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The Bungalow Mystery. by Carolyn Keene. 1930. Grosset and Dunlap. 204 pages. ISBN: 9781557091574

I am quite sure that The Secret at Solaire, which I reviewed last Sunday, is not the only Nancy Drew book I read in childhood, but it was the only one I could remember, so I thought I owed it to myself to also read one of the original titles. I wanted to see how the 1993 Nancy compared to 1930 Nancy, and to get a sense of what the series was really all about. Because my fiance owns a 1930 edition of The Bungalow Mystery that I could easily get my hands on, that is the one I chose to read.

The story begins with a sudden rainstorm, which overturns a motorboat containing Nancy and her friend Helen Corning. The girls are rescued by a stranger, Laura Pendleton, whose mother has recently died. Laura has been entrusted to a guardian named Jacob Aborn, but as she soon realizes, he does not have her best interests at heart. Nancy, determined to repay Laura for saving her life, hides the girl at her house in River Heights, and heads out to spy on Jacob Aborn's bungalow to find out what he's really up to.

Because the book was written in 1930, some of the language - especially slang - obviously sounds dated to contemporary ears. In the first chapter or two, the author uses the word chum many times, to describe Helen Corning's relationship to Nancy, and each and every time, it made me giggle a little bit, because it sounded so silly. (I also think the author could have used another word at least a few times. I counted four uses of chum on just one page at one point.) I also thought the conversations Nancy has with some of the characters were very stiff. They lacked contractions and seemed overly polite, as though each character was a perfect robot with perfect manners.

Indeed, Nancy Drew is completely perfect in every way. She's a great swimmer. She can put chains on the wheels of her roadster. (Heck, she has a roadster.) She isn't afraid of intimidating men, she finds ways to get out of danger again and again, and she never hesitates to take someone under her wing and into her home for protection. I don't think she has a single flaw, and I think the only reason readers don't totally hate her is that she does so many cool things. Before the mystery even starts, Nancy has already survived two near-death storm-related experiences, and by the end of the story, she's been locked in a closet, knocked out, tied up, and left for dead in a dark basement. And every single time she comes out of the danger unscathed. What girl - in 1930 or now - doesn't want that kind of awesome, exciting life?

I enjoyed The Bungalow Mystery much more than The Secret at Solaire, mainly because the mystery was more suspenseful, and better-crafted, and because the older title had a lot of charm and history behind it that kept me interested and immersed me in a world quite unlike my own. Though I doubt I'll review them, I definitely want to read more of the books from the original Nancy Drew series.

If you missed it, last Sunday's Old School review of The Secret at Solaire can be read here.

I borrowed The Bungalow Mystery from my fiance's personal library. 
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Swallows and Amazons was originally published in 1930 in the UK, but the version I read is the 1958 US edition. I never read this book as a child, or even heard of it, honestly, until Elizabeth Bird's Top 100 Children's Novels Poll in early 2010. I'm not even sure I would have been interested in the book as a child, as it was old by my standards and involved adventure, which I was staunchly against as a kid. My childhood prejudices didn't stop me from falling in love with this book as an adult, however, and I think I will be thinking about Swallows and Amazons for a long, long time to come.

The story is set in the English Lake District, where the Walker family - John, Susan, Titty, and Roger - are spending a summer holiday at a farm called Holly Howe. After receiving permission from their father, who is in the Royal Navy and away at sea, the four kids set off in their boat, Swallow, to camp on an Island in the middle of the lake. Aside from very occasional visits from their mother, and a once-daily row across the lake to fetch milk from a neighboring farm, the Walker children are completely on their own for the duration of their stay on the island. John, as captain, is in charge. Susan, the mate, takes care of the meals, and Titty and Roger, though subject to the authority of the oldest two siblings, serve as able-seaman and ship's boy. From the start of their adventure, the Walkers allow their imaginations to rule their every move, considering the adults all around them to be "natives", and the man living in the nearby houseboat to be a retired pirate. Also in on the game are the Blackett girls, Nancy and Peggy, who call themselves pirates and challenge the Swallows to a war.

What truly sets a children's book apart, in my mind, is how deeply it is able to immerse itself into the mind of a child. I have often cited Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsburg as one of the best children's books of all time, because it never breaks character, so to speak. There is never an all-knowing narrative voice, or an authoritative adult voice stepping in to tell the reader what's real, and what's imagined. As in real-life make-believe, the children make all the rules, and everything in the story is told from the child's point of view and nothing more. Swallows and Amazons is brilliant in exactly that way. Though the reader is in on the game from the beginning, and knows that the Walkers aren't really sea explorers anymore than the Blacketts are pirates, he or she is taken along on the adventure, and completely buys into every aspect of the Walkers' imagined lives as members of a ship's crew. Because the reader buys into the make-believe, he or she is able to experience all the excitement of an adventure on the unknown seas with the warmth and comfort of the known and the familiar.

There is something for everyone in Swallows and Amazons - adventure, camping, sailing (complete with all the jargon and sailing instruction a child could want), late-night sneak attacks, battles, enemies, and mystery. The characters, especially Roger, Titty, Nancy, and Mrs. Walker, become so real as the story continues that it becomes difficult to say goodbye to them when the book ends. It's a lucky thing there are eleven more books following this one, because once hooked

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