The Adventure Series

The Adventure Series
	The Island of Adventure; The Castle of Adventure; The Valley of Adventure; The Sea of Adventure; The Mountain of Adventure; The Ship of Adventure; The Circus of Adventure; The River of Adventure
Author	Enid Blyton
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre	Children's literature, mystery
Published	1944-1955
No. of books	8

The Adventure Series by Enid Blyton, a prolific English children's author, is a series of eight children's novels. These books feature the same child characters: Philip, Jack, Dinah, and Lucy-Ann, along with several adult characters. Jack's pet parrot, Kiki, is also a standard feature in each novel.

The stories show the four children off on their own, discovering and solving mysteries without much adult assistance. Although the publication dates span a decade, Blyton reportedly wrote each of the novels in less than a week.

The colourful dust jackets and line illustrations were by Stuart Tresilian.

Characters

(family names are provided based on first appearances)

Philip Mannering: A boy with a growth of hair which stands up above the forehead, earning him (and his sister and mother, but mainly him) the nickname "Tufty" from Jack. Like his late father, Philip has a gift of befriending any type of land-based animal he comes across, and always has a veritable zoo of small animals somewhere within his clothes. He is quite a tease with his sister Dinah about her squeamishness and often gets into a lot of fights with her about it. He's Jack's best friend and is quite kind to Lucy-Ann when Dinah is a little mean.
Jack Trent: A boy about Philip's age, though older (about 14 in the series' beginning), who has red hair, green eyes and lots of freckles all over his face, the latter of which earning him the nickname "Freckles" from Philip. He and his sister Lucy-Ann are orphans and were living with an unfriendly uncle until they were adopted by Mrs. Mannering. Jack has a special passion for birds; he spends most of his time observing birds. His greatest dream is becoming an ornithologist. He loves Mrs. Mannering very much and cares much about his sister Lucy-Ann.
Dinah Mannering: Philip's younger sister of about twelve in 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.
Lucy-Ann Trent: Jack's little sister is the youngest of the foursome (about 11 in the beginning of the series) and also the most timid one. Like her brother, she has red hair, green eyes and freckles, and in several instances she is described as very pretty. Lucy-Ann is very affectionate towards the people she loves, particularly her brother Jack, though sometimes she is a little jealous that Jack seems to love birds more than her. She also loves her "parents" Bill and Mrs. Mannering very much, is Dinah's best friend and quite fond of Philip.
Kiki: Jack's female pet parrot which is described as scarlet and grey with a big crest on its head. Her most noticeable trait is her enormous repertoire of command phrases and peculiar noises, which she seems to pick up very easily. Her commands originally came from Jack and Lucy-Anne's unfriendly uncle and his stern caretaker, with whom they had to live until Jack and Lucy-Ann were adopted by Mrs. Mannering. In the stories Kiki serves usually either as comic relief or as a saviour from tight situations.
Bill Cunningham: An important member (holding the rank of inspector) of an unspecified, quite possibly fictional 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.
Following the events in The Ship of Adventure, Bill marries Mrs. Mannering and adopts all the children as his own. Upon first encountering the children, he used the alias "Bill Smugs" - a name which appeared again in The Mountain of Adventure.
Mrs. Mannering ("Aunt Allie" later Cunningham): Philip and Dinah's mother is a widow (not much is revealed about her late husband, only that he seems to have possessed the same animal-charming ability Philip demonstrates throughout the series), and like her children she has a tuft of hair upon the top of her head. At first she adopts Jack and Lucy-Ann into her family, providing them a loving home; later she marries their common friend Bill and founds a new family with all of them. She is affectionately called "Aunt Allie" by Jack and especially by Lucy-Ann.

Novels

The Island of Adventure (1944) AKA Mystery Island (US, 1945)
The Castle of Adventure (1946)
The Valley of Adventure (1947)
The Sea of Adventure (1948)
The Mountain of Adventure (1949)
The Ship of Adventure (1950)

Originally, the series was supposed to end after this episode, but under the great demand of dedicated fans, Blyton wrote two more episodes:

The Circus of Adventure (1952)
The River of Adventure (1955)

All of the books are in print, and the original editions are expensive collectors' items.

TV versions of all eight novels were produced by Cloud 9 Entertainment Studios in 1996.[1] The Castle of Adventure had its title changed to "The Woods of Adventure" and the plot differs greatly from the book.^{[citation needed]}

Plot summaries

The Island of Adventure

Philip meets the orphaned brother and sister Jack and Lucy-Ann at a summer school, where he has gone as he was ill for most of the last few terms. Learning that they do not much like the housekeeper and uncle they stay with, he invites them home to his house, Craggy Tops, where they meet his sister, Dinah, his aunt, Polly, his uncle, Jocelyn, as well as a strange man who calls himself Bill Smugs (known as Bill Cunningham later in the series). But all is not as it seems on a little island nearby, and they soon find themselves on the trail of money forgers in the disused copper mines on the Isle of Gloom.
Note: This work has been 'severely' criticised by scientists for its geological implausibility.^{[citation needed]}

The Castle of Adventure

The children and Mrs. Mannering travel to a lonely mountain cottage, which lies close to an old castle. Curious about the ruin, and eager to watch a family of golden eagles nesting in it, the children explore the place. Jack decides to stay overnight in the castle courtyard, and finds he is not alone. He finds men doing bad things, and quickly alerts his friends who get help.

The Valley of Adventure

Preparing for a trip by plane with Bill, the four children inadvertently go into the wrong plane, which takes off under frightening circumstances — and find themselves stranded in an isolated valley scarred by war, and at the mercy of sinister men looking for a long-lost treasure.

The Sea of Adventure

Bill takes the foursome on a trip to a Scottish island to help them recover from measles. But amongst the islands, they stumble upon a sinister plot; Bill disappears, and the children are left alone to find out where he is and what is going on.

The Mountain of Adventure

Hoping for a quiet holiday for once, the children, Kiki, Mrs. Mannering and Bill go to a mountain farm in Wales for some wandering. But on the search for the Vale of Butterflies, the children get lost and find themselves near a mysterious mountain. Ominous rumblings from the ground, a pack of wolves roaming the area, a black fugitive, and Philip's disappearance are but a few of the mysteries the children have to unravel about the mountain.

The Ship of Adventure

All the children are aboard for a quiet cruise among the Greek islands. But when Philip's pet monkey breaks a birthday present, all the children are plunged into an exciting quest to find the lost treasure of the 'Andra' with some ruthless villains hot on their trail.

The Circus of Adventure

Who is the strange pompous boy whom Bill has invited to his home for the holidays? The children soon discover that he is a prince, named Aloysius Gramondie, and has enemies on his trail. The enemies want to overthrow his uncle, who is too strong a ruler for his enemies, and to place the prince, who is just 11 years old, on the throne as a puppet ruler. Jack and Kiki find themselves following the others, who are kidnapped and taken to the strange country of Tauri Hessia; but they find help in a circus, and with his new friends Jack will soon decide the fate of an entire nation.

The River of Adventure

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.