Books from my childhood

I'm geeked because I found a link to a site discussing one of my favorite book sets from my childhood. When I was a kid I was a voracious reader. I grew up in a small town (and it was the 80's), so my parents would let me ride my bike the 2-3 miles to the library. I made the trip at least twice a week and always biked home with quite a load of books in my pack. It actually got to the point that, rather than looking for specific books, I just started in one corner of the library and started to work my way around the Children's/Young Adult section, checking out 10-15 books at a time. The librarian would even hold back new books for me, so I could catch those that would have been shelved into a section I'd already covered.

I read a lot of non-fiction, but fiction stories tended to be my favorites, with a special reverence for books where the protagonist(s) went off on adventures or exploits of one sort or another. The ones I remmeber most fondly include The Great Brain books, the Encyclopedia Brown series, The Alvin Fernald books, The Mad Scientists Club books, the Hardy Boys series and anything by Roald Dahl. I have read all of the books my library had from these series at least 10 times...

I've often thought about getting these books for my son, who will hopefully have the same appetite as both of his parents for reading. However, many of them are out of print and difficult to find. Thus, I was especially excited to see that The Mad Scientists Club series are in re-print and they've even added a new one. I'll be picking these up to add to the library in the near future