Come Along for the Ride: From Shoreham to Sea Gull Beach to Switzerland with The Happy Hollisters!
“When my own [six] children were small, I used to tell them lots of stories. One day I decided to write them down. That was the beginning of The Happy Hollisters. I get my ideas from watching children, going to other countries, and even reading the newspaper . . . Whenever I write a book which takes place abroad, I go there first and study customs and people, to have an authentic background for my story. I love that part of my work most—travel.”
See the world with author Andrew Svenson (aka Jerry West) and the Happy Hollisters! You don’t need to plan an itinerary, pack a suitcase, or buy a plane ticket; all you need is a comfy chair and a Happy Hollisters book.
The Hollister family draws elementary-age readers into their world with exciting and action-packed adventures as they search out clues to mysteries around their neighborhood and around the globe. As a bonus for parents and teachers, young readers might not even realize how much they are learning about the world as they solve mysteries with the sleuthing siblings, making this series a good leisure-time reading supplement to regular school studies.
Andrew Svenson sprinkled his stories with educational tidbits based on his own adventures, giving the stories an authentic background. “While children read for excitement and entertainment, the books fill them in on facts. They’re educational, but children don’t know it,” he told a reporter from the Charlotte Observer in 1970. “A book set in Alaska, The Happy Hollisters and the Mystery of the Totem Faces, drew praise from an Alaska museum curator, who called it the best work on totems written for children . . . but the big thing is fun. Books for children should be fun.”
The fun begins in the first volume, The Happy Hollisters, when the family moves from Crestwood to their new home in Shoreham, and the mysteries begin almost immediately. The first two adventures are close to home—a hidden treasure in book one, and a boy lost on the Muskong River in volume two, The Happy Hollisters on a River Trip. Although the exact location of Shoreham is never specified, notations in the author’s file indicate that it might be imagined as being in the eastern U.S., possibly upstate New York. Andrew Svenson was born in New Jersey and attended college in Pittsburgh, where he met his wife. After they were married, they moved to northern New Jersey and purchased a home in Bloomfield. We now believe that Shoreham could be a mashup of those locations.
In the third volume, The Happy Hollisters at Sea Gull Beach, the family travels to the seashore in search of pirates’ treasure. This story was reportedly modeled on a trip Andrew Svenson took with his family to Cape Cod in 1950. The Happy Hollisters and the Indian Treasure (volume 4) and The Happy Hollisters at Mystery Mountain (volume 5) take place in New Mexico. Andrew Svenson traveled to the southwest several times to collect background information for these books. He visited the Pueblo of San Ildefonso in Santa Fe and met with representatives of the settlement to learn about the languages and customs unique to their members. (He was so enamored of the area that he began planning to move his family out west, but since his office was in New Jersey, it wasn’t a practical option at the time.)
Next up, the Hollisters head north to Canada by train to visit Gram and Gramp Hollister in The Happy Hollisters at Snowflake Camp. The Hollister grandparents live in Froston, also a fictional town, but Gram Hollister was modeled on Svenson’s mother, who was of French-Canadian descent.
By the time the sixth volume was published in late 1954, Svenson had already begun to receive fan mail from young readers who couldn’t get enough of the adventures. He noticed that many of them wrote that the stories seemed so real that they felt they were solving the mysteries alongside the Hollister children. They began suggesting locations for new mysteries, from Long Island to New Zealand.
Svenson jumped at the opportunity to start researching new locales. He loved to travel, and sometimes brought his wife or children along. Many of the trips served a dual purpose. At the same time Svenson was writing The Happy Hollisters, he was also writing for The Hardy Boys as Franklin W. Dixon, and many of the places he visited provided locations/background details for both series.
In the remaining 27 books in the series, the Hollister family crisscrosses the map with brief stops back in Shoreham. In some cases, the destinations are given fictional names, as in The Sea Turtle Mystery, which replaces the real locations of Sanibel and Captiva Islands in Florida with fictional “Santabella” and “Captive Island.”
