Enid Blyton’s Adventure Series

Island of Adventure by Enid Blyton, 1944.

Philip Mannering is spending part of his summer holidays at the home of one of his teachers, doing some extra studying, which is a bit depressing.  He has fallen behind in school because he recently suffered from Scarlet Fever and Measles, and he is trying to catch up.  He’s not the only boy studying at the teacher’s home, but he isn’t really friends with the others.

One day, he’s doing some studying on the hillside and hears a strange voice telling him to shut the door and not whistle.  There is no door on the hillside, and he wasn’t whistling.  Philip is very confused until he realizes that the voice is coming from a big, white parrot sitting in a tree.  Then, he hears a child’s voice calling the parrot from the garden of the teacher’s house.  Philip is happy, thinking that another boy has joined the study group, but it turns out that he’s only half right.

The voice in the garden belongs to Lucy-Ann Trent, who isn’t a student and isn’t there to study.  Her brother, Jack, is the one who needs to catch up in school because he never focuses on his studies.  Jack has only one interest in life, and that’s birds.  Jack owns the parrot, Kiki, and wants to be an ornithologist when he grows up.  He is bright but disinterested in anything that isn’t related to his chosen field.  Lucy-Ann is only there to spend time with him and keep him company while he gets extra tutoring.  The two of them are orphans.  They don’t remember their parents because they died in a plane crash when the children were very small.  Most of the time, they live at boarding school, which is why they don’t spend as much time together as they like.  Usually, during their holidays, they live with a fussy uncle, which is why the parrot is always barking orders at the children.

Philip also usually lives with an aunt and uncle when he’s not at school.  His father is dead. His mother is still alive, but she spends most of the time working at her art agency.  He also has a sister named Dinah, but they don’t usually get along.  Philip is surprised at how well Jack and Lucy-Ann get along with each other because he’s always fighting with his sister, who has a temper. (Although, admittedly, he does push Dinah to lose her temper.)  Strangely, Philip finds himself wishing that Dinah were also there because, when he becomes friends with Jack and Lucy-Ann, it occurs to him that she would nicely round out the group.

Philip, Jack, and Lucy-Ann become friends by bonding over their shared love of animals. Philip likes the parrot and tells Jack and Lucy-Ann that they would probably like his aunt and uncle’s house because they live by the sea, and there are many sea birds in the area.  Philip doesn’t know much about birds in general, but he likes collecting various small pets, including mice and caterpillars.  The teacher isn’t too happy about these animals because they disrupt study sessions.

Then, Jack and Lucy-Ann get a letter saying that they’re going to have to continue staying with the teacher through the rest of the summer because their uncle has broken his leg and can’t take them back.  The children aren’t happy about that and neither is the teacher because he had other plans after the summer tutoring session ended, even though the uncle has provided a generous check for the children’s care.

Then, Philip has a wonderful idea: maybe Jack and Lucy-Ann can come visit him and his sister at his aunt and uncle’s house.  Dinah has written to him that she’s bored and lonely and misses him, even though they usually fight.  She would like the company, and Philip knows that his aunt and uncle could use the money the children’s uncle is willing to offer for their boarding.  Jack and Lucy-Ann like that idea, but they’re not sure that their uncle and teacher would agree to let them go because they don’t know Philip’s aunt and uncle, and they think maybe Philip’s aunt and uncle wouldn’t want two strange children staying with them.  The children know their plan would be best for everyone, but since they’re not sure that they can persuade the adults, they take the attitude that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission and plot for Jack and Lucy-Ann to run away and join Philip on the train home.  Jack and Lucy-Ann secretly send their trunks to the train station along with Philip’s and tell the teacher that they’re just going down to the station to say goodbye to Philip when he goes.  Then, they quietly buy their train tickets and leave.

