YMMV / The Great Brain

• Complete Monster: Cal Roberts, from Me and My Little Brain, is the murderous head of a gang of cattle rustlers infamous for never leaving a witness at the scene of his crimes. After a killing spree that ended in his arrest due to accidentally leaving a man alive, he vowed to break out of prison and murder the judge, prosecutor, and foreman of the jury who oversaw his trial. After he and his men break out of prison and kill two guards in the process, Cal and his posse descend upon Adenville so he can make good on his threats. After his attempt to murder the judge through hanging fails and his attempt on the district attorney's life ends in a shootout that kills his posse, he hides in the barn belonging to protagonist J.D. Fitzgerald's father and takes his adopted four-year-old son Frankie hostage. Since J.D. and Frankie's father was the jury's foreman and his final target, he opts to make him suffer as opposed to killing him by planning to ride around town while holding Frankie at gunpoint so he can prove that he got one over on the men who bought him to justice. And despite promising leave Frankie unharmed, he truthfully planned on murdering the boy and ditching his corpse on his way to the Mexican border.
• Darker and Edgier: Each book has at least one story in it that involves danger or even death, usually in the middle chapters surrounded by more lighthearted childish hijinks.
  • Arguably the darkest book as a whole is the first book in the series, with chapters involving boys getting lost in a cave, the kids harassing an immigrant boy, a store-owner being allowed to starve to death, Tom getting a teacher fired for spanking him by planting false evidence of alcohol abuse, and a boy nearly driven to suicide after losing his leg in an accident.
• Tear Jerker: Quite a few, particularly one chapter wherein Frankie's toy horse is stolen. The culprit: a dirt farmer who couldn't afford one for his son. The boy is diabetic, which in those days was a death sentence. On learning the reason, Frankie just asks him to take good care of it. The boy died a year later.
  • The death of Abie Glassman, a Jewish shopkeeper, from starvation, a result of his struggling business and his pride not allowing him to ask for help. JD feels personally responsible because he would only go to Abie's to make small purchases, since the larger ZCMI Store offered free peppermint sticks with large orders.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: The Abie Glassman story arc in the first book, arguably the darkest storyline in the series, begins with Papa Fitzgerald talking Abie, a traveling Jewish peddler, into opening a variety store in Adenville when the latter is visiting the Fitzgeralds for Sunday dinner. Abie protests that he doesn't really have the money to open a brick-and-mortar store in a small town where he would be unable to make a living due to the Mormon church-owned store holding a monopoly on sundry goods, and implies that he would be subject to religious discrimination, but Papa dismisses his concerns, and more or less railroads Abie into speaking with the town banker and opening a store. Unfortunately, it turns out that Abie was exactly right in all of his objections, and Abie is eventually found in his store just before he dies of starvation, with no money. His disappearance isn't noticed until it is too late because nobody in Adenville except for Mamma Fitzgerald buys anything from his store. Tom later tells J.D. that he knew Abie was completely broke, but Abie had sworn him to secrecy out of fear that he would be victimized by religious discrimination and forced out of town if they knew he was broke.
• Values Dissonance: Seeing as how the books are set over a century ago this is bound to apply to any modern day reader. One particularly egregious example comes in the third book when JD delivers an intense spanking to his adoptive four year old brother Frankie. In the story the spanking ends up being cathartic for Frankie and it helps him to recover from the trauma of his parent's death. Most people today would realize that this is not the way to help a traumatized child.
  • Although Tom's attempting to get Mr. Standish fired for paddling him by framing Mr. Standish as an alcoholic is seen as one of Tom's worst acts, in most present-day schools in the United States, the use of corporal punishment in this manner would be grounds for dismissal and even legal action in many jurisdictions. However, although holding teachers to this kind of morality clause has largely faded over the years, there are still instances today of teachers being punished or harassed over moral outrages against their off-duty activities, such as parents petitioning for teachers who have done sex work (i.e. had OnlyFans or similar pages) fired.
  • Papa and Mama Fitzgerald employ the silent treatment (ignoring the offender to the point of pretending they don't exist unless they're committing another infraction of the rules) rather than the corporal punishment used by most Adenville parents. Ostensibly, they use the silent treatment because as the only parents in town with college educations, they consider corporal punishment barbaric. However, this kind of ostracism from a parent or romantic partner is considered to be a form of emotional abuse. The Fitzgerald parents tend to impose this punishment for a week at a time. JD himself notes in-series that it is a devastating punishment and that he would rather be spanked. When their first attempt to impose the silent treatment on Frankie for a string of repeated misbehaviors leads him to believe they no longer love him, he runs away and has to be brought home by a search party. It doesn't help that Frankie is still grieving over the loss of his biological family and is scared of being abandoned by his adoptive family. The Fitzgerald parents come to believe that the silent treatment is just as harmful as spanking, and from that point in the series, they typically punish the boys by taking away their allowances and imposing extra chores on them, especially as they see that the silent treatment hasn't really caused Tom to change his behavior.
  • The first book's handling of Andy's suicidal depression over his disability implies societal values about work and a person's worth that clash with a modern understanding of disability and value. JD's attempts to help Andy commit suicide early on in the story arc are also treated as one friend helping another, and somewhat played for laughs, which would likely never fly in a children's book today.
• Values Resonance: In the first book, after Tom stands up to Sammy Leeds when the latter is bullying Basil, Tom asks his father why Sammy is that way, and his father explains Sammy got his attitude from his father, who doesn't like immigrants. He goes on to point out to Tom everyone there came from immigrants except the Indians, a message which still resonates today.
  • The Fitzgerald family frequently expresses their disgust for the atrocities committed against Native Americans during the United States's westward expansion, from the broken treaties to then being forced to live on reservations where they are at the mercy of corrupt Bureau of Indian Affairs officials.
  • The original Fitzgerald family book "Papa Married a Mormon" deals directly with the issue of bigotry and conflict between mainstream Christians and Mormons, with Papa and Mama giving an example to all around them of how to live in harmony despite faith differences. It also goes into detail of how they deal with shared worship despite their different backgrounds and the relatively progressive way they raise their children, allowing them all to decide individually their faith. The Great Brain series, while mainly depicting the catholic faith, also does not treat the Mormon characters in town any differently than the rest of the cast, besides just noting a few differences in behavior, like that Mormons don't drink coffee or alcohol.
• The Woobie: JD can be one for the readers, since he's the Butt-Monkey of the series.
• Wangst: JD's almost constant self-deprecation of his Butt-Monkey status.