The concentration is on fun in all of these books, but the educational bits play a supporting role. If you have a child who wants to start a coin collection, The Secret of the Lucky Coins has just enough information to kickstart a budding numismatist. Or if your child will be studying Maya culture in school, The Mystery of the Mexican Idol just might spur them into a trip to the library for additional information on the basics presented in the story. Maybe your child just wants to solve mysteries alongside the Happy Hollisters; in addition to the themed mysteries in each volume, your young reader might want to look for clues about where Shoreham really is, for example, based on random, possibly unintentional, clues that Andrew Svenson left in the books. An overnight train ride is necessary to get from the Hollisters’ home to their grandparents’ home in Quebec. A curious reader might want to look at a map and old train schedules to determine where Shoreham could be located.
“I try to tell stories which children can learn something from. And by doing it in an entertaining way, it makes everything fun, for them and for me.”
Thanks to Andrew Svenson’s interest in adding educational teasers to his stories and the amount of time that has passed since the books were first written, teaching moments and topics for further discussion abound in all of the books. Here are some possible topics for engaging your child’s imagination and powers of reasoning:
- How is the Hollisters’ lifestyle different from yours?
- What did you learn about different customs or culture?
- How has [location of book] changed since the book was originally written?
- What new words did you learn from reading this book?
- If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?
- How is [location] different from where you live?
- How would someone from a different country describe where you live?
- What is a current event that would make a good mystery?
The stories may be read in any order to suit your child’s interests or school unit studies. Where will you go?
Shoreham & Vicinity:
The Happy Hollisters
The Happy Hollisters on a River Trip
The Happy Hollisters and the Trading Post Mystery
The Happy Hollisters and the Secret Fort
The Happy Hollisters and the Merry-Go-Round Mystery
The Happy Hollisters at Pony Hill Farm (with foray to the “southern states”)
The Happy Hollisters and the Scarecrow Mystery (with camping trip in nearby forest)
The Happy Hollisters and the Haunted House Mystery
The Happy Hollisters and the Secret of the Lucky Coins (with visit to Crestwood)
The Happy Hollisters and the Castle Rock Mystery (with “field trip” to New York City)
The Happy Hollisters and the Mystery of the Golden Witch
The Happy Hollisters and the Monster Mystery
Florida:
The Happy Hollisters at Circus Island (Sarasota)
The Happy Hollisters and the Mystery at Missile Town (Cape Canaveral)
The Happy Hollisters and the Sea Turtle Mystery (Everglades)
U.S. Other Locations:
The Happy Hollisters at Sea Gull Beach (Cape Cod)
The Happy Hollisters and the Indian Treasure (New Mexico)
The Happy Hollisters at Mystery Mountain (New Mexico)
The Happy Hollisters and the Old Clipper Ship (Boston)
The Happy Hollisters and the Mystery of the Totem Faces (Alaska)
The Happy Hollisters and the Mystery in Skyscraper City (New York City)
The Happy Hollisters and the Cowboy Mystery (Nevada)
The Happy Hollisters and the Whistle-Pig Mystery (New England)
The Happy Hollisters and the Ghost Horse Mystery (New England)
Canada:
The Happy Hollisters at Snowflake Camp
The Happy Hollisters and the Ice Carnival Mystery
The Happy Hollisters and the Mystery of the Midnight Trolls (also Iceland)
Europe:
The Happy Hollisters and the Mystery of the Little Mermaid (Denmark)
The Happy Hollisters and the Cuckoo Clock Mystery (Germany)
The Happy Hollisters and the Swiss Echo Mystery (Switzerland)
The Happy Hollisters and the Punch and Judy Mystery (Italy)
The Happy Hollisters and the Mystery of the Mexican Idol (Mexico)
Other Locations:
The Happy Hollisters at Lizard Cove (Puerto Rico)
The Happy Hollisters and the Mystery of the Midnight Trolls (Iceland and Canada)
The projects shown here were made by young Happy Hollisters fans (left: Malachi D. and right: Bailey L.), and they were kind enough to share them with us. Please let us know how you use The Happy Hollisters by Jerry West in your school or classroom! We’d love to see projects that your child makes based on the stories.
Sources:
Andrew Svenson Archives of The Hollister Family Properties Trust