The Secret Island

The Secret Island is a children's novel by author Enid Blyton. It follows the story of three siblings named Mike, Peggy and Nora. Their parents had been lost for two years after their attempted to fly to Australia with a homemade plane, putting them into the hands of their Uncle Henry and Aunt Harriet, who made them work in their farm all day long and provided them with nothing but the most basic of needs. Later on, they befriended a local boy called Jack, who lived a similarly unhappy life with his grandpa on the opposite side of a nearby lake. But Jack's got a secret. He knows a island in the middle of the lake, where they can all escape and live happily. So together, they hatched a plan to escape and start a new life.

This novel contains examples of:

 * Alternate Character Interpretation: Are their parents purely benevolent people who simply wanted to have fun, or are they greedy, egoistical glory hounds who spent lots of money building a plane for their own amusements while leaving little for their own struggling relatives?
 * Bad Cop Incompetent Cop
 * Deus Ex Machina:.
 * Everything's Better With Cows: The children managed to smuggle a cow into the island by having it swim behind their rowboat.
 * Gadgeteer Genius: Plane. Homemade. Australia. Says a lot about their parents, doesn't it?
 * Ghibli Hills: The island.
 * Hawaiian Shirted Tourist: A bunch of rather idiotically obnoxious ones had a picnic on the island, threatening to give away the children's location.
 * Improbable Age: In a true Enid Blyton style.
 * Parental Abandonment
 * Treehouse of Fun: The Willow House.
 * Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: The obnoxious tourists that visited the island for a little while were scared away by bats.
 * Wicked Stepmother: Actually an uncle and an aunt, but close enough.