This one we read from October 26th to November 9th, 2024. I’m catching up, slightly! I had to double check my dates as two weeks seemed rather quick for The Secret Island, but they are correct. You can just make out the covers on my Bookmory calendar, showing the dates we read it.

Island life

Brodie was completely captivated by this book despite it not being the more typical Blyton adventure that he normally enjoys. The island is mentioned pretty early and from that moment he was desperate for them to just hurry up and run away there – though he did agree that it made sense for them to take a bit of time to pack!

He was really interested in all the little parts of their plans and nodded approvingly as they solved various problems (like putting the milk in the spring to keep it cool, which he had suggested himself). He also asked a lot of questions.

He was particularly preoccupied about the food situation – asking what they would do if they ran out of food, where they would get more from. Despite that he, too, was reticent about them eating the rabbits.

The picking of berries excited him as we regularly pick wild strawberries, raspberries and blackberries while out on walks. Often it’s hard to get Brodie to move on once he’s found a good patch of fruit!

We had quite a long conversation about mustard seed and how it becomes mustard, and why the children would bother with it.

He also worried about the winter coming, and the children getting cold and wet. That’s a very fair concern as I think they only have one (light) coat between them, and no boots or scarves or anything. Sleeping out of doors also concerned him because what if it rains? 

He thought they should have torches and proper tents. I had to explain (again) that although those things were around at the time not everyone could afford them. I think he has gotten used to the affluence of the Kirrins and the Mannering/Trents!

One thing he also asked was How can nobody else know about an island? That’s a good question – it is sort of unbelievable, and obviously not as true as Jack thought as the trippers find it.

Getting Daisy to the island astonished him – a COW, SWIMMING??

He loved willow house but I had to spend quite a bit of time looking up photos of willow houses to help him understand the building of it. I never found anything that quite matched what is desribed in the book (or at least my imagination’s picture of it).

To update or to not update

I feel as if I made less changes here than in some other books.

I left the slaps in as I think they have far more impact than scoldings alone. That’s not to say that the life they led minus the slaps, as in the modern editions, isn’t enough to run away from, but the violence adds another level. I think (for a short while at least) it made him grateful for his own life.

I did balance out the boys’ and girls’ roles where I could.

“Nora and Peggy ought to be going to school and wearing nice clothes that fit them, and having friends to tea,” said Mike to himself. “This is no life for them. They are just very hard-worked servants for Aunt Harriet, and she pays them nothing.”

Why isn’t Mike worthy of these things too? I changed the names and references from they and them to we and us.

 He wanted to go very badly—but would the two girls really be able to stand a wild life like that? No proper beds to sleep in—perhaps no proper food to eat—and suppose one of them was ill? Well, they would have to chance all that. They could always come back if things went too wrong.

Again, I included Mike and made this apply to the three children and not just the girls.

“You leave it to me,” said Jack. “I don’t like hurting things any more than you do. But  know quite well how to skin rabbits. It’s a man’s job, that, so you two girls can leave it to Mike and me. So long as you can cook the rabbits for dinner, that’s all you need worry about. 

I made this more about Jack knowing how to do it, so it was his job, not a man’s job, and Mike could learn if he wanted to.

Other than that I don’t think there was anything other than not using queer. The boys and girls jobs are somewhat stereotypical (Peggy mends and cooks, Nora looks after the chickens, the boys fish and catch rabbits and mend/build things) but it would have been a lot of work to alter that. Besides, it seems very much as if they are playing to their natural strengths. Nora doesn’t do mending or much cooking, and at no point are they told these are girls’ jobs.

A rollercoaster of a book

There are a number of tense scenes in the book, but they are balanced out by lots of moments of humour and fun. Brodie gets very tense and worried when things are going badly, and I’m sure nobody will be surprised at which scenes I highlight here.

• The children sneaking off to run away after being told to stay in
• The trippers visiting the island and intending to explore it
• The policeman nearly catching Jack in the village and the children knowing that soon people will be searching for them (This, of course, reads very differently when you’ve read it before and know how it ends)
• The searchers coming to the island and making it into the caves

At these tense moments he always asks me what happens next – especially if we end a chapter with a cliffhanger. For some reason he usually asks me if I have read the book before, and I have to say yes, but I won’t spoil things for him. Sometimes if he is upset I will tell him that things turn out OK in the end, but I won’t say how. Sometimes if he would just wait until I finish a paragraph he’d have his answer as well.

Things he laughed at included

• Daisy scaring off the trippers, and frightening the searchers with her unexpected mooing.
• The man who says he will eat his hat if the children are on the island, because of course they are on the island
• The ‘boat’ that turned out to be a swan

As Jack finds Mr and Mrs Arnold and they reunite with the children he said:

It’s so happy. I’m so happy I could cry!

I know what he means. As an adult I think I almost – or sometimes even do – cry at this part of the book. I don’t think I ever did as a child, though.

Then he was super disappointed that they had to leave the island, and that the book had to end.

My reading experience

This was actually a pretty easy one to read. Very little in the way of changes needed. The worst ones are the things you forget about and you’re half-way through a sentence and have the only a second or two to find a substitute for the n-word or something while still reading aloud. Nothing in the way of accents required, and actually very few characters over-all. The boys probably sounded quite alike – though I tried to make Jack sound older and more authoritative, whilst the girls were similar but again I tried to make Peggy sound older and more confident.

I did have an additional thought/nitpick when the searchers were on the island and noticed the trampled area at the spring and possibly some footmarks. I wouldn’t have been surprised if there was a little worn footpath – like the desire lines you see where people take shortcuts across the grass – as the children would have been going back and forth to the spring multiple times a day, and probably taking the same route each time.