The Terrible Troubles of Rupert Piper

The Terrible Troubles of Rupert Piper by Ethelyn M. Parkinson (1963) I have a hardback copy of this book from Abingdon Press. It's kind of a precursor to the four, later, Rupert Piper novels. There are 11 short stories here—adventures and misadventures of sixth-grade friends, and their families, in a small, fictional, Wisconsin town. All pretty funny, and some of them quite surprising. I like all of the Parkinson books I've read—though I prefer the long-form stories a bit more. But these are great. This book might be a bit hard to find—but fairly easy to find are its predecessors—Double Trouble for Rupert (1958) and Triple Trouble for Rupert (1960), which both went through multiple printings from Scholastic Book Services—so you'll see them, occasionally, in used book stores. They must have printed a lot of those Scholastic Book Services paperbacks over the years—and you can still find them—but because of their distinctive look and feel, and general excellence, one day they'll become quite collectable. I'm not particularly interested in collecting, necessarily, but rather books I like to read, and reread, and these books are all worth reading. If you're an Ethelyn M. Parkinson completist (and why wouldn't you be) I can report that all 11 stories here are included in either of the previous Rupert Piper books—so if you find those, you'll have all of this book's stories. But then, if you're a completist, you might want this one, as well. In all these books, illustrations by Mary Stevens are also excellent.