People Were Apparently Reading ‘Welcome Back, Kotter’ Novelizations in the ‘70s

Ken Jennings has brought us many things: the secrets to Jeopardy!, an increasingly confusing series of patterned suits, and now, awareness of the existence of a series of Welcome Back, Kotter paperback novelizations. On August 4th, he posted on Bluesky, “Once again the book club is furious at me, but it was my month to choose,” accompanied by an image of the cover of The Sweathog Newshawks, the second in a series of six novels produced in 1976 and 1977 by prolific novelizer William Johnston, whose other works include series based on popular TV shows like Happy Days and The Brady Bunch but also Tom and Jerry and the 1978 Martin Luther King, Jr. biographical miniseries King. Not a biography of Dr. King, the novelization of a biography. It’s enough to distract you from the fact that people were reading Tom and Jerry books.

All things considered, possibly the most surprising thing about the Welcome Back, Kotter series of tie-in novels is that they… kinda sound good? Who wouldn’t love to see the Sweathogs participate in local politics, as they do in the first installment, The Sweathog Trail, or band together to save Epstein from sleepless nights fending off angry tenants as substitute superintendent of his uncle’s apartment building in The Super Sweathogs, book number three? Why weren’t these just regular episodes? That last one has a haunted elevator. If you have any doubt about the answer to the question, “Were there enough ghosts in Welcome Back, Kotter?” you’re lying to yourself.

Unfortunately, just as on the series, things start to really peter out at the end. The last two novels, The Sweathog Sit-in and Barbarino Drops Out, are bizarre rehashes of events that already occurred on the screen. In the Season One episode “The Sit-in,” the boys protest the unacceptable food offered by the cafeteria, but two years later, they’re holding another sit-in, this time to save the school, fried liver and all. Vinnie also briefly drops out of school in the Season One episode “Follow the Leader” as a response to Freddie ousting him from his position as leader of the Sweathogs, not, as Barbarino Drops Out details, in pursuit of “fame, fortune, groupies and honeydew melon.”

It’s unclear how well these novels sold, but they ended a good two years before the series did, portending harsh realities the inhabitants of James Buchanan High School couldn’t conceive of at the height of their success. At least it leaves us with something audiences weren’t exactly clamoring for at the time but might be now: more episodes of Welcome Back, Kotter, even if you have to read them.