Hunniwell Boys #7 Caribbean and #8 Non-Stop Flight Around the World

In the Hunniwell Boys #7, The Hunniwell Boys in the Caribbean, Jim and Gordon's friend, Slim Togus, lives in Cuba.  He invites the boys down to his home.  Upon their arrival, they learn that Slim wants to dive for a sunken ship in the Caribbean.

On page 51, the boys visit a village on an island.  The village consists of a bunch of natives and a white store owner.  Slim tells the brothers, "I guess that man at the store is a kind of king here.  He's the only white man I saw in the village."  So I guess the implication is that the natives just naturally regard any white person as if a king.  Then why do the natives attack the boys at every turn?

This story consists of the boys looking for the sunken ship, then dodging natives who keep attacking them.  The cycle repeats over and over until the story mercifully ends.  The story is not bad, but it is also not very interesting.  Also, there's that problem of Bill's name still being Jim for some unknown reason.  I still cannot deal with it.

In the Hunniwell Boys #8, The Hunniwell Boys' Non-Stop Flight Around the World, Jim and Gordon decide that they want to be the first people to fly all the way around the world non-stop.

The Hunniwells' plane is once again named the Albatross after being the Falcon for the last two books.  However, Bill is still Jim, and this is still a deal-breaker for me.

The book is good, and I enjoyed it more than the previous two books in the set.

The Hunniwell Boys series is very good to excellent up through #5 in the set.  #6 through #8 have the name changes, and I struggled with all three books.  So for me, the Hunniwell Boys series ends with five books, since the last three do not feel authentic to me.

Hunniwell Boys #5 Longest Flight and #6 Gobi Desert

In the Hunniwell Boys #5, The Hunniwell Boys' Longest Flight, Mrs. Green's son, Fred, left a year ago for Australia in hope of mining for gold.  Mrs. Green is heartbroken.  Bill and Gordon decide to fly to Australia to find Fred.  Along the way, the boys rescue a few people and encounter various adventures.

The aviation feats of the Hunniwell Boys are quite improbable, but for the most part, I simply ignore it.  I had to stop and think about it when the boys' plane climbs to 14,000 feet on page 17.  The oxygen level is thin at that altitude; additionally, the temperature is only 9.1 degrees Fahrenheit.  Nothing is mentioned about lack of oxygen or the cold.

This book contains many highly judgmental statements about the Aboriginal people of Australia.  I find these kinds of judgmental statements to be very offensive.  On page 169, Fred tells the Hunniwells that the natives are "hardly human they're so feeble-minded."

Indigenous peoples who live off the land in various parts of the world, even though they may not be in contact with the modern world, are intelligent and capable people.  They just have a different lifestyle, and there is nothing wrong with that.  In fact, they are much more intelligent about living off the land than modern-minded people are.  I hate reading judgmental comments about people who are different.  Just because someone is different doesn't make them stupid.

On page 194, Gordon observes, "These fellows may be lazy and all that but, take it from me, they know their stuff when it comes to springing a surprise."  Right, which means that they are not stupid.  They are knowledgeable about what is important to their way of life, which is simply different from ours.

This is a very good story.

In the Hunniwell Boys #6, The Hunniwell Boys in the Gobi Desert, Jim and Gordon Hunniwell fly to the Gobi Desert in their plane, the Falcon, to find a missing professor.

Did you catch that?  Inexplicably, the two brothers are now named Jim and Gordon instead of Bill and Gordon.  Not only that, but the Hunniwells' plane is now the Falcon instead of the Albatross.  Needless to say, the series pretty much lost me at this point.  I am not at all forgiving of sudden illogical name changes, especially when the series was supposedly all written by the same person with none of the books ghostwritten.  This makes no sense!

The book appears to have been written by Wyman as far as I can tell.  Certain phrases and colloquialisms are present, just like in his other books, but why did he change Bill to Jim?  UGH!!!

I had trouble enjoying the book.  In fact, I really didn't like it at all.  It partially bored me, and I skimmed towards the end.

Hunniwell Boys #3 Secret Service and #4 Platinum Mystery

In the Hunniwell Boys #3, The Hunniwell Boys in the Secret Service, Bill and Gordon enter a contest to see which plane can fly to San Francisco and back the fastest.  Naturally, the boys win.  As a result of the contest, they become friendly with Rogers, who works for the government.  Rogers requests that the boys help him figure out who is smuggling liquor across the border into the United States.

This is an excellent book and is a good detective story.

In the Hunniwell Boys #4, The Hunniwell Boys and the Platinum Mystery, Rogers enlists the boys' help in finding a lost cache of platinum in Hawaii.  The lost cache is on land once owned by Rogers' family and was left there by one of his forebears.

I noticed that the electric cell is now called a battery.  It's about time.

This story consists of several unrelated mini-adventures that occur while the boys look for the platinum.  Gordon even jokes about the mini-adventures on page 185, remarking, "Probably we'll see a ship on fire or a whale with a sore toe."

