My mother started the book club for me around 1967. Right away I loved the books, the family, the kids, and the dynamics. Soon, all I wanted to do when I came home from school was read The Happy Hollisters, as opposed to doing my homework. So my mother started hiding the new books when they’d arrive. But I usually found them. Once the package was hidden in a cupboard beneath our telephone.
After the package containing books 20 and 21 arrived, she cancelled the book club. I was extremely disappointed, and to this day I wonder which two stories would’ve arrived next. Over twenty years later, in 1993, I found a children’s book store in San Diego that had the twelve volumes I’d never received. I happily ordered them over the phone.
The books I received through the club were on the “wheel” system, so they didn’t arrive in the order they were written. For example, “Swiss Echo” arrived in the first twenty-one volumes I received, but “Cuckoo Clock” didn’t. The twelve volumes I didn’t get until 1993 were: Cuckoo Clock, River Trip, Trading Post, Pony Hill Farm, Totem Faces, Lizard Cove, Skyscraper City, Cowboy Mystery, Scarecrow Mystery, Merry-Go-Round, Monster Mystery, and Midnight Trolls. I still have all thirty-three.
A line I recently read from the blog “Come Along for the Ride: From Shoreham to Sea Gull Beach to Switzerland with The Happy Hollisters!” really hit home — “…young readers might not even realize how much they are learning about the world…” In 1976, when I was 19, I was watching a slideshow on Mérida, Yucatán. As I listened, I remembered many places from HH’s Mexican Idol, wondering how much of what I’d read would be true. All of it was — Chichen Itza’s Temple of Kukulcan and its 365 steps, the ball court, etc. Just one example of how I didn’t realize how much I was learning about the world.
I once asked my mother why she cancelled the book club. I’d loved it so much. She said, “I started it because I wanted you to learn to be nice, like those Hollister kids. And you didn’t get any nicer, so I stopped it.” I won’t dwell on that. Most people told me I was very nice when I was young, and still do.
In a sense, this is a long overdue letter to Andrew Svenson. When I saw his picture on the “Come along for the ride” blog I pictured this: >…< For me, the “>” represents his world; his research and gathering ideas, and then pouring them from his heart onto the pages. The “…” is the time between his writing and each book falling into a reader’s hands. The “<” is a new world opening up in each reader, as they took in Mr. Andrew’s words.
I was one of them and I’m still grateful, sixty years later.
Submitted by Joe P.
Los Angeles, California
August 2026