Vintage Thursday Thingie: A Vintage Adventure Book: TOM SWIFT and His Rocket Ship

Earlier this week, I set out to do some errands-one of which was to go to our local public library and exhange my books. When we (DH had his errand list too) got there, there was this big, long table piled high with books that the library was getting rid of: all were priced 5 shekels or $1.25 and there on the far left corner, almost falling off the table was this little vintage treasure! This is the third adventure in the New Tom Swift Jr. Adventures with a copyright of 1954, the year that the Tom Swift Jr series began...but this book was not produced that year -those books have blue spines, this has a yellow spine so it has to be no earlier than 1955.



Who was Victor Appleton II? The son of the writer Victor Appleton, the author of the original Tom Swift series? No, of course not but I do appreciate the cleverness of the publishers-the Stratemeyer Syndicate! It seems most of the series was written by James Duncan Lawrence.



This is illustration was used for both the front and back flyleafs. There's Tom not in his space ship but in his flying laboratory.


Here Tom is in the space ship: doing a very urgent repair!

You may have guessed: as soon as I got home, I read this book! I loved it! The science may be a little out-of-date but then it is science fiction!

When it came to juvenile fiction, I was more a Sue Barton kind of girl, so I enjoyed my first Tom Swift adventure. Would I recommend it to a kid today? Definitely...its a rip-roaring adventure! (and they would get to tell all about how silly some of the science is...there are communications from beings from outer space-maybe Mars! and ask "What are cathode tubes?" What fun!)

Here are Tom and his friend Bud racing to check on the rocket...the security alarm went off...saboteurs!

So remember, Support Your Local Library in 2009 and it just may support you in unexpected ways.

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