Posted by RichardG on January 13, 2006 at 18:37:10 from 217.207.172.242 user RichardG.
In Reply to: Re: That Unbelievable Peter Duck posted by Eric Abraham on January 13, 2006 at 15:41:33:
"Peter Duck and Missee Lee are "believable" in the fact they they "could have" happened as is the case with all the stories."
As a child reading the books for the first time, I could easily imagine myself with family and friends taking part in all the other adventures of the Ss, As & Ds - indeed we used to play at being Swallows & Amazons on a lake in Wales. There were also "real" places to visit to see where they had had their adventures (like many others I spent ages poring over maps of the Windermere/Coniston area trying to find where AR had moved the scenery from/to).
I never had that feeling about those two books, which for me is why their appeal was lessened. Real pirates, tropical islands and Chinese taicoons were well outside my likely experience. I suspect the same would be true for many others.