The Island of Adventure

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Originally, the series was supposed to end after this episode, but under the great demand of dedicated fans, Blyton wrote two more episodes: Bill Cunningham: An important member (holding the rank of inspector) of an unspecified secret service force (possibly based upon the British Secret Intelligence Service). His most prominent bodily feature is his half-bald head. He meets the children upon their very first adventure and makes regular appearances in the series from that point on. Mostly the children get tangled up in adventures which are connected with Bill's work at the time and end up solving them for him.

Blyton was a prolific author of children's books, who penned an estimated 800 books over about 40 years. Her stories were often either children's adventure and mystery stories, or fantasies involving magic. Notable series include: The Famous Five, The Secret Seven, The Five Find-Outers, Noddy, The Wishing Chair, Mallory Towers, and St. Clare's.This time I read them in German and in English and compare them chapter for chapter to find the differences in the German translation. I got the boxed set for Christmas when I was 40, I read them again. Again when I was 50 and yes, I'll read them again someday. Recovering from a very bad flu, the four children and their family make a river trip in the Middle East. But there is another reason for this choice of destination: Bill has been asked to watch a crook named Raya Uma. The children soon find another adventure revolving around a magnificent buried city filled with treasure beyond imagination. I was very pleasantly surprised, on re-reading The Island of Adventure. Yes, the plot is thin, and the characters, while well-sketched, still essentially simplistic. But it's fun - who does't love a good secret tunnel? In particular, it's rather better written than I was expecting, and better than it needed to be, with surprising depth and sympathy even in peripheral characters: I can see why this felt real to me in a way that more overtly childish books did not. While the prose, and in particular the dialogue, are inevitably dated, they're more 'pleasantly old-fashioned' than 'incomprehensible' or 'ridiculous'. And then there's the casual racism. There's some genuine room for debate on Blyton's intentions in this regard; by the end, much of what seems at first to be casual racism from Blyton is revealed to have been Blyton's assumption of, and attempting manipulation of, the reader's own casual racism; and so I'd be reluctant to start burning effigies purely on the evidence of this book.

But sometimes, it can be a unexpected pleasure. You know it won't live up to your memories, and so your expectations can be low, and easily surpassed. According to the Index Translationum, Blyton was the fifth most popular author in the world in 2007, coming after Lenin but ahead of Shakespeare. Dinah Mannering: Philip's younger sister of about twelve at the beginning of the series. Like her brother, she has a tuft of hair standing up atop her head, but she shares neither his gift in attracting, nor his love for, animals, especially the small creeping types (mice, insects, snakes etc.). Temperamental as she is, she often finds herself the target of her brother's teasing, but otherwise she is quite level-headed, tough, intelligent and grown-up for her age. I have to admit that Enid Blyton is one of my guilty pleasures in-between reading novels, (auto)biographies and non-fiction books on WW II.

My favorites are "Castle of Adventure", "Valley of Adventure" (her masterpiece), "Sea of Adventure" and "Circus of Adventure". The Island of Adventure (published in 1944) is a popular children's book by Enid Blyton. It is the first book in the Adventure Series. The first edition was illustrated by Stuart Tresilian.