CalMeacham:
This lead me to look up The Famous Five, which I’d never heard of before. It’s a series of books written by British author Enid Blyton from 1942-1963 and published in Britain, about – well, four kids and their dog, etc. ( The Famous Five - Wikipedia )
Blyton’s books were published in Britain and Europe, and turned into movies, comics, TV series, cartoons, etc. in Britain and Europe. I’d never encountered them before, but they were obviously a Very Big Deal.
I’ve never read any of them, but I did read at least one of Blyton’s “Adventure” Series books when I was a kid. (Instead of four kids and a dog, they feature four kids and a parrot.)
I observed in another thread:
British literature seems to have had a fairly strong tradition of books involving groups of boys and girls (often siblings) having adventures together, as in the works of E. Nesbit, Arthur Ransome, and Enid Blyton; and I think Lewis was thinking along those lines when he wrote The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe .