Danny Dunn and the Universal Glue, by Jay Williams

Danny, Irene, and Joe discover that their local river suddenly tastes like lemonade and, with the help of Mrs. Dunn, an environmental activist, search for the source of the pollution. Meanwhile, Professor Bulstrode accidentally invents a substance that can glue anything - even water.

The plotting is interesting in that it's awkward in one sense and very apt in another. The pollution turns out to be a solvent for cement, causing cracks in the dam which can only be fixed in time with the universal glue. So while it feels a bit pat for the discovery of the book to just happen to be the one thing that can fix an unrelated problem, I also enjoy the neatness of the problem being a solvent and the solution being a glue.

The owner of the polluting factory turns out to be capable of admitting that he's wrong and trying to do better, which is definitely the least realistic part of the entire book.

This one is entertaining but in the lower rank of Danny Dunn books.

The Danny Dunn books are now mostly available on Kindle, but this is one of the exceptions.

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