The Merry Mad Bachelors

The Merry Mad Bachelors by Ethelyn M. Parkinson (1962) This book is the sequel to Good Old Archibald (1960), and is about big family in small town (presumably northern Wisconsin) who are a bit eccentric—but not in a annoying, quirky way—kind of like my own family was eccentric. It's a big family—the kids are all boys; one likes to cook in the basement, one likes to give funerals for critters who have died. There's a set of twins, and there's an adopted kid. The narrator is the oldest boy, Trent Conway, and he and his classmates are about to enter Seventh Grade, and they're determined to have a good basketball team. Their newest friend was a rich kid, an outsider, Archibald—from the previous book—now fully accepted with the boys. They make a new friend this summer, Emory, who is an orphan, and is staying with his uncle, who is a dentist, for the summer. The kids' project is to convince the town judge to allow Emory to stay permanently with his uncle—though the judge is steadfastly against it, as the dentist is a confirmed bachelor. So there's a lot convoluted plots to find ways to prove that bachelors can survive without the help of a woman. It gets pretty involved. One of the reasons I like Ethelyn M. Parkinson's books so much is that her sense of humor is pretty sophisticated—though these are definitely written for a juvenile audience. She assumes her reader is intelligent, and can get the jokes, or else will grow into it. The humor is also often very dry, and sometime a bit odd—but never gets stale with me. This book remains one of my all-time favorite kids' books.