|
I've been trying to figure this one out for a loooong time. It's a series of kids books, I don't really remember what reading age, probably quite young. I'll try to recap it the way I remember it, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if I am possibly combining two different books here. There's two or three kids, they might be siblings or possibly just friends. One day they see a peculiar old lady in a park. She was really short, with a hat with a feather that reached almost to the ground, and was teetering along on high heeled boots. She gets one of her heels caught in a sewer grating, and the kids help her out. She turns out to be really friendly, and after some conversation with the kids, she says she wants to give them a gift for being so nice. She gives them an old chemistry set that she says was her son's when he was a child, but says she can't find the directions that outlined all the experiments you could perform with the various chemicals. She says she remembers some of the formulas however, and she writes one of them down for the kids. When the kids go home and try the experiment, crazy things happen. I don't remember what exactly, but if I recall correctly, it was a series of books (or I suppose it could have been a bunch of chapters in one long book, but I rather think it was separate books), and each one involves the old lady giving the kids some new thing that they can do with the chemistry set, things going crazy, and them usually needing to go find the lady again to make things right. I also feel like as the stories went on the things that would happen from the chemistry set got more and more strange and "magical", and I think that in a later book they decide that the old woman is actually a witch. (but like, a good witch). One of the strange things about my memory of these books is I swear that one of the books as a plot very similar to the movie "The Peanut Butter Solution" - which is a movie that I have never seen, only heard about. I think the book had an experiment turning one of the kids' hair a weird color, then in trying to fix it they went bald, then in trying to fix that they ended up with runaway hair growth. When someone first told me about the movie, I remember thinking that I'd already read the book, but when I look it up, it doesn't seem to be based on a book at all.
|
#
¿
Feb 24, 2008 18:19
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 6, 2024 17:10 |
|
|
You've got to be kidding me I am extremely grateful, but simultaneously overwhelmed with shame. I guess I just never searched for that particular (immensely obvious) query.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 25, 2008 17:09
|
|