When the children arrive at Philip’s home, Aunt Polly is irritated because she isn’t prepared for unexpected guests.  There are no rooms or beds for them, and she says that they can’t stay.  However, she is surprisingly won over by Kiki, who says, “Poor Polly!” over and over in a sad tone.  Not knowing that Kiki is also sometimes called Polly, Aunt Polly thinks that the bird knows her name.  She often feels overworked and rarely gets any sympathy, so she appreciates this gesture from Kiki, who repeats the phrase more often, seeing that it pleases Aunt Polly.  Aunt Polly is also charmed that Polly tells people to get a handkerchief when they sniffle or sneeze because she’s always saying that to Dinah.  When she telephones the children’s teacher to discuss the situation and learns about the fee the children’s uncle is willing to pay for caring for the children, she decides that maybe the children can stay after all.  The relieved teacher promises to endorse the check over to her.

Aunt Polly is relieved to get the extra money, and she reveals to the children that she’s been very worried about expenses because Philip and Dinah’s mother has been ill and hasn’t been able to send the money she usually sends from her job.  Her doctor says that she’s run-down and needs a rest, but her job is an important source of money to the whole family.  Everyone is relying on her, but since she hasn’t been able to send her usual support money for the children, Aunt Polly is worried about how she will afford the children’s school fees.  Philip bravely says that he’s willing to quit school and get a job instead to help out the family, but Aunt Polly says he’s still too young.  Philip has wished before that he was old enough to be the man of the family and provide for his mother.  His uncle isn’t much help with money and doesn’t pay attention to family expenses, too absorbed in his academic work.  Aunt Polly says that the money she’ll get from boarding the Trent children will help out.

Philip says that part of the trouble is that the house where they live is really too large. About half the house is crumbling into ruins from neglect, and the other half is really too big for Aunt Polly to maintain.  Aunt Polly agrees but says that moving would be difficult because few people would want a house like this one, crumbling and located in a rather lonely spot along the coast.  Besides, the children’s uncle loves it because he knows all the history of the area, and he wouldn’t want to leave.  Philip thinks the only thing that will really help is when he and Dinah are old enough to get jobs.  Then, the two of them will be able to help their mother afford a place for three of them.

Philip’s aunt and uncle have a gloomy man named Joe working for them, and he tells the children that the tower room where the boys will sleep on an old mattress (a prospect that seems adventurous to them instead of an inconvenience) isn’t a good room because it’s the only room where they can see the Isle of Gloom.  He says that bad things are associated with the Isle of Gloom because bad people who did terrible things lived there.  Jack asks Philip about the Isle of Gloom.  Philip says that it’s difficult to see, even from the tower room, and it’s always covered in mist.  Nobody lives there now.  Jack thinks it sounds great because the birds on the island have probably never seen people before and won’t be afraid of them, so he could get some amazing pictures.  He thinks maybe he’ll even find some rare birds.  Philip says that he and Dinah have never been there before themselves, and he’s not sure whether there are birds there or not. 

Staying at the house by the sea isn’t easy.  All of the children are expected to help with the chores.  There is no electricity, and they use oil lamps that need to be cleaned.  The water has to be pumped from a well.  Still, Jack and Lucy-Ann think that it’s just part of the adventure.  They enjoy going swimming and fishing with Philip and Dinah, and Jack has fun bird-watching, but Joe the handyman is always spying on them and acting creepy.  He keeps telling the children spooky stories about things lurking in the dark.  For some reason, Joe tries to discourage the children from exploring the area or going out in a boat, but they soon make an interesting discovery. 

While the children are exploring a cave, Philip teases Dinah, and she hits him.  He stumbles back and ends up in a hidden tunnel.  Philip and Jack explore the tunnel and discover that it leads to some carved stone steps and trapdoor that leads up to a storeroom that’s part of the cellars at the house.  Philip says that he never knew this part of the cellar existed.  The boys discover that the door to the storeroom is usually hidden by boxes, but Joe has the key and comes in.  Kiki, who is with Jack as usual, makes some sounds that terrify Joe, who thinks that there are strange and spooky things in the cellar.  The boys think that it’s hilarious that Joe got scared when he’s always trying to scare them.  They steal the key that Joe left in the door so they can come and go whenever they like, but they wonder why Joe even hides the door to the storeroom in the first place.  Philip is sure that even his aunt doesn’t know about that storeroom, or she would have mentioned it before.

