Help from my literary and British friends?

[gridlore]

In the wake of HBP and general memories of good young adult fiction, I'm struggling to remember the name of a series of British YA fiction books i treasured as a kid. I think I got them (or Craig got them, and I stole them) from the British grandparents. The books (and there were several) concerns a group of four friends. In their early teens, they have Kipling-esque adventures all over the world. One of them owned a parrot, and one was obsessed with the Great Auk, an extinct seabird. From the writing, I suspect that the books were written in the 1920s or 30s.

Not much to go on, I know, but it's been bugging me for days.

A lot of great stuff from those days. Craig and I devored the Tom Swift series, along with The Hardy Boys and even the wonderfully English Biggles books.

Comments

[isomeme.livejournal.com]

Enid Blyton (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?userid=Ft1ddZVAUt&ath=Enid+Blyton) was the author. She did several series, of which the "...of Adventure" series is probably the one you're remembering.

I loved those books with a burning passion. In retrospect, I realize they were part of Dad's effort to civilize us colonials.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Those would be them! Thanks.

[collie13.livejournal.com]

Oh, gosh, I remember those! Lots of fun, and she had several series going. She was amazingly prolific. ;)

[kengr]

Odds are you can find etext versions at Project Gutenberg. Or if not, opne of the alt.binaries.ebook.* (or a.b.e-book.*) groups will likely have them posted from time to time.

[rboleyn.livejournal.com]

Aside from Enid Blyton's books, some may have been from the Swallows and Amazons series, by Arthur Ransome. They were set in the same period, and the later adventures included at least one in China (Missee Lee, IIRC).

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Sounds a bit like Swallows and Amazons, by Arthur Ransome. I can't remember any that were 'all around the world', but the children imagined that their Lake District countriside was the entire world (naming the local peak Darrien, for example).

Or it could be an Enid Blyton book. If so I haven't read it, but she wrote a lot and it was hard to buy them in Canada when I was a wee lad...