The Adventure Series

(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 (as well as his sister and mother) 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 fights with her about it. He is 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, who has red hair, green eyes and many freckles on his face, the latter of which earning him the nickname "Freckles" from Philip. He and his sister Lucy-Ann are orphans and used to live with an unfriendly uncle until they are adopted by Mrs Mannering. Jack has a special passion for birds, and spends most of his time observing them. His greatest dream is becoming an ornithologist. He loves Mrs Mannering very much and cares greatly about his sister Lucy-Ann. Following his first adventure, Jack nearly always carries a rope and his field glasses, among other things, as basic equipment.
• 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.
• Lucy-Ann Trent: Jack's little sister is the youngest of the foursome (about 11 at 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 adopted "parents" Bill and Mrs Mannering very much, is Dinah's best friend, and quite fond of Philip.
• Kiki: Jack's female pet parrot, physically described as a cockatoo with a crest on her head.[lower-alpha 1] 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-Ann'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, as her voice is sometimes mistaken for a real person.
• 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.
  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.
• Mrs Alison Mannering (later Cunningham, aka "Aunt Allie"): 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 finds a new family with all of them. She is affectionately called "Aunt Allie" by Jack and especially by Lucy-Ann.

The Sea of Adventure (1948). Armada 1969 paperback edition. 190 pages

• 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. The Castle of Adventure was earlier dramatised by TVS for ITV in 1990, and the series has been Blyton's most used on the BBC; in 1974 The Island of Adventure was told on Jackanory[1] while in 1986 The Circus of Adventure followed.[2] These were the only Blyton stories ever to be told on Jackanory. In 1988, The Castle of Adventure was adapted as part of the Radio 4 children's programme Cat's Whiskers,[3] while in 1993, The Island of Adventure was read on the old Radio 5.[4]

In the 1990s, the Adventure Series was adapted for New Zealand television. The main characters were all the same as in the books, but the stories were set in modern times. This did not greatly affect the plot of the stories, though Jack owned a pocket computer which played a significant role in a couple of the adventures, particularly in "The Ship of Adventure". "The Mountain of Adventure" was set in the German Alps, rather than the Welsh mountains as in the books. Also, many of the TV adaptations featured bumbling henchmen for comic relief. Probably the most notable henchman was Ray Uma's henchman, Taj, in "The River of Adventure", who appeared to be more intelligent than his master, and had a major role in the episode's plot. The TV series also introduced a character who was not in the books- Sir George Houghton, Cunningham's rich, underworked boss, who appeared in every episode except "The Valley of Adventure". A running gag was that he always phoned Cunningham with an urgent assignment just as the family were planning a holiday- in "The Ship of Adventure", Bill had to postpone his wedding for this reason- yet Sir George appeared to be a gentleman of leisure. He was only seen doing real work a couple of times in the entire series- he was shown playing pool and golf, and on one occasion, he was seen fishing, though he lied that he was in the office. The series, which cost 6.2 million pounds, was released on DVD in Australia by Umbrella Entertainment in 2012.

The Island of Adventure was adapted into a 1982 British film directed by Anthony Squire, and starring Norman Bowler as Bill along with Wilfrid Brambell and Eleanor Summerfield.[5]

• Adventure Series Book Reviews & Articles
• The Adventure Series at IMDb