this blog<\/a> which has also got my acquisitional interest stirred up. The problem is that most of the older series are out of print, hard to find in good condition, and often expensive. And, of course, the best ones are also really long! Even the shorter ones can be a dozen books or so, and others have 30 or 40 titles to collect.<\/p>\nSo it’s a serious thing to decide to go after a series. I saw on eBay that the Robin Kane series (only 5 or 6 books long) was relatively inexpensive, so I thought I might try it. The shortness of the series is not particularly promising, but I thought the cheapness might outweigh that. And some series with good potential were simply marketed poorly and didn’t find their audience.<\/p>\n
Come to find out, though, I already had book 1! I’m in the process of re-organizing our books, having acquired a few slightly larger bookshelves, and I discovered it while I was moving all the childrens’ longer series to an area of their own. So I promptly brought it upstairs and read it this morning.<\/p>\n
The book is set in northern California, along the coast. The Kanes are a middle class family who live in a large house (something which would propel them right into the upper class nowadays, even with the housing market collapsed) with a pool and two guest houses. Dad writes a comic strip; mom is a homemaker; Kevin, 14, is a surferboy; Robin, 13, seems to be Trixie Belden; Amy, 10, is the little sister. Their best friends are Mindy and Michael Hunter, the wealthy children of a movie producer who live in a mansion and also conveniently own a horse ranch. The series opens with everyone already knowing each other and pretty much all of the establishing action having taken place off camera, so the reader is dropped right into the middle of daily life without much of an introduction to anyone.<\/p>\n
As a result, the first book is heavy on action, but pretty light on characterization. We find out about Robin’s obsession with her favorite of Mindy’s father’s horses, Nugget, whose theft (along with the theft of some other livestock) is the mystery plot upon which the book rests. The B plot involves the arrival of a child star who is working in one of Mr. Hunter’s movies. The children all immediately become good friends, and very little is really done with this; I was expecting some snobbery or something, but none ever materialised.<\/p>\n
Interesting period items included mention of soldiers going to Vietnam, Cape Kennedy, and a peripheral character (Amy’s best friend) who suffers from the results of having contracted polio.<\/p>\n
Based on the first book, this series is probably going to turn out to be pretty weak overall, and I don’t feel any rush to collect the rest. I may do it eventually if a good deal presents itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve always been a big fan of series books, ever since I was little. It’s nice to open a new book and already be familiar with the characters; to revisit old friends and find out what new things are happening to them. In some cases (for instance, the Princess Diaries, or A Series of Unfortunate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":781,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/780\/revisions\/781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=780"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flaminggeeks.com\/k\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}