The Adventure Series - Characters

Characters

(family names are provided based on first appearances)

• Philip Mannering: A boy with a growth of hair which stands up above the forehead, earning him (and his sister and mother, but mainly him) the nickname "Tufty" from Jack. Like his late father, Philip has a gift of befriending any type of land-based animal he comes across, and always has a veritable zoo of small animals somewhere within his clothes. He is quite a tease with his sister Dinah about her squeamishness and often gets into a lot of fights with her about it. He's Jack's best friend and is quite kind to Lucy-Ann when Dinah is a little mean.
• Jack Trent: A boy about Philip's age, though older (about 14 in the series' beginning), who has red hair, green eyes and lots of freckles all over his face, the latter of which earning him the nickname "Freckles" from Philip. He and his sister Lucy-Ann are orphans and were living with an unfriendly uncle until they were adopted by Mrs. Mannering. Jack has a special passion for birds; he spends most of his time observing birds. His greatest dream is becoming an ornithologist. He loves Mrs. Mannering very much and cares much about his sister Lucy-Ann.
• Dinah Mannering: Philip's younger sister of about twelve in the beginning of the series. Like her brother, she has a tuft of hair standing up atop her head, but she shares neither his gift in attracting nor his love for animals, especially the small creeping types (mice, insects, snakes etc.). Temperamental as she is, she often finds herself the target of her brother's teasing, but otherwise she is quite level-headed, tough, intelligent and grown-up for her age.
• Lucy-Ann Trent: Jack's little sister is the youngest of the foursome (about 11 in the beginning of the series) and also the most timid one. Like her brother, she has red hair, green eyes and freckles, and in several instances she is described as very pretty. Lucy-Ann is very affectionate towards the people she loves, particularly her brother Jack, though sometimes she is a little jealous that Jack seems to love birds more than her. She also loves her "parents" Bill and Mrs. Mannering very much, is Dinah's best friend and quite fond of Philip.
• Kiki: Jack's female pet parrot which is described as scarlet and grey with a big crest on its head. Her most noticeable trait is her enormous repertoire of command phrases and peculiar noises, which she seems to pick up very easily. Her commands originally came from Jack and Lucy-Ann's unfriendly uncle and his stern caretaker, with whom they had to live until Jack and Lucy-Ann were adopted by Mrs. Mannering. In the stories Kiki serves usually either as comic relief or as a saviour from tight situations.
• Bill Cunningham: An important member (holding the rank of inspector) of an unspecified, quite possibly fictional secret service force (possibly based upon the British Secret Intelligence Service). His most prominent bodily feature is his half-bald head. He meets the children upon their very first adventure and makes regular appearances in the series from that point on. Mostly the children get tangled up in adventures which are connected with Bill's work at the time and end up solving them for him.
  Following the events in The Ship of Adventure, Bill marries Mrs. Mannering and adopts all the children as his own. Upon first encountering the children, he used the alias "Bill Smugs" - a name which appeared again in The Mountain of Adventure.
• Mrs. Mannering ("Aunt Allie" later Cunningham): Philip and Dinah's mother is a widow (not much is revealed about her late husband, only that he seems to have possessed the same animal-charming ability Philip demonstrates throughout the series), and like her children she has a tuft of hair upon the top of her head. At first she adopts Jack and Lucy-Ann into her family, providing them a loving home; later she marries their common friend Bill and founds a new family with all of them. She is affectionately called "Aunt Allie" by Jack and especially by Lucy-Ann.