Memoriam: George Kell

George Kell, a former third baseman who played for, among other teams, the Detroit Tigers from 1947 to 1952, has died. He was 86.

Shortly after arriving in New Zebedee in 1948, Lewis and his uncle Jonathan discuss Tiger baseball and whether Lewis knows Kell’s batting average that year.

The Runaway Star

The Richard Curtis Agency has negotiated with Lyron Bennett of Sourcebooks Jabberwocky for The Runaway Star, a children’s science fiction series, by Brad Strickland.

Time Capsule: March 8, 1959

March 8, 1959: Tonight’s the night John Bellairs made his television debut – live from Washington D.C. Fifty years ago tonight Bellairs, along with three other students, represented Notre Dame on the G.E. College Bowl program. In a battle of the wits with Georgetown University, these other Four Horsemen from Notre Dame buzzed in their answers but it was Bellairs who made the night memorable.

The Curse of the Blue Figurine Chronology (Part I)

Several years ago, probably as we were putting The Dullard’s Bane version of this website to pasture, I got the wild idea to go through the Johnny Dixon series and identify all the passages of time. When Bellairs noted the date, or a day or week or month passed, I scribbled down the particulars. Part of this was to gauge just how much of Johnny’s life was crammed into the “early 1950s” – the generic setting Bellairs used, and Strickland inherited. Also, if the events had happened chronologically, what year would it have been by the end of The Wrath of the Grinning Ghost? A case of too much time on someone’s hands? Maybe. Anyway, here’s when the initial chapters of The Curse of the Blue Figurine occurred: