him was at dinner, when he would entertain his family with all sorts of tales.
He always knew just where to pause. He frequently tested out mystery ideas on his children. And there were so many stories. By the time he died in , he had written 29 books, each one with 10 stories. Although the puzzles Sobol concocted were always eminently fair, the clever writing is what kept his readers coming back.
What helped keep the books popular is that they showed how kids could be smarter and more observant than adults. Sobol himself learned that lesson anew in when second-graders in Philadelphia found an error in one of his stories and wrote to him to point it out. He had to change the story. Was he the real Encyclopedia? With his background in reporting, he knew how to track down the facts he needed.
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