Adventure series Readathon

[leanne_maybe]

I know this readathon is long over, but I have just done my own readathon of the Adventure Series from beginning to end, so thought I would add my impressions!
I think that I'm in the minority here in that I don't actually rate the Adventure series as any higher
than the FF or FFO series - I think they are equally good but not better. Just personal preference I guess. I think that the characters are slightly more interchangeable some ways than in the FF - or less defined roles is what I mean. In some ways Philip and Dinah are slightly harder in attitude than Jack and Lucy Anne, but Jack and Philip seem to take it turns to take the lead, and where the girls do things, they also seem to take it in turns to be brave. In some ways that makes it more realistic as people do often take different roles at different times. Another thing I enjoy is the development,epecially of the girls' role - I enjoyed the early books but didn't like the girls being left out so much, but this changed through the series.
I liked all the different and exotic settings, which as others have said, made this series a bit different from the others. Rereading these as an adult I found I was very uncomfortable with the jingoism and racial stereotypes in this series - it struck me more in this series than others, but I suppose that is because the settings are more exotic so there are more encounters with other cultures.

[leanne_maybe]

In terms of order of preference of the books, I think I would say:-
1. Valley
2. Island
3. Castle/Sea
4. Ship
5. Circus/Mountain
6. River

I really enjoyed Valley, it was so atmospheric and creepy. I too reading it as a children felt that the elderly couple had been there for decades! I rather wish we had met Julius though - he is stated at the end to be a 'good sort' but actually he knew the old couple were still there, so in my view he has been rather slow in getting the valley open again! I also wondered why the children were so sure that the men were baddies from so early on - this justified their stealing food from them, but actually the only evidence they had that the men were enemies were the men's 'thick necks'! Still I enjoyed it.
Island is a great opener to the series - I didn't find it slow as we saw the relationship between the children form and then explore the wonderful setting of Craggy Top! And the ending was an absolute nail biter - one of the best endings of the whole series and certainly some of the most threatening baddies. I've said on another thread how the children seemed quite happy to ignore the orders of Jojo re his boat in order obey the orders of Bill - obviously poor black servants don't need to be considered as much!
Castle I would say again is creepy and exciting - the set up is convincing, Jack staying in the castle to spot the eagles. Lovely description of the eagles too. The suits of armour idea is inspired! I always like the bits when the childlike imagination comes through too - the children are so sensible and capable, but then you get just little bits where they believe for a minute that the suits of armour have really come alive!
I also enjoyed Sea, especially Huffin and Puffin, although it is strange that Bill wants to take them away when he is so much danger himself - it does rather smack of using them as a smokescreen. But the conversation at the end when he realises they came back for him is lovely. I was a little chilled by their treatment of poor Horace - I think as someone else said earlier that it seems justified from the children's point of view, but the audience is given more of an idea that he may not be an enemy so is more sinister for the reader. It definitely reminded me of Lost as a very similar dilemma occurs in that!
Tbc!

[Chrissie777]

I know this readathon is long over, but I have just done my own readathon of the Adventure Series from beginning to end, so thought I would add my impressions!

Hi Leanne, I think it's a great idea to revive old readathons or other EBS book discussions even if they are "closed", but usually other members notice the thread being opened again and some people usually comment, too. When I joined EBS last year in March, I did just the same. I searched the forums for interesting readathons of my favorite EB books (Adventure series and Famous Five series).
And now I'm looking forward to read your reviews.

[Moonraker]

I think it's a great idea to revive old readathons or other EBS book discussions even if they are "closed".....

Topics don't close (usually), they just nod off for a year or two - just waiting for someone to awaken them!

[ledzep93]

I've just blasted my way through Island of Adventure in two days, fab read! I think it's got all of Enid's strongest characteristics and she plays them at her best, a great read throughout, and I loved the Indiana Jones-esque ending!

[Daisy]

..... and I loved the Indiana Jones-esque ending!

Well I've never heard it described like that before - but it is a jolly good read and a great introduction to a great series.

[Lucky Star]

I suppose there is an element of Indiana Jones to the ending. The suspense, the danger of death, the heroic efforts of Bill to save himself and his two young charges..... I think we can certainly say that Enid foretold the coming of Indiana Jones and the birth of Harrison Ford in this book.

[Daisy]

II think we can certainly say that Enid foretold the coming of Indiana Jones and the birth of Harrison Ford in this book.

-is that smiley the nearest to a groan, I wonder?

[Lucky Star]

is that smiley the nearest to a groan, I wonder?

Yes.

