Adventurers, Inc. 1

I pulled Adventurers, Inc. out of my book storage and decided to give them a reread/review. This series was published in 1994-1995 and lasted for 8 volumes. There were more planned. #9 was Toni Francis, Princess for a Day, set on the French Riviera and involving a kidnapping. #10 was Suzette's Victory Ride, set in Ireland.
And #11 was Rosina's Moroccan Caper. I really wanted to read that last one! I actually got in touch with the author years ago and she informed me that sadly, they were never published.

Anyway. The series has six main characters. The premise is that the four girls won an essay contest and get to spend the summer travelling around the world. In charge is their young teacher, John, and Debbie, who is older sister to one of the girls. Toni is the Kristy of the group. She's short, outspoken and gets them into trouble twice in the first book. Debbie is her older sister. Allison is her best friend. She's the only girl in a family of five kids. She's into cars and mechanical stuff, which is cool because she's a girl, but also because she's black, and you don't see a lot of black female characters trying to fix their own jalopy. Rosina is half-Spanish and half-French and she's the wealthy fashionista type. And Suzette comes from a Japanese family. She's more sheltered and very close with her grandfather, but she also does some pretty brave stuff in the book.

Their first adventure has them going from California to Vancouver. They sightsee a bit, then go camping, which some of the girls aren't thrilled about. I'd totally be like that. Like Rosina, I mean. If I  won a trip around the world and we started out with friggin' camping, I'd be pissed.

Naturally, it turns into a crazy adventure when they meet Paul and his grandfather, who are searching for a lost family mine, and the girls go off alone in the woods with Paul. Toni and Paul decide to search for the mine, he falls down into a shaft and breaks his ankle, and Toni and Suzette set back out across mountains (yes, really) to get back to the camp. A storm causes a crevice to form, which sends Suzette back to the mine, while Toni continues forward. She makes it back to camp and then they can't get a rescue helicopter right away, so despite her fear of heights, she skydives into the valley near the mine with a ranger. That's what's on the cover, even though they look a mite too happy considering.

Is it realistic? Absolutely not. Like a teacher would let four teenage girls go off by themselves in the goddamn woods. Is it fun? Sure. I love books about travelling, so I'm all in.

Next up: Rafting down the Grand Canyon. A cute Native American boy. Suzette's scared of water, yet has to perform a daring rescue. Are we setting up a pattern? Maybe. Maybe.