I’ll begin this with two points:
One – I feel bad about recommending this series because the books are quite hard to find and rather expensive when they are for sale. But not bad enough to not write this post.
Two – That’s not a grammatical error in the title. The family’s surname is Cherry. When talking about them they are The Cherrys. I know it looks really wrong, but it isn’t.
The Cherry series
There are fourteen books in Will Scott’s Cherry series, published from 1952 to 1965.
The Cherrys of River House (1952)
The Cherrys and Company (1953)
The Cherrys by the Sea (1954)
The Cherrys and the Pringles (1955)
The Cherrys and the Galleon (1956)
The Cherrys and the Double Arrow (1957)
The Cherrys on Indoor Island (1958)
The Cherrys on Zigzag Trail (1959)
The Cherrys’ Mystery Holiday (1960)
The Cherrys and Silent Sam (1961)
The Cherrys’ Famous Case (1962)
The Cherrys to the Rescue (1963)
The Cherrys in the Snow (1964)
The Cherrys and the Blue Balloon (1965)
I’ve got two Cherrys book. Book 12, The Cherrys to the Rescue was my mum’s, and book 11 The Cherrys’ Famous Case was given to me by a very generous stranger in return for some special edition stamps. It wasn’t as weird as that sounds. A lady posted on the Enid Blyton Society Forums that she had a copy of a Cherrys book and she’d like it to go to a good home. I was the first to respond and she offered to post it to me, her only request was that I send her some British stamps in return.
The first twelve books are illustrated by Lilian Buchanan (who did five of the Find-Outers books), though I can’t find any information on the last two books.
An illustration from The Cherrys to the Rescue on the left, and one from The Cherrys’ Famous Case on the right.
What are the books about?
The Cherrys are a family of four children, Jimmy, Jane, Roy and Pam, and their parents, Captain and Mrs Cherry, and also their monkey Mr Watson, and parrot Joseph.
Captain Cherry, a retired explorer, likes to create mysteries and adventures for his children. These they call ‘happenings’ and together they explore, solve, hunt, search, investigate, hide, escape… and generally have a very jolly time. The happenings occur in several fictional places, set around the Kent coast mainly. Market Cray, St Mary’s Cray, St Denis Bay, and so on are loosely based on real places.
In some of the books they are joined by others such as the Pringle family and the Wilks family.
The Cherrys’ Famous Case
This book begins with the children moping. Captain Cherry is away and as [he] was always the one to get things going when you had nothing to do. His ‘happenings’ as they were called – those wonderful adventure games that were better than any games you ever thought of – were famous with the Cherrys and the Pringles and Mr Wilks next door.
Roy is reading a detective book and says it would be fun to try to follow clues. It’s just his luck that the next day Captain Cherry takes them to visit a professor friend, and he just so happens to have lost a parcel. Perhaps it was stolen! The Cherrys form a police force and must put together a suspect list, find clues and investigate this crime.
Of course this is another ‘happening’ all set up by the Bigs (as the adults are known). The Littles (as the children are known) solve it in the end, having worked out that the real culprits are Captain Cherry, Mr Wilks and Mr Pringle.
The Cherrys to the Rescue
In The Cherrys to the Rescue, it’s Jimmy who gets the idea for the happening, when his father tells a story about rescuing a professor from the jungle.
Suddenly Jimmy gave a jump. “That would be a good idea!”
Everyone was interested, because ideas for ‘happenings’, their own wonderful adventure games, were always so very welcome at River House.
“If only we could have a missing professor we could organize a relief expedition and rescue him.”
“Absolutely smashing!” cried Joe Pringle. “It would take hours and hours!”
Captain Cherry offers to be the professor, but Roy decides it isn’t fair – poor father always does the organising of the happenings and thus can’t take part. Before they can argue too much about it, Mr Wilks’s brother from the Isle of Wight arrives. They invite him to join their picnic, but he never returns from taking his car to the garage.