[Poppy]

I have recently read The Mountain of Adventure and am currently enjoying The Sea of Adventure. It is a tremendously thrilling series with wonderful characters, genius plots and a brilliant variety of locations.

[pete9012S]

I too am currently reading the Sea Of Adventure.I'm just at the bit were Bill has been taken and the storm is just about to break and whooooosh the tents away!!!

[Llywela]

Hello, I hope no one minds me reviving this very old thread. I've lurked on this forum for a while, just out of casual interest, but this last week while off work with a nasty flu-bug, I was hit with a fit of nostalgia and dug out and read the entire Adventure series, which I vaguely remembered as a childhood favourite. Then I came here and found this old thread and spent some time reading through the entire thing!

I've noticed throughout the thread people wondering if someone like Philip could be real. Well, his powers are exaggerated for dramatic effect, sure - taming a hunting pack of Alsations and soothing fractious bears - but as a child Philip was always my favourite because he reminded me so much of my brother (whose middle name, coincidentally, is also Philip). My brother has a way with animals. There's no other way to describe it. In caterpillar season, we never made it home from school without his pockets filling up with caterpillars, which he always loved and cared for and provided exactly the right leaves. There was one baking hot summer when he was about 4-years-old when our mum took us to the local Lido only to find it unusable because a wasp nest had hatched out nearby and the wasps were going into the water and stinging the children as they drowned. My 4-year-old brother started running in and out of the water scooping up handfuls of wasps and bringing them to dry land, trying to save them. He wasn't stung once. Even today - and he's nearly 40 now - if there's a wasp or bee in the house he will capture it with bare hands and carry it outside, talking very softly to it the whole time (that soft, special voice of Philip's, see, always seemed real to me because I'd heard my brother doing the same when he did his bee-charming). He has never been stung in his life. If we played on the nearby railway embankment as children, my brother would inevitably find a field mouse or even a dormouse willing to let him pick it up and play with it. He just...had that kind of affinity with living creatures (just with less opportunity for indulging it than Philip, as a city-boy). And still does. He'd far rather spend time with an animal than a human!

We also used to keep sloworms in an old fish tank in the garden that served as a hospital when our cats brought them home wounded, and at least one of these rescued creatures gave birth during its recovery, so I always knew exactly what Enid Blyton meant about the babies being like silvery darning needles!

I was especially interested to read everyone's comments about Mountain of Adventure, seeing as I've lived in Wales all my life. Especially seeing so many comments about it being either interesting or annoying to have so many 'Welsh' words dotted through the text. Now, I read this book only the other day, and I've got to say, I don't recall reading a single word of actual Welsh! Plenty of idioms Enid Blyton evidently felt sounded Welsh (or thought her child readers would take as Welsh), but no actual Welsh. Someone way back in the thread felt that 'look you' and 'whateffer' were South Welsh expressions, but I'm a South Walian born and bred and have never heard either except in this book! She's got some of the sentence constructions right, though - like when Mrs Evans says 'it is a big ham I must give you to take back', yep, that is pretty much how a Welsh speaker might construct such a sentence. I was also struck by Jack's comment about the map looking bare and assuming it was because the area was so remote it had never been properly explored. Bless the boy, Wales really isn't that big! I liked the detail thrown in at the end that the place they were trying to get to was clearly marked on the map after all, but in Welsh - which never occurred to the children at all (not that they'd have been able to read it if they did think of it). Someone commented way back about the superior attitude they take to all non-English speakers, and that is very apparent in this story - and again in Ship and River, where they laugh at the stupidity of characters like Tala and Oola when they struggle to communicate in what to them is a foreign language. Ditto David in Mountain, whose simplicity is presumed purely because he doesn't speak English and therefore can't communicate - a very sore point for any Welsh person because it was that exact attitude that saw concerted efforts made to stamp out the Welsh language a century or two earlier, with English teachers appointed to teach monoglot Welsh children, who were then punished severely for speaking their native tongue and mocked as stupid for not comprehending lessons delivered in a foreign language.

But to get back to the book, the existence of the Evans' and Trefor does soften the blow of David's uselessness, as it is clear that David's weakness is personality rather than nationality, given that they are all shown to be perfectly lovely and competent (if prone to speaking in improbable idioms!)

As far as Mrs Evans calling her husband 'Effans' goes, I'd imagine that Enid Blyton had at some point seen a Welsh person spelling their name as Efans and presumed that was how it was pronounced, not realising that in Welsh the letter 'f' is pronounced like 'v' in English. Now, would a farmer's wife in remote rural Wales really call her husband by his surname only? I can't see it somehow. If his first name were Efan (pronounced Evan), that would be plausible enough - that kind of naming pattern is common in Wales (Evan Evans, William Williams, David Davies, John Jones, etc). But the 's' at the end makes a surname of it, not a forename. So - confusion on Enid's part, we must presume!

