The Secret Mountain: Enid Blyton’s Adventure of Jack, Mike, Peggy and Nora
The unusual, fast-paced adventures of a group of children who are always on their way to the next escapade: Nora, Peggy, Mike and Jack, a close-knit team who do everything together. In The Secret Mountain, the third book of Enid Blyton’s Secret Series, they set out to rescue the parents of three of them from a strange mountain and the people who live inside it.
Author: Enid Blyton (1897–1968)
Title: The Secret Mountain (1941), Secret Series 3
Format: English paperback (Award Publications), 192 pages
Scope: Classic children’s adventure for ages 8 to 12
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/184135676X (ASIN 184135676X)
Four Friends and a Mountain
The children solve the most unexpected situations with intelligence and humour. It is a fun series, full of suspense. The Secret Series began with The Secret Island, where the four first joined forces, and here the stakes are higher: the rescue takes them far from home, to a mountain whose inhabitants keep very strange customs.
Blyton for Today’s Readers
In the Spanish collection I read, these unforgettable Blyton classics had been newly illustrated with today’s children in mind: an exceptional, high-quality reissue. Blyton’s books are free of any real violence or cruelty; they tell daring adventures in which friendship, loyalty and generosity are the key values.
The Secret Series
Blyton’s Secret Series has five books: The Secret Island (1938), The Secret of Spiggy Holes (1940), The Secret Mountain (1941), The Secret of Killimooin (1943) and The Secret of Moon Castle (1953). In the first, Jack, Mike, Nora and Peggy run away to live on an island in a lake; in the second they meet Prince Paul of Baronia, who joins the group, together with his loyal, larger-than-life bodyguards Ranni and Pilescu. Their adventures are bigger and more exotic than the Famous Five’s, often involving aeroplanes, kidnappings and faraway places.
A Rescue by Air
In The Secret Mountain, Captain and Mrs Arnold, the aviator parents of Mike, Nora and Peggy, disappear on a long-distance flight to Africa. The children fly out with Paul, Ranni and Pilescu to look for them and discover that they are held captive inside a mountain by a hidden people who plan a terrible ceremony. Caves, secret passages and a daring escape follow, in classic Blyton style.
Reading It Today
The book was written in 1941, and its portrayal of the mountain’s inhabitants reflects attitudes of its time that today’s readers will find dated, which is one reason later editions have been revised. Parents may want to read it with younger children and talk about it. The qualities the original reviewer praised, the friendship, loyalty and courage of the group, are what keep the series alive. Enid Blyton was born in London in 1897 and trained as a teacher before writing full time, which shows in the brisk, clear prose that young readers can manage on their own.
Why Children Still Love Blyton
Blyton’s critics have long complained about her limited vocabulary and simple plots, but those are exactly what make her books such good first chapter books. Children read them fast, feel competent, and go looking for the next one, which is how many lifelong readers begin. The Secret Series also has something many children’s books lack: real adventure far from home, with the grown-ups out of the way for most of the story.
The Author
Enid Blyton is one of the most widely read children’s authors of all time. She wrote over 700 books, and her work has been translated into more languages than that of almost any other children’s writer. She is best known for the Famous Five, the Secret Seven, The Magic Faraway Tree and Malory Towers.
A note for Spanish readers: in Spain this book was published within a ’Los Cinco’-style collection, but these are not the Famous Five; they are the four friends of the Secret Series.
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