I haven’t had time to reread this so I’m not sure how long it takes them to realise that Mr Wilks’s brother has taken the role of the missing professor. Either way, they throw themselves into trying to find him. Things are muddled by the involvement of two mysterious boys they nickname Thin and Fat, as the Cherrys follow the trail Mr Wilks’s brother has left.
Of course they reunite with Mr Wilks’s brother in the end, and the solutions to various puzzles are revealed.
Like Blyton but not like Blyton
Featuring nice, middle-class children of the 1950s having adventures, Enid Blyton and Will Scott’s books have a lot in common
However, there is one huge difference between Scott’s stories and Blyton’s. In Blyton’s books parents are generally packed off as soon as possible – through trips abroad, hospitalisation, caring for sick relatives, or the children themselves go off on camping/hiking/walking/cycling tours to get away from authority. Only then can they fall into hair-raising danger.
Will Scott, however, has not only the Cherry parents but also the Pringles and Wilks parents as well as other adults just as embroiled in the happenings as the children are. Of course the treasure hunt or kidnap trails are all entirely fictional, but everyone enters with such enthusiasm that they become very real. The clues and trails are just as satisfying as are any solutions made.
Much like Blyton’s stories, the Cherrys’ tales are supported by lovely covers and illustrations, by Lilian Buchanan as I mentioned above. What they also have are endpaper maps, illustrating the areas in which the book’s happenings take place.
On the left is the map from The Cherrys to the Rescue (unfortunately my book is an ex-library copy and the left of the map is missing from the front, and the right is missing in the back. I was able to scan each part separately and put them back together though!), and on the right is the one from The Cherrys’ Famous Case.
So if you ever stumble upon a Cherrys book I heartily recommend them, and I can only hope that one day I can find some more of them myself.
Fiona
pippastef
worldofblyton
World of Blyton 
Norman Dale’s adventurous trilogies from the 1940’s (The Exciting Journey/Mystery Christmas/Skeleton Island) (Secret Service/Dangerous Treasure/The Best Adventure) all have maps in the front.
Actually the second trilogy turned out to be a tetralogy. This summer I found one more sequel called “The Secret Motor Car” (but that one was not as exciting as the rest and for me it was way too technical with the kids big project of repairing an old jalopy).
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Thanks for sharing this info, these sound like fun. I will start searching for them.
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I would LOVE to be able to get my hands on a “Cherrys” book. No library holds them (of course). And on ebay type sites, as you say, the books have asking prices of hundreds of Australian dollars = hundreds of English pounds. So they are unobtainable.
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Did you manage to find a copy of one?
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These books were the greatest childhood memories for me so in my older years I set myself a challenge.”Where can I get them?Are they available in a bookstore? Obviously to no avail.Did I give up? No..I am now the proud possesser of every one.
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Oh gosh, excellent work, Sarah! I’m very jealous.
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I am lucky because I have the collection from my childhood. I’ve found the books in my parent’s attic. They have been translated to portuguese in the 60,s
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I remember the Cherry series as being (almost) the first books I can remember reading, exciting (to a nine year old) and full of incident. Unlike Sarah I am not quite the proud owner of the whole set as I have one (The Cherry’s and Silent Sam) to find. I’ve been looking for a couple of years now but will not give up as somewhere out there is a copy with my name on it. If you haven’t ‘met’ the Cherry’s yet give them a go, you will be well rewarded.
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Good luck on finding Silent Sam!
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Hi there – fascinating reading this forum. The one book of the series I can vividly recall is the Double Arrow one: possibly due to the cover picture of the boys up a tree (cool!) or alternatively the name itself which was more offbeat than the others. Anyway some ten years ago I decided to try and get hold of the whole collection having enjoyed them so much in my youth. I set myself an ambitious target of first editions with good dust covers just to make it more of a challenge. It took a little more than average perseverance and lots of searching but managed to get there in the end. I am the first to admit that I had some good fortune on the journey in that I stumbled across a “special package deal” of a number of books on offer – from someone on the south coast who just happened to be the close friend of Will Scott’s daughter: he gave her a copy of his latest book on release. What a bonus! So this speeded up the collection completion in a rapid manner. The only non-first edition I have is – strangely enough – the posthumously released Blue Balloon one . I am re-reading each one in turn: some I recall but several I have forgotten the story-lines. Each brings a smile to my brain.
