I was chatting with some folks on a blog today and we got to reminiscing about various YA book series from the past (Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Tom Swift, etc.) These all came from the Stratemeyer Syndicate (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratemeyer_Syndicate). One fellow asked, “What if that syndicate had been around in the colonial era, and had been producing a series to those standards for the entire time?” That got me to thinking about a book called, “The Chronicles of Young Thomas Swift, Assistant to Benjamin Franklin and Accomplished Inventor in His Own Right.”
I'm not in a position (for time and priorities) to try to write this myself, but I'd be happy to throw some ideas to anyone who might be interested in taking the idea and running with it. Some thoughts:
http://jalopnik.com/5923086/the-usa-could-have-had-a-tank-to-fight-the-revolutionary-warhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_air_riflehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Steam_CarriageAnd maybe involvement in some other period events, for example, the underground railway during the 1850s, westward wagon trains during the 1830s-40s, telegraphs, the pony express, railroad expansion, etc. But I’d still like to see a Tom Swift analog (Bartholomew Fleet, since Tom Swift is probably copyrighted?) attached to Ben Franklin as a mentor…
