Smugglers at Whistling Sands

Modern children adventures in the style of Enid Blyton.

If you are not familiar with Blyton's book series like the Famous Five or the Adventure series, they feature groups of children who, while on holidays during the middle part of the 20th century, got involved in adventures and mysteries, facing bands of smugglers or other criminal gangs. They emphasize friendship and adventure, and often feature outdoors activities like camping or hiking in natural environments, mysterious light signals, secret passages and so on. The children often were given a lot of freedom to go on holidays on their own. Reading stories like that as a child, I was attracted by children like me being involved in thrilling adventures, but also by their friendship show more and the sense of freedom. Even though Blyton's books were, and to a certain extent still are, incredibly successful, there is a lack of modern books in that style. One of the reasons is that it is more difficult to conceive of modern children being given that much freedom to go on holidays on their own.

Looking for a modern writer in that style led me to several disappointments, until I found this book. Here, we have a twelve year old girl, Lou Elliott, who befriends three siblings: twelve-year-old Jack, eleven-year-old David and ten-year-old Emily. Lou is quite the outdoors, self-sufficient, adventurous type, while the others are more sheltered, so she immediately becomes the leader of the group.

I enjoyed the dynamics between the characters, with the occasional squabbling among the siblings giving a sense of realism to the otherwise good-natured friendship. The pace is fast, with the adventure starting quite soon in the book when David accidentally overhears a conversation between two men who appear to be talking about smuggling.

I thought the author did a good job incorporating modern technology. The internet and mobile phones are used, but they do not dominate the adventure tale.

The writing was mostly quite good, adequate for a children's adventure like this. On the minus side, there were several occasions when there was an awkward passage, like this one:

Her foothold gone, Lou started to slither down the bare cliff-face, which seemed to crumble away from her.

Grab something, anything! She thrashed out in panic. The man in the moon must have been on her side. His pale white face shone down again, lighting up the exposed root of a heather bush. Lou grasped it, praying it would take her weight. It did so -just- groaning horribly above the roar of the sea.

So... how does a root groan horribly above the roar of the sea?

In spite of that, this was a very entertaining and dynamic story. It captures well the spirit of Blyton's adventures, and I highly recommend it. show less

This first children’s book that George Chedzoy has written is a warm-hearted adventure of four children searching for smugglers. The seaside adventure begins at Abersoch on the LLyn peninsula and continues on to the beaches and the empty mines of Porth Ysog, Wales. Excellent read, as a chapter book can be enjoyed by the entire family.