The racism present in the Hunniwell Boys books bothers me due to the overtly judgmental basis of it.  The boys become friendly with a "Jap" after a rough start.  On page 194, Gordon speaks positively of him, saying, "He's a regular fellow if his skin is a bit on the yellow shade."  He's saying that the man is okay despite his skin color.

For the duration of this book, no villains are after the platinum, which makes the story more realistic than most series books.  It's not necessary always to have somebody who knows one's intimate plans.  The boys run into plenty of trouble without having anyone privy to their plans.

This is an excellent book.

Hunniwell Boys #1 in the Air and #2 Victory

The Hunniwell Boys series consists of eight books written by L. P. Wyman.

1.  The Hunniwell Boys in the Air, 1928
2.  The Hunniwell Boys' Victory, 1928
3.  The Hunniwell Boys in the Secret Service, 1928
4.  The Hunniwell Boys and the Platinum Mystery, 1928
5.  The Hunniwell Boys' Longest Flight, 1928
6.  The Hunniwell Boys in the Gobi Desert, 1930
7.  The Hunniwell Boys in the Caribbean, 1930
8.  The Hunniwell Boys' Non-Stop Flight Around the World, 1931

In the Hunniwell Boys #1, The Hunniwell Boys in the Air, Bill and Gordon Hunniwell have built their own plane, the Albatross.  They have borrowed some electric cells from their friends, Bob and Jack Golden, who are currently in Europe.  The Hunniwell brothers use the cells to power their plane.  Soon after the plane is ready, the boys fly to Newfoundland to search for some lost fliers.

The Hunniwell Boys live in the same town as the Golden Boys.  Bob and Jack Golden never appear in this series, but they are mentioned at the start of most of the books, since the Hunniwells use their electric cells.

This is a good book.

In The Hunniwell Boys #2, The Hunniwell Boys' Victory, Bill and Gordon add a second propeller to their plane.  The propeller is placed on top of their plane and can lift the plane vertically.  The boys call the propeller the "elevator" and use it to land and take off from tight spaces. 

Mr. Golden requests that the boys survey some land in the Maine woods.  The land is disputed, and Mr. Golden wants the boys to verify that his information is correct.  The job proves to be very difficult.  The boys end up under attack and must use all their wits to complete the survey.

This is a very good book.

The Thrill of Finding Books Online

Many collectors say that they prefer searching for books in stores.  I now prefer to do my searching online.  I get a kick out of finding an impossibly scarce book online.  The process often requires a good bit of creative thinking.

A few months ago, I worked on building sets of books written by L. P. Wyman.  I successfully built complete sets of the Lakewood Boys and Golden Boys series.  The Hunniwell Boys series proved to be problematic.  I placed orders for seven of the eight books.  Two sellers cancelled the orders due to unavailability.  Fortunately, I was able to locate those two books later on eBay.

I was not able to locate a copy of The Hunniwell Boys in the Caribbean.  A few months passed as I read various books.  Finally, I read the Golden Boys series.  After I finished, I wanted to start the Hunniwell Boys series, but I still didn't have that one book.  I searched on Bookfinder and elsewhere, and not a single copy was available.

I have this belief that even if I do not see an online listing for a book that a copy could still be somewhere on the Internet.  It's just like when people visit various stores looking for books.  A copy of any book on the buyer's want list is likely for sale somewhere, but the problem is locating the store where the book is.  Instead of doing that kind of hunting, I work on cracking the secret of where the book is located on the Internet.

After I checked again a couple weeks ago, I still didn't see a copy of The Hunniwell Boys in the Caribbean anywhere online.  I sat and stared at the computer screen for a moment.  I was thinking to myself, Where is it?  How can I find that book?  It must be somewhere.  Then it came to me.  I thought of searching for "Carribean" instead of "Caribbean."  And there it was.  At the top of the search results was a link to an AbeBooks listing.

I clicked on the link to see the price, hoping it wouldn't be extreme.  Thank goodness.

To some of you, $35.00 plus $4.00 probably seems too expensive.  However, this is not too high for a book that isn't available anywhere else and that I want to read now.  I purchased the book, and then I waited, hoping that the order would be confirmed. 

The order was confirmed, and I received the book.  Yay!

In the meantime, I began reading the Hunniwell Boys series.  As I read The Hunniwell Boys and the Platinum Mystery, I discovered that the book has a binding error. 

Oh, no!  Pages 49 through 64 are missing, and pages 65 through 80 are duplicated.  Fortunately, I had a another copy that I thought I had upgraded to the copy with dust jacket that I was reading.  Now I have to keep both copies.  One has a dust jacket but is missing pages, and the other is in rough shape but has the complete story.

All of the books seen in the above photo were purchased from April through September.  Completing my set of Hunniwell Boys sets was difficult and not a smooth process, but at least I do have all eight stories complete in nine books.