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 eagles are surprised and puzzled by Kiki, a bird that can screech like an eagle but talk like a human! If Is actually almost scary in parts. Maybe it’s because I’m looking at them from an adult perspective now, the mess the kids are in, the creeping sense of danger earlier in the book, the slightly claustrophobic feelings. Very good. Very well written. I love all books by Enid Blyton. I first read this book about 35 years ago. I still love it 35 years hence. The adventures the four children had in the castle on the hill have engrossed my sister and me for a long time. The boldness of the children to explore things on their own, the courage to enter a castle which looked scary and overgrown, and their adventurous spirt all fascinated me as a child and still do. I loved the character of Philip because I am an animal lover myself. My only disappointment is that my daughters do not appreciate Enid Blyton's style of writing as much as I did at their age. They tell me they can't relate to things written in her books and perhaps its true. For those were the good old days , There is just one surprise in this story and that too a small one. This was one of the reasons I liked to read it so many times – because nothing is lost by having it read it already.

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. 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 Castle of Adventure was a children's live-action serial based on the book by Enid Blyton. [2] It ran for 8 half-hour episodes from 19 April – 7 June 1990, produced by TVS Films and shown on CITV. The star-studded cast included Susan George, Gareth Hunt and Brian Blessed. The children were played by Rosie Marcel, Richard Hanson, Hugo Guthrie, Bethany Greenwood and Eileen Hawkes. Lionel Augustus and Edward Francis (who was the producer of all episodes) were the writers. Terry Marcel, Rosie's father was the director. The plot of the series closely followed that of the novel, but the setting was updated to the time of its production. The series was filmed on location and at Saltwood Castle in Saltwood, Kent. Love the children, This book never talks down to kids, It allows the responsibility for their actions, it lets them go and do what are used to do to learn to be future adults. It is so far from The way the parent today... We could learn a lot. Yes there is danger, but that’s just life. The kids in this are courageous and look after one another. There is maybe a slight leaning on the side of misogynous tendency but that’s just the time it was written. Enid was very much in favour of equality and that comes across in all her books, this one in particular. This book also has secret passages and hidden rooms. There is again pulse pounding action in the last part of the book - tussle with the bad guys as well as fleeing from a cataclysmic disaster.

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. The actors fitted the characters perfectly in most cases, and again, where they didn't (such as Tassie) it seemed an improvement or just as good as the original, considering the times. The film has been very gently and effectively modernised (though is more than a decade old now), yet cleverly manages to remain true to the book at the same time. 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, what is going on and how they will escape.urn:lcp:castleofadventur0000blyt_y9s7:lcpdf:393304de-3d73-4186-b2c8-2d0d760ae34e Foldoutcount 0 Identifier castleofadventur0000blyt_y9s7 Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t74v6j56m Invoice 1652 Isbn 9781447205241 If you cannot open a .mobi file on your mobile device, please use .epub with an appropriate eReader. 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. I just have to make comment on bill smugs. I remember him in The ship of adventure. A slightly odd character who makes himself quite comfortable in the house the children are staying in even though no one is there. He seems so hugely unconcerned about the children’s welfare it made me laugh a lot.🤣 According to the Index Translationum, Blyton was the fifth most popular author in the world in 2007, coming after Lenin but ahead of Shakespeare.

This is got to be one of my favourite Enid Blyton books. I really like most of the Adventure series, But this is my favourite one of all of them.Edward Francis told The Guardian at the time of its broadcast [3] that "Dinah takes the initiative far more. She confronts and debates things in a modern way. And there is more parity in the children's relationship with their widowed mother than in the original; she's less formal and disciplinarian". Three years later, [4] commenting on the updates which had seen an anti-tank device and the SAS included in the storyline, Anna Home (former head of children's programmes at the BBC who had been at TVS earlier in the 1980s) mentioned that Blyton "suffer(ed) from being neither truly period nor modern; it is difficult for writers and actors to know whether to retain the language and accent of the period or try to update it", and suggested that the dramatisation had not been "particularly successful". The Castle of Adventure (published in 1946) is a popular children's book by Enid Blyton. It is the second book in The Adventure Series. The first edition of the book was illustrated by Stuart Tresilian.