The Island of Adventure

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Jenis petualangannya 11-12 dengan Lima Sekawan (((o(*°▽°*)o))) yang artinya: Lorong Rahasia! Gua Persembunyian! Harta!! (✧ω✧) ...atau minimal sesuatu yang berharga [̲̅Rp(̲̅ ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°̲̅)̲̅✧] 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 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. This time I read them in German and in English and compare them chapter for chapter to find the differences in the German translation. Originally, the series was supposed to end after this episode, but under the great demand of dedicated fans, Blyton wrote two more episodes: 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 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. 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. 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. 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.My favorites are "Castle of Adventure", "Valley of Adventure" (her masterpiece), "Sea of Adventure" and "Circus of Adventure". So buy a modern edition (unlike mine). And, if you do, set your expectations impartially low, try to tolerate the occasional out-of-date ejaculation, and enjoy. Dulu pas SMP dipinjemin seri Petualang ini tapi yang vol.6 ...dan karena waktu itu juga sudah baca Lima Sekawan, STOP, dan Trio Detektif, rasa-rasanya keempat tokoh utama di seri ini jadi kurang meninggalkan kesan~ 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'. 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).

Waktu SD, cita-cita aku dan teman-temanku (sesama pembaca Lima Sekawan) adalah menemukan harta di suatu tempat rahasia yang bisa dilewati dari bawah tanah~ Cita-cita ini kandas begitu saja ( ◡‿◡ )

According to the Index Translationum, Blyton was the fifth most popular author in the world in 2007, coming after Lenin but ahead of Shakespeare. To be honest, it wasn't reading, it was sharing the adventures with the characters, they did get into some predicaments, ones we all dreamed about getting into ourselves as kids in real life!