Joe is definitely doing something suspicious, going out at night in a boat, fearful that the children will find out what he’s doing. The children make friends with a nice man named Bill, who is staying in an old shack nearby. Bill says that he’s there for bird-watching, but he doesn’t seem to know that much about birds or talk about them as much as Jack does. Bill has a boat and takes the children out sailing, but he doesn’t want to take them to the island and warns them to be careful of Joe. Does Bill know something the children don’t, or does he have some dangerous secrets of his own?

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies). It was first published in Britain, and some US copies use the title Mystery Island instead. The book was made into a movie in the 1980s, and you can see it on YouTube. The movie has John Rhys-Davies as one of the villains.

My Reaction

First, I’d like to get it off my chest that I didn’t like many of the family relationships throughout the book. Aunt Polly’s marriage is a little disturbing because she doesn’t have enough money to run the household, but her husband not only says that he has none to give her and wouldn’t give her any even if he did have money. He doesn’t seem to care about the welfare of either Polly, who is eventually revealed to have a heart condition, or the children in his care. He buries himself in his study most of the time and has almost no idea of what’s going on in the rest of the house or even who’s there. He’s not just obsessed with his studies, but at times, it seems like he’s deliberately hostile toward everyone else, including his wife, like their existence in the house is a terrible inconvenience to him.

I didn’t like the way Philip and Dinah were portrayed as always fighting physically in the book. Admittedly, my brother and I got into physical fights when we were little, but Dinah is twelve years old, and Philip is older than she is. Both of them seem to be too old to be acting the way they do in the story. Dinah is very emotional and has a hair-trigger temper, and Philip, knowing this, intentionally baits her into losing his temper. He likes to put creepy-crawly creatures on her or act like he’s going to, knowing she doesn’t like it and that she’ll react, and then he’s not happy when she lashes out and hits him. While Dinah shouldn’t react by hurting people physically, I could sort of understand it if she constantly has to put up with this from Philip. Living with someone who is always baiting you and escalating his behavior until you break would probably leave anyone broken in the end, and I can’t help but think that Dinah’s emotions would stabilize more if she didn’t have to deal with someone always trying to throw her off balance. Maybe she’d still be an emotional person, but I notice that it’s particularly Philip who gets her to fight physically while nobody else does because they don’t bait her into it. I found that sibling relationship kind of disturbing because Philip seems to know exactly what he’s doing, and as I said, he’s too old to be doing this stuff innocently.

Jack and Lucy-Ann seem to have a more fond sibling relationship. Lucy-Ann sometimes seems a little clingy with Jack, but I think that might be because the children are orphans and are not fond of their stern uncle, so they don’t really have anybody else to be close to except each other.

My copy of the book is one of the later editions that had some of the names and language changed to remove racially-problematic aspects of the story. In the original version of the book, the sinister handyman was a black man called Jo-Jo, and his race was unduly emphasized. I prefer the version where he’s just a weird guy named Joe.

The mystery isn’t bad. I knew right away that Joe was suspicious because he kept acting suspiciously, but the mystery is one of those type where it’s not so much about “whodunnit” as about “What is this person doing?” Readers know that Joe is up to something, but it isn’t clear for much of the book what it is. I had a couple of ideas early in the story, but neither was right.

Bill is also an interesting addition to the story. For part of the book, he looks a little suspicious because readers can tell that he’s not the bird-watcher he pretends to be, but he doesn’t seem to be allied with Joe. Bill is actually a good character, although he’s not what he appears to be, and he becomes one of the important characters in other books in the series.