The treasure hunters
The Treasure Hunters by Enid Blyton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Jeffery, Susan and John Greyling go to stay with their grandparents, who are being forced to sell the family home, which has been in the family for generations, because they can no longer afford to maintain it. The children discover a hidden map showing the whereabouts of the family treasure, which had been lost for many years, and if they can find the treasure, their grandparents will not have to sell the house. But there is already a potential buyer, Mr Potts, who is also after the treasure, and is determined to get the map from the children.
I can’t remember when or where I first read the book, but I must have been about 9 or 10 years old, and it was a copy that belonged to someone elee, so I wasn’t able to re-read it. Jeffery, the eldest of the children, made a big impression on me — so much so that when I wrote a children’s novel of my own many years later (Of wheels and witches), I borrowed his name, and something of what I had imagined his character to be.
On rereading it as an adult, more than sixty years later, I am struck by different things. I can see why there was a period when librarians didn’t like Enid Blyton. There are some things about her style that I found annoying as an adult, though as a child I didn’t notice them. There is an over use of exclamation marks. The children are always telling each other how clever they are and exclaiming about the obvious. There is the usual Enid Blyton food porn. This gives the impression that Enid Blyton is writing down to children, and I was struck by the contrast with, say, the Harry Potter books, where the style is so much better.
But after the first couple of chapters either the style improves, or else one gets caught up in the story so that the defects are less noticiable. There are a few reminders of how society has changed since the book was first written, assumptions about gender roles, for example. The children discover an abandoned summer house, and when they decide to clean it up, “Susan took charge of the cleaning, because she was the girl.” But at least her brothers helped her.
It’s a simple story with a simple plot, but still an enjoyable read after all these years.
Notes from underground 
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