Wednesday, April 12, 2017

J is for Jerry West



Jerry West is the author of a delightful children's series, The Happy Hollisters.  Pete, Pam, Ricky, Holly, and Sue embark on a variety of adventures, often associated with trips they take with their parents.  Mr. John Hollister is the owner of The Trading Post, a hardware, sporting goods and toy store and his wife Elaine is never too busy to help her sleuthing children on their latest venture.

My Dad came home from work one day when we lived in Belgium with a Happy Hollisters book under his arm.  He had no idea how it came to be addressed to me; I can only imagine that through one of those Scholastic book offers or some other such thing at school, the publisher sent the first book with one of those try it or send it back offers.  My parents paid the bill and the remaining books (33 in the series) came about every other month.  I read the books, my sister read the books, and they traveled from Belgium to England and then to California with us.  Sadly, in the late 1980s, they were lost in a fire at my parent's home.

Wanting Sophia to have the same enjoyment, I scouted around second-hand sources to rebuild my collection.  I have 29 of the books, some with dust covers and some without and I need to get working on the remaining four.  The final book in the series is the most elusive as a smaller number were printed and they are hot ticket items on Ebay.

As I was writing this post and linking to The Happy Hollisters site, I was delighted to find that the books are available again, albeit in paperback.  I'd love to gather a set together and put them away for the day when I might have grandchildren asking for Nana to read them a story.

10 comments:

  1. Looks like a great series. will have to see the age level, might be interesting for dnephew's gift

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  2. Great news about the books being released again. I will have to look into these for my grandkids. Find me here.LINK

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  3. My Mum bought those books for us kids when we were much younger and they were adored by all, I'm sure if you ever have grandchildren they'll all love reading time! I hope you have a wonderful and blessed week!

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  4. Never heard of this series, how interesting.

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  5. What a great memory of those books and your family reading them. I am sorry they were lost in the fire. I love that you have almost the whole set though!! Thats so awesome. I've never heard of them but will be on the look out

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  6. I have never heard of the The Happy Hollisters. My oldest was a voracious reader. I remember looking everywhere to try and complete her Animorphs collection as that series was out of print too. I'm glad to hear you'll be able to find new copies of The Happy Hollisters.WeekendsInMaine

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  7. I have eight of them (unfortunately not the last one). Loved getting them in the mail as a kid. I may have to read one for my 2017 reading challenge book-with-a-red-spine category. :)

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  8. The Happy Hollisters sound like an enjoyable series for tweens/early teens. That's such a challenging age to find good books for. Some of the older, classic ones are the way to go for that age group. I'll need to check the series out for my daughters.

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  9. How awesome that you found the series you were looking for!

    Vanessa @Vanessence

    My "theme" - A Thirty-Word Story, revealing one word of the story each day of the challenge.
    #AtoZChallenge The Letter K

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