Image and book information courtesy of James D. Keeline

One of the little-known facts about the Tom Swift Jr. series is the fact that it spawned its own activity book. This activity book, which was created by Tony Tallarico in 1978, is quite hard to find; in fact, mint copies of this book usually commands prices of $60 or more.

Why is a mere activity book so highly valued? Well, I think that there are two reasons. First, very few copies of this book were published -- the Tom Swift series was nearly dead, and somehow the activity book just wasn't selling well. Second, if people mailed the cover -- yes, just the cover -- of this activity book to the publisher, people could get a rebate on other series. books. This policy, as one might imagine, resulted in the destruction of a large number of copies of this book.

I don't know very much about this activity book, and since I don't own one I can't provide you with a lot of detailed information. However, James D. Keeline was kind enough to provide me with a little information, which I'm posting here: