Originally, the series was supposed to end after this episode, but under the great demand of dedicated fans, Blyton wrote two more episodes: 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 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'. Following the events in The Ship of Adventure, Bill marries Mrs Mannering and adopts all the children as his own. The children call him Bill Smugs due to the fact that he introduced himself under that alias on their first adventure. When Bill buys a plane, he decides to take the four children for a holiday, but events at the airport lead to the four getting into the wrong plane. When the plane lands they find themselves in an unfamiliar valley scarred by war and, once again, the four children fall into an adventure involving a lost treasure sought by a band of villains. A film based on the book was released in the United Kingdom in 1982. It was directed by Anthony Squire and stars Norman Bowler as Bill, Wilfrid Brambell as Uncle Jocelyn and Eleanor Summerfield as Aunt Polly. [1] There was also a New Zealand television series, in which the first episode is based on The Island of Adventure.According to the Index Translationum, Blyton was the fifth most popular author in the world in 2007, coming after Lenin but ahead of Shakespeare. Thanks to a German friend at elementary school I discovered Enid Blyton's Adventure series and Famous Five series in the fall of 1965 and reread them from time to time even now in my sixties.

I know I'm dating myself here, but kids haven't changed much. Dinners (and breakfast and lunch) are immensely important to the young, and one of the key moments in all the Adventure books always concerns them stumbling over a cache of tinned foods that will (phew!) tide them over until help comes. It can be hard, re-reading childhood favourites (or, in this case, moderately well-liked introductions to series that contain favourites). They never live up to your memories.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. Fortunately I have old versions of these books in German and in English (I bought all 8 books in English on my first trip to the UK in 1981 at Foyle's in London). Later versions were often modernized to make them politically correct (which I hate as that's not what I remember reading when I was a child). 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.

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. 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.

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. 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.