This was the first time I'd read the books in about 30 years - such a different experience, coming back to them as an adult. There's a real sense of progression through the books, which I'm not sure I'd ever been consciously aware of as a child, and they are definitely pitched slightly older than the other Blyton's I've re-read in recent years. In comparison, when I picked up the first few of the Secret series after finishing this one, I was startled to find how very young those books were pitched, something I hadn't really realised or remembered from childhood at all - I only remembered that the Adventures were the favourite.

[Moonraker]

An interesting post, Llywela.

How many of us turn to a Blyton when feeling unwell! I remember reading many Blyton's under such circumstances. I knew a boy when at junior school who could charm animals. I remember him having a lizard in his pocket as well, so such children do exist!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Very interesting, Llywela. I always welcome the revival of an "Adventure" thread!

How lovely that your brother was/is like Philip. As a child, I was envious of Philip's affinity with animals and the fact that he even had the opportunity to get close to bears, a monkey and puffins as well as the more ordinary dogs, mice and slow-worms.

Good points about the portrayal of Wales and the confusion over "Effans". I grew up in North Wales and I agree that the sentence "...it is a big ham I must give you to take back" is pretty much how a Welsh speaker might phrase it.

This was the first time I'd read the books in about 30 years - such a different experience, coming back to them as an adult. There's a real sense of progression through the books, which I'm not sure I'd ever been consciously aware of as a child, and they are definitely pitched slightly older than the other Blyton's I've re-read in recent years. In comparison, when I picked up the first few of the Secret series after finishing this one, I was startled to find how very young those books were pitched, something I hadn't really realised or remembered from childhood at all - I only remembered that the Adventures were the favourite.

Yes, the Adventure series does seem to be pitched older even though several of the Secret adventures are also dramatic and dangerous and involve going abroad. I think it's not only the style of writing that makes a difference, but the illustrations. The Secret books were illustrated by an assortment of artists, most of whom tended to make the children look on the young side, whereas Stuart Tresilian's artwork for the Adventure books captured the maturity of the children and the gravity of events.

[timv]

Regarding the interesting post from Llywela, I can add that I'm half-Welsh (South Walian) and have lived in Wales for part of my life and have Welsh relatives - rural, like the Evanses at the farm in Mountain of Adventure, though from a village not a farm . My first reaction to 'Mountain of Adventure' as a child was mild annoyance at the stereotyping of the language, especially 'look you' which is supposed to be Welsh idiom but which I have never heard anyone in Wales say. (Did Shakespeare first popularise this with his 'Fluellen' in 'Henry V' ?)I have heard 'whateffer', but only occasionally. But the general idiom, the verbal rambling of excited chatter, and the unusual sentence construction is however fairly accurate, and I wonder if Enid had heard it on holiday in Wales and reproduced it. There is a similar reproduction of this in the scenes set at the Welsh coastal inn/ hotel in 'The Ragamuffin Mystery' with Mrs Jones and her mother chattering away and bemusing the English visitors; this may also be set in North Wales, possibly around Criccieth. (Cf the rambling and involved conversations among the Barry Island characters in 'Gavin and Stacey' for a modern equivalent on TV, partly written by local Ruth Jones from Bridgend in Mid Glamorgan?) I do find 'David' to be a bit annoying, but the point is that he is not very bright or experienced and is easily startled rather than that he is a stereotyped 'local'. Enid needed a 'guide' who would get lost and run away from the 'wolves' for plot purposes, though it is a bit surprising that the farmer would not find someone who had better geographical knowledge of the route!
Regarding the question of 'pitching' the series at an older age-group: the danger is more widespread than that in the 'Secret' series, and more immediate - ie people being shot at rather than a distant threat of human sacrifice (or for that matter radiation leaking out of the secret mine in ' The Secret of Moon Castle'). But I think the 'grown up' Tresilian illustrations are a major part of this; the 'Secret' series first edition illustrations are of younger children and are done in a more 'childish' way, particularly in 'Moon Castle'. They are more in line with the Willow Farm series; Tresilian's approach is more like Eileen Soper's.

I have heard that Enid was apparently related to a Glamorgan character, 'Willy Blyton', who lived in a village outside Bridgend in the 1930s-40s, a few miles from my relatives. He was said to be her uncle but I have not found him on the Blyton family tree; the connection may have bene more remote. I have no idea if this was accurate or if she had any contact with him, but my mother (who had corresponded with Enid) seemed to think it true .