Captain Cherry is described in several texts as an “explorer” and yet in the stories themselves I am sure there are references to him being a “military surveyor”. This struck a chord with myself as my background is in geology and survey. Was I using him as a role model when I tried organising “happenings” for my three daughters when they were young. Quite probably!
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I remember reading this series as a child. I used to get them out of the library and when I had read them all, I just started borrowing them all again. Brilliant memories of some great books.
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I wish my library had had any of them! They’re so hard to find now which is a real shame.
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can anyone make pdf to Cherry series?
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I have today laid in the sun-kissed garden and read The Cherrys and the Blue Balloon, the last one in my reading of all the books in the series, nearly 60 years after I started.
I’ve read them all (something I never managed as a child) in recent years and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience. There’s a real sense of joy in them, in that depiction of an unfettered childhood, roaming around hunting for clues. The maps are superb (Lilian Buchanan still doing the maps and drawings in Blue Balloon). And Captain Cherry is just the greatest father. In fact the way that all the parents band together in the Happening planning is pretty unusual in fiction I think.
There’s some sexism in the way that the women and girls (in the case of Pam) are treated but such is the times they were written in. If you can forgive this they are just lovely books, readable in one sitting.
As a kid I only got these from the local library or once or twice as presents. My ten year old self would rate the Double Arrow as the best, my adult self is slightly in awe of Indoor Island, even if it’s a bit untypical. Galleon is also excellent.
That’s it, no more Cherrys to read 🙁. On to Jennings I suppose.
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Hi Keith,
Interesting to read your comments (I posted earlier on this thread – see above) as , like you, I was always a Cherrys fan in my youth. Double Arrow was probably my favourite overall although since I re-read them I realise that I missed out on a few when I was younger (including the final Blue Balloon one funnily enough). Great stories for a child’s imagination.
I also progressed onto Jennings & Darbyshire – also Just William and the Billy Bunter series (the Famous Five in the BB books were of more interest than the Fat Owl). I could never garner an interest in the Blyton Famous Five but did read some of the Secret Seven books at a younger age.
A variety of books to choose from in those days.
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Thanks Rob, for your reply.
Getting hold of the Cherrys when young was so difficult. I was mostly dependent on one very small local branch library, which had a reasonable collection of Brock Books but presumably couldn’t buy everything. I twisted my Dad’s arm to buy me Double Arrow while on holiday in Llandudno, but he wasn’t one to buy presents outside of the big occasions. The fact that they weren’t paperbacked at the time wasn’t a game changer as I think I’m right in saying that no kids books were (at least of the sort I was interested in) – I recall seeing the Famous Five books in paperback just as I was moving towards more adult reading.
I read some Jennings to my kids about 15 years ago and thought they held up very well – still very funny.
A series I keep eyeing up is the Green Sailors by Gilbert Hackforth-Jones – a family who head off on increasingly flamboyant sailing adventures. I enjoyed these as a kid (not that it led to any sailing urges) but I’d have to track them down now.
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I have a copy of “Zigzag Trail” if someone is looking for a copy.
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I’d be interested, but given the price these books usually go for it might well be out of my budget.
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I loved these books when I was a youngster and have been able to collect them all over the years and I do have 5 Cherrys books that are doubled up in my collection each with photocopied dustcovers:-
The Cherrys to the Rescue
The Cherrys of River House
The Cherrys and the Double Arrow
The Cherry and Company
The Cherrys on Zigzag Trail
I also have a second copy of Will Scott’s The Great Expedition
I’m willing to sell for a fair price – no exchange for stamps 🙂 lol – if anyone might be interested.
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Hey! I’m glad to see people still enjoy the cherry books! I don’t know much about them since they were before my time and I’ve never read any of them. Recently, I decided to do some digging about them and Will Scott because I’m actually related to him! So cool to see what he did! I’ve enjoyed writing my whole life and I’d like to write my own stories someday! Hope you find and enjoy these books! 🙂
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