The Island of Adventure (The Adventure Series)

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Still, the fact that Bill asks them not to tell their aunt and uncle about him, and the way he puts his arms around the girls later does seem rather creepy. They can see the sinister Isle of Gloom from their window, covered in mist and harbouring strange secrets. I honestly didn’t know what I’d find, re-reading this novel for the first time in at least 15, if not 20 or more years. Joe (formerly Jo-Jo) picks them up at the station, and as with the 90s adaptation he is now a white man, however he is still foreign.Refreshingly, however, Blyton acknowledges just how nightmarish this all is, and there’s a definite edge of brittle trauma to many of the characters. Then it all gets rather silly and overblown as they throw in a high-speed boat chase where Bill is after Smith. Corners/edges rubbed, light readers creases to spine, pages slightly browned, no writing or scribble, else in Very Good Condition. Philip meets Jack and Lucy-Ann and Jack's pet bird Kiki, and after they sneak home with him, they move in with Philip, his sister Dinah and their Aunt Polly and Uncle Jocelyn at an ancient mansion at the coast. The boys are still sent to sleep in the tower room overlooking the Isle of Gloom – or just Gloom as they refer to it – and Joe warns them off the island.

We start off the book with two separate sets of children (not very happily) living with aunts and uncles.His sister Dinah finds this habit disgusting, and Philip loves to torment her by shoving a starfish in her face or letting his caterpillar crawl towards her. Boards with rubbing, creasing, edge and corner wear, marks, wear top and bottom of spine, discolouration. Condition: This book is in good condition for its age other than some minor signs of wear, discolouration, sticker on endpaper. I read somewhere that the publisher of this recent edition changed the color of the rock on the Isle of Gloom from red to green. They manage to add back in the Trents being unwelcome as Mrs Mannering spoke to Uncle Jocelyn who said the children could come, but didn’t tell Aunt Polly.

Then we’re back to following the book as Bill and Philip go down the well to Jack’s rescue and get caught. Philip finds a boat and climbs in, only for a man in a wetsuit to come up from the water behind and get him in a chokehold. The text is clean and bright and Includes iconic black and white illustrations by the prolific and celebrated children s book illustrator, Stuart Tresilian. I forgot how I used to read quickly to find out what was going to happen next, and this hasn’t changed.I’m not in general a fan of censoring old books to match modern morality – and of course there’s also arguments to be made about the value of having memorable black characters with agency, in a book series that’s otherwise as vanilla white as you’d expect from the author’s location in space and time. During school holidays, Jack, his sister Lucy-Ann, and their parrot Kiki go to stay with their new friends, Phillip and Dinah, in their isolated old house, "Craggy-Tops", set on a steep cliff on the coast.

The children sail out to the Isle of Gloom and eventually learn that Jo-Jo is working with men who are counterfeiting money in the old mines on the island. Brief Summary by Courtenay Rule: Philip and Dinah Mannering and their new friends Jack and Lucy-Ann Trent — along with Jack's irrepressible talking parrot, Kiki — are spending their summer holiday at Craggy-Tops, an ancient, half-ruined house by the sea. In the end, Jack and Lucy-Ann are allowed to stay because Jack’s pet parot is the only living being that’s ever expressed compassion for Dinah’s aunt, who is having a mental breakdown. The quality is not brilliant but I expect that it isn’t really any worse than when it was first released.The house is owned by Phillip and Dinah's uncle Jocelyn (a focused historian) and overworked aunt Polly, who are helped by a handyman named Jo-Jo (Joe in some versions). Joe, unfortunately, refuses to take the children out in his boat at all, let alone to the island, so Bill Smugs – a friendly man living in a rundown shack a mile and a half along the beach – offers to take them out in his. Who are the two strange pilots, and what is the secret treasure hidden in the lonely valley where the children land?