Posted by Robert Hill on April 26, 2001 at 13:28:04 from 129.11.159.105:
In Reply to: most humourous book? posted by Dan Vine on April 26, 2001 at 11:45:48:
I would say PM is the funniest with WH second. One scene in WH that springs
to mind immediately is where Captain Flint arrives at the houseboat to find
the D's in occupation. Another amusing aspect is Nancy's remote control of
the other characters. But I may be overlooking the funny qualities of
some of the other volumes that I haven't read as recently.
Your message, though short, touches on two points I've made on Tarboard
in the past.
1) I too enjoy PM more as an adult than I did as a child. Other
contributors have said the same. PM wasn't my favourite then but it is now.
2) All the lake books except S&A are what you call 'failure' books:
the characters are at the lake, and would like to be camping on Wild Cat Island,
but something prevents them. Three of these four books end just as the
preventing factor has been removed or is about to be removed.
In the fourth the preventing factor is the winter, which cannot be removed
except by waiting for the summer.
After I had first read S&A aged 8, and before I had read any of the other
books in the series, I imagined, or at least wanted, all of them to be
about adventures that occured while camping on Wild Cat.
Readers, characters and author all agree that there is something special
about being based there, but the author has seemingly used up in S&A all the
plot ideas that can be centred around that, so he has to introduce the
preventing factors.
There may be some analogy with the religious idea of the expulsion from paradise.