Thursday, November 15, 2007
The perfect children's adventure story
I finally got to read another of Enid Blyton's short one-off novels, Children of Kidillin, originally written under the guise of Mark Pollock. My copy is not exactly old and rare, just a two-for-one 1965 hardback with a torn dust jacket, called simply Adventure Stories; but hey, I got it free with another book I bought from eBay, so I'm not complaining. The book also contains Mischief at St Rollo's, but I wasn't in the mood for a school story so got stuck into Children of Kidillin first.
In case you think I'm about to suggest that this is the perfect children's adventure story... well, it's not. Read on!
Children of Kidillin is a little different to Blyton's other short adventure stories in that the Second World War is not only mentioned but is integral to the story. Here we have two English children, Tom and Sheila, who are evacuated to a remote Scottish village to live with their cousins, Sandy and Jeanie. And Kidillin is about as remote as you can get, with just a couple of shops and not much more for miles around. The Scottish hills are very much part of the story too, and the two local children enjoy dragging their English cousins up and down the slopes and wearing them out (their cousins, not the slopes). But Tom and Sheila get their own back by outdoing Sandy and Jeanie in their home-tutored schoolwork.
While explicit mention of the War is fairly rare in Blyton's books, and the Scottish setting itself a little different to the norm, the plot doesn't steer too far from the familiar "children find a secret underground passage and foil the bad guys" formula. In this book the bad guys are spies, and there's a big to-do over a "machine" that Sandy catches a glimpse of; this "machine" (which has absolutely no other description) is subsequently "dismantled" and relocated to a cave, and later turns out to be a wireless transmitter. Not quite sure how you dismantle a wireless transmitter though; isn't it just a big box-like object full of buttons and switches and dials? What's to dismantle exactly?
Anyway, like many short novels, there's no room for incidental details; anything that gets a mention is involved in the plot somehow. The little empty cottage on the mountain that the children visit to escape the rain is now the lair of two bad guys; the stream gushing out of a hole in the mountain is not just there for scenery, it plays a major part in the story; and when the shepherd reminds the two Scottish children of another hole in the ground, the "pot-hole," you can bet it too plays a part. All the elements come together a little too perfectly, and the result is a light and pleasant, but generally average adventure story.
Once again this brings to mind a fanciful idea I had a year or so ago about the author. When you read book after book after book, all in the same mystery/adventure genre, you get the distinct feeling that Enid Blyton was striving to write the perfect adventure. She had all the plot elements laid out before her: a set of three or four children, secret tunnels, caves, underground streams and waterfalls, lost or hidden treasure, smugglers or kidnappers, a prisoner locked in a tower, moors and mountains, mist and marshes, islands and causeways, castles and old mansions... The question is how to put all these elements together to produce the best children's adventure ever.
The problem is that it's difficult to cram in every single plot element. So Blyton tried several ideas involving various different selections of plot elements to see which worked best. Story ideas included:
- smugglers, treasure and towers
- kidnappers, prisoners and towers
- treasure, secret tunnels and mist
- marshes, mist, kidnappers and tunnels
- tunnels, smugglers and castles
- old mansions, treasure and clever thieves
- clever circus folk, towers and prisoners
- haunted buildings, prisoners and tunnels
- ...and so on
Tap-tappety-tap, go Enid's fingers on the typewriter. "Oh, gosh," she thinks, pausing as a new idea hits her. "I simply MUST include a knowledgeable old man. And some gypsies. And some mist. Oh bother, that's at least another ten possible stories..."
It doesn't end there. "Is three children better than four? Is it best to use two girls and a boy, or two boys and a girl, or two of each? Blow! I'll have to experiment. And how are they related? Cousins? Brother and sisters? A bit of both? Perhaps some are related but one is a boy next door or a ragamuffin from the circus or a simple nephew..." As the books spew from the typewriter, Enid wonders, "Golly, I haven't really explored what would happen if the children were alone on an island! Now, let's try two boys and a two girls stranded on an island with a secret submarine base... and then perhaps two boys and two girls who run away to an island to escape horrible guardians and live there for a year... and then perhaps two boys and two girls who run away to an island to escape horrible guardians but find a kidnapped girl there... and then perhaps two boys and two girls who visit an island but are stranded there and find a secret gang of gun smugglers..."
A new wave of ideas hits Blyton. How about a story involving a prisoner in a tower, she wonders, and the children seek the help of circus folk for their rescue attempt. Plop! A novel falls on the floor. Or — the same idea but the children use the secret passages leading up from the caves near the sea... and the prisoner is a prince! Plop! Or — what if the prince is first disguised as a girl and then gets captured and imprisoned in a tower. Plop! Or — instead of a boy disguised as a girl, what if there's a girl disguised as a boy, and... Plop!
Pausing for a moment, Enid looks out her window and has a terrible shock. A pair or twins is standing there, eating ice cream. They're so alike that Enid can't tell them apart. Ideas begin to form in her active mind... "I rather like the idea of the children meeting twins, only they meet one at a time and each contradicts the other and confuses the children... Plop! Wait — how about a set of boy-girl twins who both look like boys? Plop!
"How awful it would be," Enid thinks to herself, "if the children are exploring tunnels and water is cascading all around them. Perhaps the tunnels are under the sea and the ocean is rushing in — Plop-plop! — or perhaps they have to swim to get in or out of a mountain — Plop-plop-plop! — or perhaps the tide is rising — Plop-plop-plop-plop-plop! — or perhaps..."
Now the sound of machine gun fire emanates from Enid Blyton's study as novels ratter-tatter from her typewriter, slamming against the wall with a thud-thud-thud. The publishers send a three-man team in a van to collect the pile of manuscripts, which are already in the hundreds, and as they leave they discuss how on earth they're supposed to print all these one go.
"We canna dae it," says one (who has a Scottish accent). "Help ma boab! We didna ken there'd be s' mairnie books!"
"We'll just have to store them up and publish a few at a time," says the second. "There's enough here to last us decades."
"Yes, by jove, yes, that's a spiffing idea," says the third. "Let's keep it under wraps though, chaps. There's no sense in letting on to the world that we have enough material to make us all rich."
As the heavily-laden van pulls away, Enid pops her head out of the window and frowns. "I say — you do know that I was just experimenting, don't you? I certainly didn't mean for ALL those books to be published. They're all really rather similar to each other, you know."
This is all just a theory of mine.
This post has 3 comments
Your articles are very good, I think if there is ever a vacancy as a column writer in some newspapers, I will tell you straightaway, Keith. Back to this article, I accept sad endings, but it is of course more lovelier if it has a perfect ending.
Even if it is your theory, Keith, I had a medium-level thought that maybe it is, after all, true!!!
Mimsy
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