The Enid Blyton Society

IceMaiden wrote:Perhaps Enid got the inspiration for this story from Grimms fairy tales!

IceMaiden, it reminded me of Haensel and Gretel.

That's it! I knew it reminded me of one of them but it wouldn't come to mind which! I'm really enjoying it, it's so different yet at the same time has all the same familiar ingredients of an EB book. Must admit, when I got to the chapter with them finding the caves, I fully expected them to find a passage that came out under the floor in one of Jack's grandfather's sheds and a hidden pile of treasure in an one of the caves .

No, IceMaiden, I believe that EB was not yet writing about secret passages in 1938 when "The Secret Island" was published.
You might also enjoy "Hollow Tree House" which also reminded me a bit of Grimm's fairy tales.

Chrissie777 wrote:No, IceMaiden, I believe that EB was not yet writing about secret passages in 1938 when "The Secret Island" was published.

There was a secret passage (behind wooden panelling) in Enid's first 'holiday adventure' book 'The Wonderful Adventure' - 1927.

Just to be fair to Chrissie,until The Wonderful Adventure came to light I think we would have plumped for one of Enid's later books - unless there is another early example, perhaps a short story?

Rob Houghton wrote:There was a secret passage (behind wooden panelling) in Enid's first 'holiday adventure' book 'The Wonderful Adventure' - 1927.

Thank you, Rob. Even though I bought this book a few years ago from EBS and read it twice, I forgot.

Question: does any EB expert now WHICH particular castle gave EB her inspiration to use underground passages in so many of her suspenseful books?
Or was that just a common thing in novels of the 1920, 1930's and 1940's (like in Norman Dale's adventure books)?

pete9012S wrote:Just to be fair to Chrissie,until The Wonderful Adventure came to light I think we would have plumped for one of Enid's later books - unless there is another early example, perhaps a short story?

Pete, since 2008 I'm trying to collect all of EB's suspenseful books with underground passages. Maybe I can start a new threat and ask all forum members which of EB's books contain underground passages. I might still miss a few.

Great idea for a thread, Chrissie! i'd be interested to see a list of books that all contain secret passages.

I finished "The Adventurous Four Again" and it was very delightful to read (with the underground passage and the underground river). But at the end of the book I was wondering: what hapened to Jill's, Mary's and Tom's father? Did he die in WW II? He was part of vol. 1, but is never mentioned in vol. 2 (I've read the English hardcover version from 1950).

Good point Chrissie. I wonder if he's mentioned in the Adventurous Four short story at all?

Perhaps he was still away fighting in the war? I think the book is meant to take place a year after 'The Adventurous Four'...so presumably it's still wartime?

I finished reading Five go off to camp last night.

At the start it seems that Jock might almost be like Ern or Sid (the newspaper boy in "Five Fall into Adventure") because of the way he speaks and acts. His reaction when Julian has just told him about the episode with Wooden-Leg Sam:

Jock listened, enthralled. 'Coo! I wish I'd been with you. Let's all go there together, shall we?' he said.
His eyes almost fell out of his head, and he went brick-red whenever they came to an exciting part.

Very "Ern-like" I think.

But a bit later, after Julian says that they'll take him with if they go looking for spook-trains, Jock replies: "That's wizard of you. Thanks most frightfully."

He suddenly sounds like one of them. He doesn't go back to sounding like Ern. He seems to be a fairly normal boy without any fantastic gifts or odd habits that these secondary characters often have.

I've finished Ring O' Bells Mystery and thought it was very good indeed. I said before it was an 'old favourite' but to be honest I only remembered certain aspects of it such as Red Riding Hood, Mother Hubbard, and the hundred year old man who talked fondly of his childhood and own grandfather. The plot was something of a mystery in itself to me. But there was talk of someone having drowned in the well, the kidnap victim expecting to be 'bumped off' or just left to die, and the woman villain callously telling her partners that if Barney fell from the tower, he would be killed and they wouldn't need to worry about him any more. Quite frankly, I never noticed before that Enid Blyton books could be so gritty!

There's also a reference to brunch which surprised me as I had always thought it was an Americanism from the 1980s!

Next up is ANOTHER old favourite, Five Have Plenty Of Fun!

I agree, Ring O’Bell is one of the best book written by EB.

Hello everyone. My greetings to the administrators, to the members of the forum and to their visitors. I live in Getxo (Spain). This is my first message, after overcoming some resistance, because I neither speak nor write correctly in English, having to help me through the Google translator. Like many others, I am a great admirer of Enid, who since childhood made me part of a wonderful world in which nature and animals, in addition to children, occupied a preferential place. My favorites are the Find-Outers, followed by the Adventure series and The Famous Five. However, I have also enjoyed reading Secret Seven, St. Clare, Malory Towers, Secret Series, The Barney Mysteries, The Adventurous Four, etc. Now, at 59, I still enjoy all of them.

At this moment I am rereading The Mystery of the Vanished Prince and I have observed a curious thing: although Enid makes the stories of Find Outers happen in the Easter, Summer and Christmas holidays (not in autumn), both the Mystery of the Invisible Thief (8º) as the Mystery of the Vanished Prince (9º), begin in summer, which seems an involuntary forgetfulness of Enid. Greetings.