Stuff

Before I get into the rest of the stuff I want to say here I had one more thing to say about book 6 that I forgot to put in my other blog. I was amazed by how often the story just took a pause for several pages so that the characters could have long conversations detailing the history of Arizona, indians, dude ranches, and all sorts of things. Ok, maybe it was suppose to be educational but it felt kind of like there wasn't enough story and this was added for filler. Anyway, enough about that.

So - Julie Campbell Tatham. She was the one who came up with Trixie Belden and wrote the first 6 books. She also wrote the Ginny Gordon books and some of the Cherry Ames and Vicki Barr books. Crabapple Farm, where the Belden family live is actually based on a real place, Wolf Hollow, where she lived herself and Sleepyside is based on Ossining, New York. She didn't want to continue Trixie after 6 books but the publishing company ended up cutting a deal with her because though they owned the rights to the books they conceded she owned the rights to the characters. She ended up getting some sort of monetary compensation and a series of in-house authors (the various "Kathryn Kennys") took over the job.

Above and below are a couple of maps of the area that the Bob-Whites lived. The fictitious "Glen Road" that they lived on is actually Glendale Road. Catamount Hill that you can see in the map above is actually explicitly mentioned in, I think, book 1.

Aside from the obvious change in author names you can tell the later books are written by different authors because they're occasionally inconsistent. With eye colours changing, personalities being slightly different, Di's house suddenly being on Glen Rd with the others etc. I'm not saying that the various "Kathryn Kennys" did a bad job, in fact my favourite books are all Kathryn Kenny books, it's just interesting to see how things go.

Anyway the point of all this is that this blog is now departing Julie Campbell country and we have to take a slight pause and say thank you to her for giving us something we love. So, "Thank you, Julie Campbell, it's been fun, we love your work"

Next up - Umm, the Mysterious Code. I THINK this is the one where the Bob-Whites are facing being disbanded by the school and to show the club is good they hold some sort of charity event for UNICEF (again, I think). What I do know is that it's the one with the little stick figure alphabet code :)